Lost Souls

by Hwang Sunwon

  It was dark out, no stars in the sky. He remembered his father asking his mother that morning what day it was by the lunar calendar. It was the twenty-sixth day of the month, said his mother. And then Father had muttered to himself, “So the moon won’t be out till later in the evening.” And tonight, not only was it dark, it was cloudy too.

  Around dinnertime his father had smoked several bowls of tobacco in his long pipe, and suddenly he had blurted to Mother, “Are you sure it’s the twenty-sixth?” His face wore a serious expression. To be sure, it wasn’t the first time Pau had seen him with that look. Just a few days ago his usually dignified father had come inside and said in an angry voice to no one in particular, “The world has gone to hell—we’re always getting cheated,” with that same serious expression.

  At times like this his father’s face seemed especially old. The wrinkles on his forehead were deeper and more numerous. Maybe they were a little more numerous and got a little deeper each time his face wore that expression.

  But his father’s face today told him somehow that something was going to happen before the night was over. Pau recalled what his father had said the day before yesterday when the rumor had arisen about the farmers being taken off somewhere in connection with the grain tax: “Even worms will squirm if you step on them.” He thought he could tell what it was that would happen that night. As he hurried back home, the image of that fearsome rifle barrel rose in his mind. His heart wouldn’t stop pounding.

  He arrived home and sure enough, there in the dark of the courtyard were a group of village men. So there—I knew something was going to happen. His heart started pounding again. A fireflylike kerosene lantern glowed behind every patchwork paper-paneled door and window, but the light wasn’t enough for Pau to make out who the men were. Or to count how many there were. At least ten, he estimated.

  He thought back to last autumn, when his grandmother had passed on. The villagers had gathered in the courtyard then too, and Pau had heard the buzz of voices. But those voices weren’t hushed and careful like the ones he heard now. Granted, what was going to happen tonight was more serious than his grandmother’s death. He had wailed along with his mother then. Even little Ŏnnyŏn, who was too young to understand, had wailed with them. He had always felt a thrill at the buzz of the villagers when they gathered at his house. But not tonight.

  That guy over there flicking away the cigarette he’d smoked down to his fingertips—that was Kŏbuk’s big brother, he was sure of it. And he was just as sure that the squatting man who had intercepted that butt so he could add the tobacco to his pipe was Kaettong’s father. He saw the glowing butt in the pipe bowl rise to the level of Kaettong’s father’s mouth, glow red, then fade, and then it began to float in his direction. He looked closer and saw that the group had broken up and were coming his way. Can’t let them know I’m here. He scurried off toward the ash shed. And now he really did have to pee. When he was finished, and even after the villagers had scattered, he remained where he was for a short time so that anyone who came along and saw him would think he was peeing. As he did, another memory came back to him, triggered by the earlier memory of his grandmother’s passing: as soon as they had put her in the coffin, he had taken her pillow and hid it in the rafters of this shed. The pillow of this grandmother who had been so terribly fond of him was somehow so unsettling that he didn’t dare go near the ash shed at night. He’d been scared by something that now seemed completely harmless. He was too old for that—thirteen already. His father had told him that when he was Pau’s age—actually, when he was fourteen—he was already wrestling in the championship matches. Still, thinking about that pillow he’d hidden, Pau had to admit that being by himself here in this shed at night was not pleasant. His feet took him quickly toward the house. No, I wasn’t scared, he told himself; I just want to hurry up and see what my father’s doing.

  The courtyard was empty now. Pau heard only the heavy breathing of the bull from the cow shed. In the family room he came across his father, who was putting on his overpants. He was about to go somewhere, Pau was sure of it. His mother had put little Onnyŏn to sleep and was sitting near the kerosene lamp, mending clothing. She didn’t look up when Pau arrived, merely asked why he wasn’t twining rope with the other boys. Pau lied, saying he had come back home for more rice stalks. He went to the cooler part of the heated floor, where some sheaves of rice stalks were stacked in a corner, and rummaged among them.

