Lost Souls

by Hwang Sunwon

  But when at the same moment Maktong’s father realized he was finally going to unload his family’s land, the image of his father’s frightfully angry face came to mind, and he closed his eyes in an attempt to block it out. I have to win a jackpot with this stake. Then I’ll get the family land back, and just like in the old days we’ll have enough land to work on our own—that’s all I’m hoping for. Maktong’s father was sure that with this stake he would win, so he quickly proposed that if he could not buy the ox, then the very next day he would return the money and Chŏn should give him back the land. Chŏn willingly agreed. From now on, he would have to bend a little in his dealings with the villagers, just as he was doing now. It would be to his future advantage to do so. And this is how Maktong’s family’s land changed hands. The rumor that the buyer had no good reason to offer a fair price, because Maktong’s father was desperate to sell, was inaccurate.

  It was understandable that the two different rumors had arisen about Maktong’s father: that he had gambled away all the money he had raised from selling the land, and that he had made a clean sweep at the gambling table. In fact, early on he lost almost all of his stake. But then he won several hands in a row and was comfortably ahead. As always, though, he didn’t know when to stop, and he began to lose again. Generally speaking, when a man’s family is ruined because of his gambling, it’s because the man doesn’t know when to stop—it all depends on that. When your pockets are empty you have the illusion that if only you have a stake you can empty your opponents’ pockets, and you’ll do anything to get that stake; after you’ve won a good sum of money you feel you’re going to clean up, and in the end you can’t stop yourself—and although this demonstrates how greedy people can be and how strong the lure of gambling is, Maktong’s father was especially vulnerable, and incapable of seizing an opportunity to quit. In comparison, Kaptŭk’s father, a villager nicknamed Slit Eyes because his eyes were narrow like a crow tit’s, was quick-witted and knew when to stop. When Slit Eyes’s losses reached a certain amount he would withdraw for a while and look on, saying he was waiting for his lucky streak to arrive. The way he put it, if you got agitated after losing money, you were as good as done. After a time he would notice that the luck had run from one man to another, and at that point he would join in again. And when after winning a certain amount he started to lose again, he would leave, saying he had to use the bathroom. When it came to luck, he would tell you, it went to one man for a while and then to another man, so when you had won for a while and then began to lose, it was a sign that the luck had begun to move to another player, and the best policy was to withdraw. Slit Eyes would take his earnings home, then head back to the gambling table with his original stake. In this way he became an uncommonly skillful gambler, one who could support his family on his earnings.

  Slit Eyes’s feel for gambling was something Maktong’s father had always lacked. Such was the situation when Maktong’s father took on the card player from out of town. True to the one rumor, he lost almost all his money. But then he won for a time, then he began to lose again, and his fortunes proceeded to go back and forth, but after his initial reverse he was never far from breaking even. The following day passed, the day when Maktong’s father was to have returned the money to Chŏn and reclaimed his land. But by then Maktong’s father’s only thoughts were of the next hand; the gambling bout was still going on. Slit Eyes for his part was keeping tabs, joining in and then dropping out, playing for a while and then withdrawing, and when he had sufficient winnings he made sure they stayed in his pocket. At first Maktong’s father didn’t like it that Slit Eyes was playing—he thought it was bad luck—but Slit Eyes kept to his routine, and as Maktong’s father became ever more consumed with the play of the cards, he ceased to pay attention to what Slit Eyes was up to.

