Lost Souls

by Hwang Sunwon

  There on the wall were two photographs, mounted side by side. One was of the deceased manager, the other of a young man clad in uniform and cap, presumably his son. The photograph of the manager seemed to be recent, and it showed a man with an unyielding personality. Chunho had never seen the son in real life, but could tell from his photograph that he resembled his mother more than his father; the cheekbones stood out in his wide face, and his broad shoulders suggested a strong build. It occurred to Chunho as he observed the photos that if the son were to return from the battlefield he would probably live to an older age than his father. The two women seemed apprehensive lest Chunho call out “Comrades!” and have the photos removed, and so they scrambled onto chairs and did it themselves, clearly agitated at the prospect of these photos passing into the hands of others. Chunho wondered what the fussy and supercilious manager would have done if he’d been there at that moment, and in spite of himself he broke out laughing. The two women were startled.

  Next to this room and toward the entrance to the house was a room with a floor heated in the traditional manner. The lamination on the floor was several years old but usable. And a good thing it was: the room was too small for a family of seven, but as long as they could move their household items into the family room next door they could squeeze into this room just for sleeping. On the far side of this room was a tatami room that appeared to be the maid’s. But by the looks of things she had left already; she was nowhere to be seen.

  Chunho stepped down to the inner courtyard. And there, as always with a house of this scale, were not only rocks and various trees but also a small, cozy man-made pond. At the far end of the yard a side gate opened onto the street, and in front of that gate was a bomb shelter that was supposed to have been excavated by workers from the distillery. Between the shelter and the gate stood a pair of stone figures facing each other. Have to get rid of that Japanese crap! Chunho called out to the two women for an ax.

  Presently the widow scurried out from the back yard with the tool. Chunho began to roll up the sleeves of his suit jacket. But they were too narrow. At least he didn’t have to worry about a necktie; if he had been wearing a tie, his suit would have looked even more awkward on him than it already did. Chunho gave up on the jacket sleeves and took the ax from the woman. He was small of stature, but he tensed his body, his protruding eyes bugging out even more, and with a swing of the ax he cleft the head from the first stone figure. It rolled into the bomb shelter.

  Next he lopped the head clean off the facing figure. This head did not roll into the bomb shelter. The other men had appeared from the house in the meantime, and with his foot one of them sent the second head rolling into the shelter. “They dug themselves a grave for the stone men,” he said, and they all laughed. The woman flinched, seemingly startled more by the laughter than by the crack of ax against stone. Chunho next took the ax to a stone lantern near the pond; a chip from the shade fell to the ground.

  The others went down to the basement, beneath the reception room, and returned a short time later to report that there were three barrels of soju. The men sounded disappointed—they had thought there was more. They all smelled of alcohol, and Chunho wondered if they had tapped the barrel with a hose and each taken several mouthfuls. A drink would be nice, he told himself, but he had to keep up appearances, so of necessity he desisted.

  By way of explanation the woman said to Chunho that when her husband had passed away she had brought the barrels of soju home to use during the mourning rituals, and the times being what they were, had simply kept them there. But Chunho knew that when the manager had died, only one barrel had been taken to his home. There was no doubt in his mind that the manager had previously brought home liquor under the pretext of using it for a gift, but in fact had been bartering it.

  The woman told Chunho they had a bathroom—would he like to see it? She seemed intent on softening his mood. I’ve had enough fussing with this Japanese woman, thought Chunho. And so instead he left, after telling the woman that he would move in the following day and to be sure the house was vacated, and, again following Kŏnsŏp’s words, that individual ownership was a thing of the past and she shouldn’t touch a single item in the house.