  His father left. His mother didn’t say anything. Why is she asking me about the rope and not asking Father where he’s going? Maybe his father had told her before Pau got home. But there she is, looking like nothing’s wrong.

  He thought back to the winter before Liberation, when the grain tax was collected, when his father had caught that awful beating from the Jap constable and been taken off to jail in Ch’ungju—well, his mother had been doing her mending then too, every night, all by herself. She looked like she had eased her concerns about Father being taken away, and would stay awake in case he happened to be released from jail that night, to welcome him home.

  Back then Pau would awaken several times during the night, and he would always see his mother sitting there just like that.

  But tonight he had to catch up with his father and see what was going on. With half an armful of rice stalks under his arm, he slid open the door and stepped out. He thought his father was already outside the brushwood gate, but in the faint light filtering through the open door behind him he saw his father take the supporting stick from his A-frame backrack where it rested beneath the eaves and head toward the gate. From behind he looked like a very old man.

  Ever since that terrible beating the winter before Liberation, his father had had trouble with his back. When he was in the prime of his youth, his strength and his wrestling prowess were known throughout the neighboring villages. Even at the age of forty, he would from time to time challenge the strongest of the village youths to a bout, his face breaking into a dignified smile; then he’d grab hold of his opponent around the waist and before the smile had faded would lift the young man and throw him to the ground.

  But after that beating it was all he could do simply to walk. It was really frightening, that beating. The Japanese constable had come riding along on his horse, urging the villagers to pay their grain tax, his mustache giving him the appearance of decency itself. And then out of the blue, as if to make an example of Pau’s father in front of the other villagers, he had grabbed him by the collar and said, “You bastard, you’d rather wrestle than pay your grain tax, eh? Why don’t you and I have a go?” And with a scream he went at Pau’s father, who was standing there wordlessly, and using some technique called judo threw him all over the frozen ground. And as his father lay on the ground, blood gushing from his mouth and nose, the constable worked himself up some more and stomped on his back with the heels of his riding boots. When it was over, his father couldn’t get up on his own. All the onlookers could do was shudder. And then the constable took his father away to Ch’ungju. Pau was transfixed; he couldn’t even follow as far as the entrance to the village. His father disappeared around the corner of Sshidol’s family’s house, and not until a short time later did Pau burst into tears. What a fool I was! All I did was tremble and watch!

  Tonight he wasn’t going to stay home and do nothing. He had to be with his father. He placed the rice stalks in his own small backrack, next to his father’s, then took his supporting stick and out the brushwood gate he went.

  Even in the dark he could make out his father in the distance. He followed along, maintaining enough of an interval between them to keep out of sight. His father passed through the lower village and beyond the last of the dwellings. Once outside the village it was half a mile to the bank of a stream, and just before that stream bank, where the road narrowed, there stood an ancient zelkova tree. Pau saw his father walk toward that tree; he seemed to be stopping there. Pau likewise came to a stop. He saw that his father was not alone; several others
were gathered there. He could hear their muffled voices. Each of these others, like his father, carried what looked like a backrack stick.

  Pau wondered if the villagers gathered beneath the zelkova were there for a different reason—were they after a thief? Several days ago someone had supposedly made off with beans from Ojaeng’s family’s bean field, and then the same thing with Kaettong’s family last night. Quite a few families had run out of grain, even barley, and were starving, and there were frequent cases of people taking for themselves newly ripened grain, regardless of whose land it was.

  So maybe the villagers gathered there were lying low in hopes of catching a thief, and the reason his father asked his mother what day it was by the lunar calendar was that on a moonless night it was easy to hide and catch a thief in the act. But then the villagers left the zelkova and went down to the stream. Maybe they wanted to keep watch over the far side of the stream. I’m going to follow him anyway. He went beneath the zelkova and looked toward the stream. In the darkness he heard Ojaeng telling the others that they didn’t have to wade the stream—he would carry each of them across on his back. Ojaeng with the stubby neck, short waist, and solid, stocky build—he was very strong. Pau remembered how the villagers had joked about him. When Ojaeng was born his father had swaddled him in a grain basket and hung it on the wall, because that was supposed to make a baby grow fast, but this newborn wiggled so much that the nail holding the basket came out and the basket fell. Luckily the baby landed right side up, but his bottom hit so hard that his neck and his waist were compressed—and thus the grown-up Ojaeng’s stubby neck and short waist.

