Lost Souls

by Hwang Sunwon

  Sŏgi hurried down in time to see a porcelain bowl fall from Suni’s hand. He heard it shatter.

  “What are you doing?”

  Suni heaved a great shudder, unable to answer.

  Sŏgi stooped and located a piece of the bowl. It was coated with a sleek liquid, which he rubbed between thumb and fingertips—lye.

  “You little fool!” He angrily shoved Suni away from the shattered bowl. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Suni collapsed in a heap. Her shuddering seemed to concentrate in her back, which began to heave rhythmically as she broke into tears.

  “It’s all because of me,” she sobbed. “Why don’t you go back home today?”

  “Don’t be silly! If you don’t like this life we’re living, then you should go someplace where you’ll be comfortable.”

  All Suni could do was cry.

  “What are you crying for? Don’t you like that idea? If we sell everything we have we could raise fifty nyang—that’s enough for you to go and live wherever you want.”

  Suni quickly crawled to Sŏgi and embraced his legs. “No, I’m not going anywhere.” She rubbed her tear-streaked face against his knees.

  From Hadong Sŏgi and Suni moved to Yangjitkol, a cozy little village a few miles southwest of the town of Sach’ŏn. There they bought an acre of paddy and an ox.

  Nearby lived a poor farmer whom everyone called Went-and-Did-It-Again for his numerous offspring. Sŏgi allowed him to use the ox for his own paddy in return for plowing theirs and doing manual labor for them.

  Naturally Went-and-Did-It-Again was surprised to see that Sŏgi was missing an ear. But then he noticed Sŏgi’s hands.

  “Will you look at those nice white hands—I’ll bet they’ve never done a day of farmer’s work!” he said, his mouth dropping open in amazement to reveal a set of longish teeth.

  Automatically Sŏgi stuck his hands inside his waistband.

  When it came to putting in a day’s work, Suni held her own. And she was always welcome when the neighboring farmers needed temporary help. But Sŏgi stayed at home, concentrating on their own paddy. An able-bodied boy could have outworked him. At weeding time Sŏgi could initially do half a row to everyone else’s full row, but later in the day he could barely finish that half row while others did three or four rows. The work was too taxing, and Sŏgi began to moan in his sleep.

  Suni couldn’t bear to see him like this.

  “Why don’t you stay home and look after the ox or something?”

  Sŏgi would hear nothing of it.

  “What! Do you think I’m a boy? That’s a job for children and old men.”

  Next it was heat prostration, which kept Sŏgi in bed several days with the flu. Afterward Sŏgi noticed his sunburned skin flaking off.

  “Goodness,” he said as he worked at the skin peeling from his shoulders, “I’m like a little boy. Well, a crab has to molt in order to grow. Maybe it’s the same with me.”

  Suni didn’t have the heart to laugh at this jest.

  By the time they finished threshing the grain from the autumn harvest, Sŏgi’s pale forehead had taken on a coppery hue and his soft palms had callused.

  Sŏgi and Went-and-Did-It-Again loaded the ox with grain and set out for the market in Sach’ŏn.

  The other man noticed Sŏgi’s roughened hands. “They aren’t nice and soft anymore. Too bad. They were so white, just like powder.”

  But Sŏgi felt thankful that he didn’t have to hide them anymore.

  Went-and-Did-It-Again produced a short pipe from the back of his waistband, filled it with leaf tobacco, and lit up.

  “A farmer’s hands are like the hooves on that old ox. When we get real busy, the nails wear down and don’t have time to grow. I think we ought to have some kind of covering for our hands, like the shoes on that old fellow.”

  Sŏgi produced his own pipe. He had started smoking not long before. But he still handled the pipe clumsily, the strong leaf tobacco made him cough, and he couldn’t inhale the way other men did.

  “You know, I just can’t figure you as a farmer. Whatever made you want to do it?” Went-and-Did-It-Again had long been wondering about this.

  “Can you really draw a line between people who are cut out to farm and people who aren’t?”

  “Sure, why not? Seems to me some folks are born to be farmers.” Went-and-Did-It-Again inhaled deeply on his pipe.