  The next day, when Chunho and his family arrived at the house in a truck from the distillery containing more people than belongings, the widow was still there. Was it too early in the morning to have moved his family? But as he looked about the house, the young wife was nowhere to be seen. The widow tagged along behind Chunho and in a low voice pleaded with him, saying she had sent her daughter-in-law off to her relatives and asking if Chunho would allow her to remain there herself for the time being. Chunho assumed the woman was reluctant to impose on her relatives and asked why at a time like this the Japanese were concerned about saving face, and was she going to make a fuss about this, and why hadn’t she simply gone with her daughter-in-law to stay with her relatives? In fact she had done precisely that, the woman replied, but upon arriving at the relatives’ home she had found it full of refugees recently returned from Manchuria, so the house, spacious though it was, couldn’t possibly accommodate another person, and even though it was unreasonable she had arranged for her daughter-in-law to stay there while she herself returned here, and that before long the Japanese would be gathering to evacuate, and until that time, wouldn’t it be possible for her to stay here?

  Chunho looked for a moment into the woman’s tired, dark eyes. The whites and the pupils seemed to have blended together. Then, without telling the woman yes or no, he began moving his family’s belongings inside. The woman seemed to interpret Chunho’s lack of a response as a yes, and when Chunho’s wife arrived to inspect the kitchen, the woman received her in the large tatami room with an air of satisfaction, as if to say that for a Japanese kitchen it wasn’t that cramped and would serve their needs, and then proceeded to help her arrange their meager belongings. Not so long ago Chunho would have been ashamed to have his meager household belongings exposed to view in the presence of this Japanese woman, or to allow his children to run riot from room to room and down the halls as if they owned the world, but now he did not feel this way in the least.

  And so the woman ended up remaining with Chunho and his family. Chunho asked himself why he hadn’t expressly told the woman yes or no. Was it because Koreans had always felt sympathy for those who had fallen into a wretched state, even if they were enemies? Chunho himself felt such sympathy and in spite of himself was unable to suppress it.

  Starting the following day, the woman took it upon herself to rise at daybreak and go about cleaning the house—a routine that seemed to derive in equal measures from her lingering attachment to her home, impossible to sever, an obligation she felt to be doing her share if she was to remain there, and her habitual practice all along. First light brought with it the sound of the dusting stick. Most days Chunho, who rose quite early, would still be in bed.

  Every evening, tipsy with drink from the barrels of soju in the basement, Chunho had a nice warm bath and fell asleep in the guest room, only to be awakened from a sound sleep at daybreak by the slap-slap of the dusting stick. He would grouse to himself that the stick was driving out whatever good fortune might be poised to enter the house, and that all the dust that was being scattered would simply resettle. Annoyed, Chunho wished he had told the woman to leave in the first place.

  As one day led to another, though, and as Chunho lay in bed at daybreak listening to the slap-slap of the dusting stick, he came to realize that the hard life he had led during his forty years had not been fruitless and that from now on he would be able to live more comfortably, and after considering this he would fall back into a languid sleep, as if the exhaustion that had accumulated till then had all at once been whisked away. Not only did he grow used to the slap-slap but eventually he needed to hear it before he could rest assured that all was clean and tidy in his home. His children had the run of the large house, and there was little that his wife by herself could do to
clean up after them. Instead it was the widow who was forever occupied with this task. Lacking children of her own who needed constant supervision, she couldn’t stand even a hint of squalor, and perhaps that was why she swept and cleaned as she did. There was no harm in having kept this woman, thought Chunho; indeed it was fortunate that she was here. If not for her, there would have been no one to heat his bathwater to just the right temperature, not too hot and not too cold.

  On one such day a peculiar feeling came over Chunho: wherever he looked in the various rooms of the house, it felt like something was missing. Was it the absence of the furnishings, which had been removed from their proper places through no fault of their own? Well, of course it was. And they probably weren’t what Kŏnsŏp had in mind when he had talked about getting rid of all things Japanese. In any event, it wouldn’t do for a high-class house to be so bare. Time to rescue the furnishings from storage and put them back where they belonged.