  When Maktong’s father gambled he was like a man possessed. The end of a gambling bout would leave him with his face drawn, his body languid, as if he had just recovered from a high fever. And he would drink, as if alcohol were a kind of medication. Once, after one of these bouts, Maktong’s father had had his fill of drink and proceeded to cut off the tip of his right thumb with a fodder chopper. To a gambler the right thumb is the most important digit. At the critical moment in a hand, when each plays his final card, it’s the thumb that keeps that card from showing. And if that card doesn’t win the hand, the gambler inevitably curses the thumb, as if it were responsible for the outcome. It was this offending thumb that Maktong’s father had mutilated. This had happened sometime before Liberation, when a rumor had reached the upper village that two young men from other parts were throwing their money around in the local gambling den. This was all Maktong’s father needed to hear, and off he went. Sure enough, the two men, who appeared to be in their early twenties, had a seemingly endless supply of cash. For a while Maktong’s father was winning, but when the following day dawned he had lost his entire stake. Maktong’s father hurried home, saw that his father was out, stole one of his beehives, and returned to the upper village to sell it. But the proceeds were soon gone. He returned home again, intending to sell one of the two remaining hives. If he were ever caught sneaking off with one of the beehives to which his father was so devoted, there would be instant calamity, but Maktong’s father was no longer mindful of that possibility. Fortunately, this time too his father was out. He was leaving with the beehive when his seven-year-old daughter Chŏmsun opened the door from the family room and looked out, only to close the door the next moment.

  By the time Maktong’s father returned to the upper village the two young gamblers, who, it turned out, had come from the city of Taejŏn, had disappeared. But instead of taking the beehive back home, he sold it and drank with the proceeds. Some five days later, when he was finally about to return home, another rumor arrived in the upper village: the two young men from Taejŏn were notorious crooks, gambling cheats. Finally, Maktong’s father realized he had been taken. He who had been gambling practically since he was old enough to count—a period of more than twenty years—had been cheated by two guys still wet behind the ears. Why hadn’t he caught them cheating? He would have wrung their necks on the spot! But gradually his anger was displaced by a feeling of shame—he had been disgraced. Damned if I’ll ever touch a card again! The next moment he had rushed outside and chopped off his thumb. And from then on he wouldn’t go near a gambling table. The villagers said that now that Maktong’s father was approaching age forty, the age of wisdom, he seemed finally to be acting like a man should act. Among them Song Saengwŏn praised Maktong’s father, telling the story of another gambler who had cut off his thumb, saying he would never again touch the cards, but before the wound had healed this man was gambling again, and complaining he had cut off his thumb in vain because now he couldn’t use it and all he had gotten out of it was pain. In truth Maktong’s grandfather would not have seen fit to entrust his son with money to buy an ox if his son had seemed less than fully cured of his gambling fever. But it did appear that he was one hundred percent cured.

  And so it was most peculiar how Maktong’s father had become involved in this latest gambling bout. He had gone to the upper village, and when he located the man who was selling the ox, the man told him he had just sold it to another man from Sŏdanggol, who was going to slaughter it for meat; this other man would be coming back for the ox, and Maktong’s father should talk with him then. Maktong’s father decided to wait inside the gambling den for the man to return, but to his misfortune he saw that a round of gambling was under way, a high-stakes game involving the man from out of town. Before he knew it, he had joined in. When the buyer of the ox returned and told Maktong’s father that he was willing to sell it, his words had fallen on deaf ears.

  The news about Maktong’s father’s gambling woes came from the ox-slaughtering man, and the news about the sale of his family’s land came from Chŏn P’ilsu. As soon as Chŏn came to the unexpected realization that Maktong’s father was a gambler, he told himself he had made a mistak
e. Maktong’s father was old enough to know better, so Chŏn had entered into business with him directly—and to think someone like that was a gambler! He had to be careful and not act rashly. The first thing to do was inform Maktong’s grandfather that he had bought the land. But rather than tell him directly, he decided it was preferable to spread the news and give the grandfather time to get wind of it, and not visit him until he sensed the old man’s anger had cooled. It would be unpleasant if the first thing he did was visit this stubborn old man and be confronted with a denial.