  “Well, we’ve been farmers since my grandfather’s day,” Sŏgi said as he watched the smoke exhaled by the other man.

  In a certain sense Sŏgi believed this. He remembered his grandfather acting just like a real farmer as he went about supervising the farm work with Sŏgi in tow.

  And after three years of farming, Sŏgi looked and acted like a farmer.

  It was winter—a time of respite from the busy farm work. One evening after dinner had been cleared, Sŏgi said to Suni, “Look at my fingernails. When I see them growing like this, it gives me the itch to work.”

  By now, Suni could smile at the sight of Sŏgi’s toughened hands. And sometimes he unwittingly brought her to laughter. It had all started one day when Suni happened to watch him handling his pipe. Producing the pipe from the back of his waistband, filling it with leaf tobacco, lighting it with the flint—in each of these actions he was the very image of Went-and-Did-It-Again. Sensing the reason for her laughter, Sŏgi had turned to Suni and showed off by puffing away more deeply. Such was the life they had settled into as the years slipped past.

  In their fourth spring of farming, a baby boy was born to them.

  That autumn, as in previous years, Sŏgi loaded the ox with grain and set out for the Sach’ŏn market with Went-and-Did-It-Again.

  Sŏgi had negotiated a price for his grain and was about to leave when a man approached him and bowed deeply. Sŏgi recognized the man as an elderly servant of his parents.

  “Young master. . . . Goodness, what’s happened to you?”

  The man tearfully related to Sŏgi that he had come looking for him at Sach’ŏn the previous market day, five days earlier, after learning that a man resembling Sŏgi had been seen there. He then confessed he hadn’t recognized him at first—the young master had changed so much! Finally he explained the purpose of his visit: Madam was critically ill; they should leave for home at once.

  Sŏgi entrusted Went-and-Did-It-Again with the ox and set out immediately with the servant.

  Along the way Sŏgi asked when his mother had fallen ill. It was not so long ago, he was told, but for two or three years prior to that she hadn’t been eating properly. It occurred to Sŏgi that he might have been the cause of her illness. But what could he have done differently?

  They made the trip quickly, arriving just before dusk at the hill in front of the village.

  Here the servant asked Sŏgi to wait, saying he would return shortly. With no further explanation he disappeared down the hill.

  Sŏgi began to understand. It probably wasn’t his father but his mother who had sent for him. And now the servant would be telling Sŏgi’s mother that her son had arrived, and would await further instructions.

  Sŏgi noticed that his family’s chimney was the only one producing smoke; the other families must have finished supper. Even from that distance he could see figures moving between the women’s quarters and the master’s quarters. It appeared that his mother’s illness was indeed critical.

  In the evening shadows Sŏgi could see ripe red persimmons among the bare branches of the Chinese parasol in front of the gate to the master’s quarters. He recalled from his youth the familiar sound of his grandfather coughing as he tapped the ashes from the bowl of his long pipe—and the voice of his mother calling him too softly for others to hear.

  There had been an evening—was it spring? autumn? He remembered only that the mornings and evenings had been chilly then. Once again he had been whipped by his father for playing with Suni. He went behind the chimney in back of the house to cry. He had no idea how long he remained huddled there.
He felt as if he were melting in the heat from the chimney and began to nod off. Then he felt his nose tingle in the chill air and woke to realize that the fire had been lit for supper. He rose and discovered something flickering in front of him. A tiny spider was descending on the thread of a web it was weaving. And he heard his mother call him softly from the front yard. Sŏgi gazed at the flickering spider web, not answering. It felt good just to stand there listening to his mother’s voice.

  All he could think of now was that his mother was calling him from her sickbed. He shouldn’t be waiting here. He kept rising only to squat down again, paralyzed by anxiety.

  The servant returned, his face streaked with tears.

  “We’re too late. Madam has . . .”

  “Has what?”

  “Madam passed on early this afternoon.”

  It had all happened so quickly. Sŏgi was too stunned to cry.

  The servant for his part began weeping again.

  “I asked the master if you could—”

  “I know, I know!”