  When he was sure no one remained on this side of the stream, Pau ventured down to the water. Quickly he took off his shoes and rolled up his pants legs, and then he crossed the stream. The water chilled his toes and calves. On the far side of the stream he dried his feet on the grass, put his shoes back on, and without rolling down his pants legs, set out after his father and the villagers. They were some distance beyond Kŏbuk’s family’s tobacco plot before Pau spotted them. None of them spoke; there was only the sound of their footsteps. It wasn’t like a group of people moving forward; instead, the way each man silently followed the one in front of him, they looked just like a line of cows walking this dark road. No, a line of bulls.

  Pau thought back to the year before last when he had gone to Ch’ungju with his father to buy a bull calf. They had returned at night on this very same road. The sun was setting when they crested Masŭmak Pass, and by the time they reached the Han River it had dropped below the horizon. The calf had balked at the ferry landing and the boatman and Pau had to pull on its nose ring while his father pushed its rump before they managed to get it on board. By the time they reached the three-way fork that led to Hŭinbawi Hollow, it was dark and Pau was frightened. But unlike tonight, stars had dotted the sky and there was a crescent moon, so it wasn’t pitch black. Pau had tried to comfort himself with something he had heard from the grown-ups—if you had a bull with you, you didn’t get scared, no matter how rough the surroundings. Well, the animal he and his father were taking home was a calf, but it was a bull calf, and with that thought he had tried to put his fears to rest. But then Pau had remembered a story he’d heard from the grown-ups, something that had actually happened a few years earlier. One evening a young man went outside around dinnertime to graze the family’s bull. When sometime later the bull came back by itself, its horns bloody, his family panicked, certain the bull had gored the young man. But then the young man reappeared, and he didn’t have a scratch on him. He had been grazing the bull, he explained, when without warning it startled, knocking him over. He thought he was going to be trampled. But once he had managed to gather his wits, what should he see but a tiger? The tiger seemed to be toying with the bull, leaping back and forth over its back. And every time the tiger leaped, the bull turned to avoid it. (Here the young man explained to Pau that actually the bull wasn’t trying to avoid the tiger; instead it was trying to meet the tiger head-on so it could charge.) Anyway, he hadn’t been trampled. The bull somehow managed to gore the tiger and then ran off. The young man saw that the tiger was dead, its belly ripped open. (Here again the man telling the story added that it’s the nature of a bull when it finally hooks its adversary to keep goring it, flipping it up into the air like a shuttlecock, until finally its innards spill out, and then it gives up.) This story had made Pau wish that their bull calf was a little more grown up. And then there were the stories about tigers attacking people while they slept or people walking country roads, and supposedly the tiger always snatched the middle person because it thought that person was the most fearful. And yet Pau hated walking in front of the calf or behind his father, so he stayed between them, and by the time they got home he had been kicked by the calf more times than he could count.

  But at least back then he had the bull calf and he was with his father. Tonight he was by himself, separated from his father. If only he had the bull—it was full grown now—he wouldn’t have a worry in the world. On the other hand, you’re two years older now, right? Don’t tell me you’re scared of a dark road. Besides, you’ve got the stick. And all you have to do is shout and those bulls from the village will come running. But he had never been able to erase such fears from his mind, and now he walked faster so as to shorten the distance between himself and the villagers.

  But if the villagers intended to catch whoever was stealing the grain, shouldn’t they be hiding somewhere nearby? They were almost past the croplands; if they went much farther they’d be at the three-way junction to Hŭinbawi Hollow. And then it occurred to Pau that maybe they weren’t trying to catch a thief after all. Maybe they were going to fight the people from Hŭinbawi Hollow.