  Just as Chŏn had thought, Maktong’s grandfather did not take well to the news. “We’re ruined! You son of a bitch, you deserve to have your throat cut!” He bellowed like a rutting bull, the roars sounding as if at any moment they would bring down the decrepit house. And this was how the rumor started that he was sharpening his sickle to a fine edge to cut his son’s throat. But in truth it was his own throat he felt like cutting. His son had gone and sold their land—it was wishful thinking to hope the family could recover. What remained to them was two plots alone: a tiny paddy that depended on rainwater and drank it up like a sand field, and a rocky dry field. And if that were not bad enough, the previous year his family had felt compelled to begin sharecropping Min Ch’angho’s dry fields. Even so, Maktong’s grandfather had never lost hope that they would somehow be able to get back on their feet again. Now, even that hope had gone up in smoke.

  There was no denying that Maktong’s father was to blame for his family’s having to resort to sharecropping the previous year; until then they had been proud, self-sufficient farmers. But their situation also resulted in part from a decision the grandfather had made three years earlier. To pay off a debt, he’d had to hand over to Min Ch’angho a spring-fed paddy. As if this weren’t regrettable enough, he had then sold Min a fertile dry field, and that proved to be a big mistake. Maktong’s grandfather had had it in the back of his mind to use the proceeds from that sale to buy a hilly plot three times as big as the dry field, and then to reclaim that plot and develop it into a productive dry field. Because of all their mouths to feed, the family needed at least that much land to provide them with an adequate supply of grain each year. Maktong’s grandfather considered: there’s no land that’s productive right from the start; it all depends on how you cultivate it. That fertile dry field he had sold wasn’t fertile from the very beginning—it was made fertile by his father, who, winter or summer, went about the village at dawn before anyone else had risen, gathering dog manure to spread on it. This was not an easy task, but then again, he had never seen anything in this world come without effort. Best of all, reclaimed land was exempt from the Japanese grain tax for three years. But as it turned out, developing that hilly plot required several times more labor and effort than he had anticipated. In addition to the grandfather and father, Maktong’s mother and even Maktong and Chŏmsun had to help with uprooting the trees and digging out the rocks.

  But in spite of all their labor, when tilling season arrived they still hadn’t cleared the plot of all the roots and rocks, and since they didn’t have access to a plow, they planted their barley crop with shovel and hoe. You couldn’t expect much of a yield in such circumstances, not even enough for seed to plant the following year—though it might have been different had they had enough manure for fertilizer. Since there was no grain tax on reclaimed land, they had initially thought they should fertilize the hilly plot, but if their original dry field didn’t produce and they ended up without enough grain to pay the tax, they would have to supplement it with the yield from the reclaimed land. So whether they fertilized the one plot or the other, the total yield minus the grain tax would be the same. And so the fertilizer ended up going to the original plot, which offered somewhat more assurance of a good yield. As Maktong’s grandfather sowed the barley, he wished and wished he could apply just one sack of that chemical fertilizer they called ammonium nitrate. But that was not something his family could even hope to have. Nothing to do but keep trying to enrich that reclaimed land.

  At tilling time the following year, though, they again didn’t have enough manure to go around, and most of it went to the original plot. If there was anything better about that year’s yield, it was the seed grain they had left over to plant the next year. But this was cold comfort when the Japanese colonial administration proceeded to institute a grain tax on reclaimed land. This measure was apparently necessitated by the administration’s desperate need for the county’s grain.

  But Maktong’s grandfather continued to believe that his reclaimed land, unlike others’ land, would be somehow exempt—until the officials began to press him for payment. He was told that no matter what, he was responsible for paying his grain tax, the amount of which he had already been notified. In that case, he responded to the officials, they could come and watch at harvest time, and he would give them the entire yield from his reclaimed land. The township superintendent then went into a long spiel about how the grain tax was not meant to deprive the farmer of all his grain; rather, what was left after the family stockpiled enough for its own consumption was offered to the nation. And finally he took Maktong’s grandfather by the shoulders and shook him, asking how he could let his no-good son gamble and yet be unaware of his duty to supply the nation with grain. Maktong’s grandfather made up his mind that he wouldn’t give up a single grain more than what he harvested from the reclaimed land, and if that meant being beaten to death, then so be it. Actually it would be better if his old self were beaten to death, he thought, because if he had to supplement the grain tax on the reclaimed land with grain from the original fields, his entire family would starve. Go ahead, let them beat me to death. But his son and daughter-in-law couldn’t countenance this prospect, and in the end they paid the shortfall from the harvest from the original field.