  Sŏgi realized his father was loath to allow the sinful son to see his departed mother. It was just as well, he thought. After all, he hadn’t returned to see her while she was alive.

  “Since you’ve come all this way, shouldn’t you get a good night’s sleep here?”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary.” Sŏgi turned and set off. The servant followed. “You can go back now,” said Sŏgi. And then something occurred to him. “How is Suni’s family?”

  “They’re all right. They returned the land they received from the senior Pak, and now that Kwidong can do a man’s work he’s taking care of the farming.”

  The servant continued to follow.

  Sŏgi stopped. “You’re holding me up—I want you to go back.”

  The man reluctantly stopped. “It’s not easy for me to say this,” he said hesitantly, “but the master asked me to tell you—he doesn’t want you in the Sach’ŏn area any longer.”

  “I understand,” said Sŏgi, his voice trembling.

  “I just don’t know what to think about all of this.”

  “Don’t worry. Now off with you.”

  Finally Sŏgi was alone on the darkening mountain road. His legs were unsteady and he plopped down, feeling as if the grief he had suppressed was about to explode. But the tears never came.

  Sŏgi and Suni decided to move to the foothills of Chiri Mountain. They loaded their ox with seed, staples, and farm tools and departed.

  Went-and-Did-It-Again was at a loss. Four years earlier this fellow had drifted in, the most unlikely looking farmer you could imagine, and now he was disappearing elsewhere just as winter was approaching and, what was more, leaving him all his paddy land. How to explain it?

  Sŏgi would tell no one where they were going, not even this man to whom he had drawn close over the past four years.

  The day Sŏgi and Suni arrived at Chiri Mountain they began felling trees, and eventually they were able to build a hut. Nearby they found a rocky slope, an area suitable for fire-field farming, and burned it. After clearing the stumps and rocks, they planted barley. In all of this they put to use their four years of farming experience.

  Night and day they saw the ridges of Chiri Mountain, heard the mountain freshets, the wind, and the calls of bird and beast. And sometimes when they least expected it they would hear the patter of centipedes as long as your hand is wide, crawling along the walls of their hut.

  They picked mushrooms and gathered acorns. There was the occasional visitor foraging for medicinal herbs, and they were all too happy to put aside their work and keep company with this person for the rest of the day.

  Winter arrived and the herb pickers stopped coming. During the long, long nights the wind and the cries of the animals sounded all the more fierce.

  The following spring, when the nights were still frosty, they sowed the unplanted areas of the rocky slope with cold-resistant crops such as potatoes, corn, and millet.

  The supplies they had brought with them and the acorns gathered the previous fall sustained them until they harvested the barley, which they had husbanded with care. To supplement these foods there were pine trees whose edible inner bark they could peel, and an abundant supply of mountain greens such as bracken fern, bellflower root, aralia shoots, tŏdŏk, and aster shoots.

  They managed to obtain fabric for clothing and condiments for their food. Before the arrival of the herb pickers early in the spring they picked their own herbs, then bartered them for such commodities as salt and cotton cloth.

  The first ripe ears of barley were small, but when they clipped them and rubbed away the husks, they saw that the kernels had filled out nicely.

  They sat down to their first meal of cooked barley. Before they ate, Sŏgi offered a spoonful to their little one, who was old enough now to be reaching for food.

  “We’ll have to plant a lot more barley this fall.”

  “Where will we ever find the time and the energy?”

  “If we put our minds to it, why not? That little fellow comes first. We’ll just have to work more land.”

  Sŏgi looked down at the baby trying to mash the barley in its mouth. A smile lingered on his face for the first time in a long while.

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Suni. With a beaming smile, she pretended to give their son a playful pinch on the cheek.

  The potatoes, corn, and millet were small as well, but they were plentiful enough.

  And now it was Suni saying, “Next year we’ll have to plant more corn and potatoes.”

  One day Sŏgi went far up one of the valleys and returned with his narrow-mouthed basket full of wild grapes.