  In the Western-style room Chunho re-hung the pictures, restoring the brightness you would expect in such a room. Next came the miniature plum tree. And among the widow’s furnishings, all those that were pleasing to the eye or would come in handy were brought out of storage as well. When the paulownia wardrobe was returned to the room next to the guest room, that room once again became properly inviting. Among the framed pictures and scrolls that had been taken down, he re-hung the undamaged ones. The table in the south-facing room with the wooden floor once again bore its potted plum tree. Next he had to reattach the heads to the stone figures in the yard. No self-respecting garden lacked stone figures, stone lanterns, and such. So out Chunho went to retrieve the heads of the stone figures and replace them on the bodies. The stones were considerably heavier than they looked. Next he recovered the chip from the stone lantern. He’d have to cement it back on to the shade.

  Chunho sat himself down at the table with the miniature plum in the Western room. He was pleased with himself—except for a nagging thought that something was still missing. Yes! A picture of myself, big as the previous manager’s, right here on this wall. He readied himself for a visit to the photography studio, brushing his Western suit till it was cleaner than ever before. It was a spring-and-autumn suit he had bought more than ten years earlier at a ready-to-wear shop—just the thing, said the shop owner: fabric thick as rawhide, a dark-gray color that would never show dirt, wearable not only in spring and autumn but also in winter and summer—but as Chunho was to find out, it was actually much more of a winter suit and not really meant for summer use. What’s more, he had rarely worn the jacket, which felt a bit tight; while it was in storage at the bottom of his wardrobe both it and Chunho remained the same size, but for some reason as he was trying it on now the sleeves felt narrower and the length of the jacket seemed shorter, but the pants were just as long and baggy on his short frame as they had ever been, with the result that the top and bottom of this suit just did not go together. He looked even more awkward when he knotted his tie. Even so, he could still wear a self-satisfied look as he stepped outside, though no amount of brushing could have remedied the mismatch of the garments.

  When Chunho returned that night, his face wore an ugly scowl, he smelled of liquor, and he was spluttering and shouting: “Those bastards will rue the day!” After having his photo taken, instead of going to the distillery he had visited the Office of Private Commerce and Industry to check on the status of his application to take over management of the distillery.

  The clerk at this office had leafed through a sheaf of papers in an obliging manner, cocked his head meaningfully, then looked over the rims of his tortoiseshell glasses and reported to Chunho that two applications had been received. Chunho’s heart sank but he managed not to show it. It couldn’t be, he said to the man, there must have been a mix-up; could he check again to make sure? The man, peering at the sheaf of papers, said there was no mistake. What happens now? Chunho had asked, and the man had looked through the papers again and in his obliging way had asked Chunho his name. Chunho told him, and the man nodded knowingly and looked at him again over the tops of his glasses. Chunho asked who the other applicant might be, but the man merely produced a vacant, bovine smile, as if to say that this was privileged information. Which led Chunho to chide himself for having asked—the thing to do in a situation like this was back off for the time being.

  Chunho’s mind got busy, and after leaving the office he estimated when the man with the glasses would finish work for the day, waited, and proceeded to intercept him as if they were encountering each other by chance. The sun was going down, observed Chunho, and it was time for a drink. So saying, he led the man to a quiet place and a two-man drinking party commenced. The man in glasses soon was showing signs of tipsiness; he kept saying how good the liquor tasted. You could hardly call that stuff liquor, Chunho commented; next time he’d treat the man to some honest-to-goodness liquor. Chunho decided the time was right. Organizing his thoughts, he said, “Sir,” and after a pause to let this polite salutation sink in, he asked who the other person was who had applied to take over the distillery he himself was now managing, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible, as if this question had just occurred to him. The man produced his bovine smile and asked what difference it made—Chunho was the heir apparent, so there was nothing to worry about. No, he wasn’t worrying, Chunho said, smiling in his turn, as etiquette would demand.