  They couldn’t afford to continue working the reclaimed land. He had to sell it, Maktong’s grandfather told himself. Next year’s grain tax will ruin us—I’ve got to sell. The problem was, who would want to buy it? This was the situation when Min Ch’angho appeared with an offer to buy the hilly plot for the same price Maktong’s family had paid for it. Maktong’s grandfather challenged Min, asking if all the labor they’d put into developing the land shouldn’t be reflected in the purchase price. Min responded by asking if the loss of all the trees they had cut down to use shouldn’t be considered as well. The way things were going, he added, the grain tax would be so bad that even if that worthless piece of land were offered for free, no one would take it. Maktong’s grandfather realized Min was right. There was no other way but to sell it for the price they had paid. His family needed that money to subsist on.

  But now there was another worry: which field would they cultivate the following year? And so his family had to begin sharecropping a portion of Min’s land. And in that case, thought Maktong’s grandfather, they might as well work the fertile plot they had sold Min some years back. And so he visited Min and proposed as much. Well, well, Min told himself, the old man is finally under my thumb. I’ve been telling him all along to sell me his house and land, but the stubborn old goat never listens. And then, to see how much he could push the old man, he said that if his family really wanted to sharecrop, then they’d have to do it on the reclaimed land they had sold him. Maktong’s grandfather was in a fix. If they were to work that land, he told Min, they would need a couple of bags of ammonium nitrate. There he was again, up to his tricks, thought Min, but for the sake of the field he reluctantly agreed. He knew that under the old man’s care, that land would develop into a nice field.

  Spring came and when Maktong’s grandfather applied ammonium nitrate to the reclaimed land, he imagined that he was sprinkling not fertilizer but what they called granulated sugar—he had seen it at the market some time ago. And as far as the land was concerned, perhaps this powder he was sprinkling was as good as sugar. But just as sugar isn’t as good as honey, the ammonium nitrate wasn’t as good as fertilizer made from ash. So finally this year th
is piece of land is getting a taste of sugar. As if oblivious to the sad fact that the land he now stood upon no longer belonged to him, he felt gratified that the land was enjoying this sugar he was sprinkling on it.

  From the time the seeds began to sprout, the reclaimed land produced as well as the original fields. He weeded, he removed rocks, he trimmed the grass along the raised path through the field, and he lamented over and over, “We can’t even get a handful of this for our own.” There was nothing he could do about it, but he remained regretful nevertheless. At the same time, he was happy to see the grain ripening before his eyes. At least we ought to be able to get some gruel out of it. . . . In the meantime the day of Liberation, August 15, arrived. To Maktong’s family, as to other farming families, Liberation held out the expectation that the grain tax would disappear—as if the grain tax by itself were the cause of their scarcity of clothing and insufficiency of food.

  Even after Liberation, Maktong’s grandfather ate only enough to stop his stomach from growling, and he made money by selling grain. At the same time, his honeybees were multiplying and he was able to sell one of the hives. And he scraped every last spoonful of the honey that came from the buckwheat blossoms and sold that as well. Once again it was truly a fine world to be alive in. The family would have to get back on their feet again. And now that his son had made a clean break from his compulsive gambling, what more could he want? For farmers there was nothing besides farming. He even laid in a supply of timber for fixing the house. He scraped together the money he had tucked away from the sale of the reclaimed land along with the coppers he was able to squirrel away, and decided to buy the ox that he had had his heart set on for ten long years. This was the money that Maktong’s father had lost at the gambling table—after which he had sold the house and the land. So you could understand the grandfather’s reaction: “We’re all ruined! That son of a bitch deserves to have his throat cut!”—though it was his own throat he felt like cutting first.