  “Look at the little bugger’s eyes—just like these grapes,” Sŏgi said as the three of them ate. He held one of the grapes next to the baby’s eye for comparison. “What do you think?”

  “His eyes look like those grapes? Darling, really! It’s the grapes that resemble his eyes.”

  They both laughed.

  And so the little one came to be called Grape Eyes.

  The sound of the wind and the animals’ cries no longer bothered them. Nor did the long centipedes seem as frightening.

  That fall they burned a different patch on which to grow more barley. And the following spring they planted even more potatoes, corn, and millet.

  Summer arrived and floss appeared on the ears of corn. One day around sunset Sŏgi was resting in the hut while Suni gathered water at the spring below. Suddenly, a scream from Suni rent the air. Sŏgi ran outside barefoot. Suni was beside the spring, clutching silently at the air in the direction of a large wolf as it disappeared into a thicket some distance away. In its mouth was the baby. With a sickening feeling, Sŏgi grabbed an ax and set off after the animal.

  Sŏgi could see the wolf loping away in the distance, but he couldn’t gain on it. He shouted and shouted, his cries bringing echoes from all over the mountain. The wolf’s only reaction was to look back; it gave no indication of releasing its prey.

  Time ceased to exist for Sŏgi. It was dark before he knew it, and he lost sight of the wolf. As he thrashed through the woods, his fiery gaze met the gleaming eyes of animals. Sŏgi charged at those eyes, flailed at them with his ax. But instead of the wolf his ax found a tree trunk or glanced off a rock with a shower of sparks.

  And then there there were no more gleaming eyes to be seen. The short summer night had given way to dawn.

  Face, arms, shins, the soles of his feet—Sŏgi was everywhere sweaty and bloody. He returned to find Suni in a state of shock, still huddled beside the spring.

  Suni never returned to that spring. The sound of the wind, which had become a regular presence in their lives, now threw her into a fright. When the wolves howled she blocked her ears—she said it was their baby crying—and quivered like the leaves of an aspen. Sŏgi would take the ax and run off into the woods like a man distracted.

  The two of them seemed suddenly to have aged. The wrinkles in their fa
ces deepened; flecks of white appeared in their hair.

  They could no longer bear to stay in the hills, so they left for the coast.

  Along the way, at Tansŏnggol, they sold the ox.

  “Beast looks ready for the glue factory,” said the broker. He opened the animal’s mouth. “Only eight years old, and it’s a bag of bones!”

  In truth, the animal, like its master, was suddenly old and bony.

  They agreed to the broker’s price and continued on to Samch’ŏnp’o. There they boarded a ferry for T’ongyŏng.

  They had no special reason for choosing T’ongyŏng—except that Sŏgi recalled how much Suni liked the taste of abalone, scabbard fish, and such when they had lived in Hadong. So why not give coastal life another try? For a seaside town Samch’ŏnp’o would have sufficed, but they wanted to go farther so as to avoid, as much as possible, attracting the attention of anyone they might know.

  The ferry to T’ongyŏng was a sailing vessel of modest size. There were only half a dozen other passengers.

  The ferry put out to sea and the boatman, after trimming the sail, began striking up conversations with the passengers.

  “Where you from, uncle?” he asked Sŏgi in an amiable tone.

  The “uncle” took Sŏgi by surprise. The boatman seemed no more than thirty, and therefore close to Sŏgi in age.

  “Up in the hills,” he answered reluctantly.

  “And you’re on the move, eh? You must have had a rough go of it there,” the boatman said, inspecting Sŏgi, who was all too conscious of his missing ear and his generally wretched appearance. “You have some connection in T’ongyŏng?”

  Sŏgi stared at the water ahead, his silence telling the boatman that there was no one there to welcome him and Suni.

  “No matter what they say, for a farmer, farming is the thing. From the time I was a boy my father used to tell me, ‘Son, pine-eating caterpillars don’t eat oak leaves, and sea gulls can’t live on the mainland.’ And that’s why he told me not to worry as long as I took good care of this here boat and made a living from it.”

  The ferry arrived, and Sŏgi and Suni found lodging near the dock in a locality called Haep’yŏng.