  By then Chunho had determined that this thirty-two-year-old man with the glasses was a drinker like himself, the kind who gets drunk fast but then shows no signs of further intoxication, and there the man was now, sitting quietly, peering over the rims of his glasses at Chunho as he nursed his drink. It wouldn’t do to inquire further, to show how hot and bothered he was, and so Chunho decided to speak no more about the distillery. Instead he urged more liquor upon the man, consistent with what he had told him on the way there—that sundown had put him in mind of a drink and he had wanted some company.

  But Chunho had scarcely parted with the man when he found himself thinking that even though this obliging, sincere-looking person had told him not to worry, that didn’t necessarily mean he wouldn’t say the very same thing to the other party. The man had made a point of not identifying the other applicant, which suggested to Chunho that those two were on good terms. At the very least, that clerk sure was clever when it came to the art of etiquette. Just goes to show that a guy who’s sincere and obliging on the outside can be a snake on the inside!

  So then—who was this other person who had put in an application? Well, whoever he was, he’d better watch out. Chunho was not about to let himself get swallowed up by someone else—no way! What a wretched state it was, with Koreans trying to swallow each other up. “You better watch out!” he practically screamed, as if the other person were actually there, lurking in the darkness. And that night, after the alcohol had worn off, Chunho kept waking up and had difficulty getting back to sleep.

  The following day Chunho told Kŏnsŏp as soon as he arrived at the office that someone else had applied to take over the distillery. Anyone who was loyal to the distillery should have been shocked at this news, but not Kŏnsŏp. Instead he told Chunho that he had been waiting for him since the previous day, when he had gone to the union and heard that it had been decided that the takeover of the distillery would be handled not by the Ministry of Commerce but by the Ministry of Finance, and that if the union became responsible then the purchase price would be divided into annual payments, whereas if a private party took charge then a one-time lump-sum payment would be required. While acknowledging to himself the importance of what Kŏnsŏp had said, Chunho pressed on: What would become of their distillery, then? Kŏnsŏp replied that as he had said, there were just the two possibilities: the distillery would be entrusted to the union, or it would pass into private ownership. Well, what would happen if the union took it over? asked Chunho. “It’s the right thing to do,” Kŏnsŏp stated. “Our future lies with the union.” What Chunho had meant by his question, though,
was what would happen with his application to take control of the distillery.

  But Kŏnsŏp seemed unmindful of such matters. Chunho felt compelled to try to obtain further particulars from Kŏnsŏp but ultimately thought better of it. Not because Kŏnsŏp was unconcerned; rather, it had suddenly occurred to Chunho that just as a second party had applied to the Office of Private Commerce and Industry to take over the distillery, Kŏnsŏp through his recently assumed status as contact person with the union might be campaigning to represent the distillery once it came under the control of the union. Clearly he must be. You couldn’t survive at that time without deceiving others. Just look at Four-Eyes in the Office of Private Commerce and Industry: even though takeovers and such were no longer the responsibility of that office, he had lied to the end in telling Chunho not to worry about the distillery. (In all fairness to the clerk, he had learned only the previous morning of the second party’s application.)

  It was all becoming clear to Chunho. That rascal Kŏnsŏp’s pretense of right conduct and his “Comrades” blather had been a ploy to convince others that what he was saying made sense. Chunho saw now that the big words that rascal used—words that the illiterate couldn’t understand—had all been parroted from the newspaper. And to think that he himself had thought nothing but the best of the guy till now! Talk about getting stabbed in the back!

  Now that he thought about it, you didn’t often see someone as grasping as Kŏnsŏp. Didn’t he look like a greedy sort, with those big fat blue lips and that drooping chin? And what’s more, from the very day he had started working at the distillery as a clerk—and he had come highly recommended!—he had never revealed himself to others. People like that were wicked! From now on, Chunho told himself, he would have to be very careful with that rascal. And not just careful: if Chunho found out that Kŏnsŏp was up to no good in other ways, he’d have to do something about it. He would see the end of this. But since he had no specific proof for his suspicions, it was necessary to bide his time. Meanwhile his own priority was to find the capital he would need to run the distillery.