  Almost every year fights broke out over water during irrigating season. They were murderous brawls in which teeth were knocked out and skulls split open. Behind each side was a powerful landowning family urging the fighters to get the water first and worry later. This year the son of the Hŭinbawi Hollow landowner had supposedly gotten himself a high government position in Seoul, after which his father had ordered the villagers to irrigate only his paddies. Some time previous, the oldest grandson of Old Kim Long Pipe, the landowner in the village where Pau’s family lived, had likewise obtained a high government position in Seoul, and once he was established, Old Kim launched an attack on the other landowner, calling him an ungrateful wretch and warning him to watch out. And so, thought Pau, maybe the men from his village were going to fight the men from Hŭinbawi Hollow tonight.

  Wait a minute. Didn’t some men from each village get together and decide not to fight anymore?

  And sure enough, the villagers had reached the three-way junction and were not taking the road to Hŭinbawi Hollow. Instead they turned down the road to Ch’ungju. So there. As he had reckoned in the first place, his father and the villagers were on their way to Ch’ungju.

  That fearsome rifle came to mind. Pau could see it whipping down in the darkness, cracking Ch’unbo across the shoulder blades. He hadn’t paid his barley and wheat tax. Ch’unbo hadn’t flinched under the first blow. Ch’unbo, face pale from long years of malnourishment, who shouldered the burden of so many mouths to feed. That fearsome rifle struck again. This time Ch’unbo would go down. His shoulders would be injured, just like Pau’s father’s back. The man with the rifle struck the unresisting Ch’unbo’s shoulders yet again, and finally he went down. There was a glint in Ch’unbo’s eyes. It came from tears. And then Ch’unbo began to shudder all over. He looked like he was wiggling. This wiggling spread to all the villagers looking on, and to Pau among them. But that was the end of it. Ch’unbo, like Pau’s father before him, could not get up on his own, and was led off to Ch’ungju. And it did turn out that Ch’unbo’s shoulders were never right again. Just like Pau’s father’s back.

  The villagers arrived at the Han River. They seemed to have already spoken with the boatman at the landing, and were crowding onto the boat. Should he wait
for the next boat? Or take this one? If he took this boat they would know right off that he’d been following them. If he took the next boat he’d fall too far behind them, and he wasn’t sure of the route where the road went up from the other side of the river—that would really be a problem.

  He decided to take the first boat. Even if he was discovered, the villagers wouldn’t have the heart to send him back home by himself. And I wouldn’t go back even if they did. But once he was on the boat, no one recognized him. Then again, he wasn’t able to tell who was who either. No one spoke, or even smoked. The only sound in the darkness was the creaking of the oars. Pau listened to the creaking. He remembered thinking, when he was on this boat before, that if they went down the river for three or four days they’d get to that place called Seoul—wouldn’t it be fun to go there sometime? But no such thoughts came to mind now. His mind was occupied by the creak of the oars and a feeling that the river was so much wider now than before.

  On the other side the villagers started walking silently up the hill, still resembling a procession of bulls. Pau followed at a safe distance.

  They were getting closer to Ch’ungju, and once again that fearsome rifle came to mind. Pau’s heart was racing. He thought back to the news two days ago about all the farmers who had been taken into custody. Young as he was, he realized he could not pretend to himself that this was simply someone else’s concern and not his. Now he knew. He knew why his father and the other villagers were going to Ch’ungju—“Even worms will squirm if you step on them.” From now on, he would be there for his father.

  Oh no! Yet again the image of that fearsome rifle loomed in his mind, only this time the bodies of his father and the others were sprawled out beneath it. There was a glint in their eyes, the glint of tears. All of them were squirming, just like worms will do if you step on them. They were crying out, all of them: If you keep this up, we’ll starve! We’re not asking to get rid of the grain tax, we just want it to be fair! Why do you let people fill up their sacks in the granary and sell on the sly in Japan or god knows where else? Why do you let them do that? Why do you harass the needy night and day—what will you get out of them? If things don’t change, we’ll starve!