Lost Souls

by Hwang Sunwon

  His throat was choked with sobs. But the tears wouldn’t come, frustrating him all the more.

  Reaching the entrance to the village, Tŏkku knocked on the door of Auntie Wart’s drinking house. The door opened to reveal the woman rubbing her sleepy eyes.

  “Mr. Cho!” Her voice registered her shock. “What are you doing up at this hour?”

  “I was coming back from the market and I got robbed.”

  “My goodness, what a terrible thing to happen. Come in, come in.”

  “A couple of guys jumped me, they must have knocked me out. When I came to, they’d taken every last copper I got for my grain.”

  “Heavens! Well, it’s good you weren’t hurt.”

  “Give me a bowl of makkŏlli, would you?”

  He drank that bowl and then another.

  “I’ll pay later if that’s all right.” True to form, Tŏkku was happy to postpone payment.

  “Don’t worry about that, just get yourself home. You can imagine how long she’s been waiting.”

  Despite the makkŏlli, Tŏkku for some reason felt wide awake. He’d have to tell his wife the same story about being robbed—what else could he say?

  But this excuse and every other one he framed in his mind seemed flawed. He should have brought that money home at all costs, even if it meant risking his life at the hands of robbers. Again he wished he were dead. As he entered the twig gate to his home, he had an urge to strangle himself with his money belt.

  The soy crock in the yard caught his eye. He’d guzzle the stuff until it killed him. He rushed to the crock and scooped a gourdful. But by the fifth swallow he was on his knees vomiting. Everything came out, including what he had eaten at the market. All he could think of was that he had wasted a gourdful of soy sauce.

  For three days he kept to his bed, sick at heart if not in body.

  He became a laughingstock among the villagers. “Got enough soy sauce to last the year?” they would ask. Tŏkku, red-faced, would say nothing.

  But the Tŏkku who returned from the army was nothing like Tŏkku back then.

  The villagers had raised money, and they welcomed him with a party the day he returned. Tŏkku managed not to overdrink, but he had something to say: on the battlefield, the dead were no different from a chunk of wood or a rock you might see alongside the road. And so the sight of a corpse wasn’t so awful; in fact, it didn’t faze him at all.

  When the villagers registered surprise at this, Tŏkku responded with a short, high-pitched laugh in direct imitation of Sergeant Kim.

  While Tŏkku was recuperating in the army hospital in the city of Taegu he had received word that Kim had died in action. Whereupon he had adopted the sergeant’s giggle. And now, surveying the crowd as he giggled, he added, “Long as you’re alive, you should eat what you want and do what you please.”

  As if to translate these words into action, Tŏkku proceeded virtually to take up residence at Auntie Wart’s drinking house. And when intoxicated he would say things he wouldn’t have said before; he even flirted with her.

  “Auntie, how old are you?”

  “What’s gotten into you? If you really want to know, I’m thirty-seven.”

  “What rotten luck. If you were five years younger, I’d settle down with you.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “No. It’s just that I’ve fallen in love with that wart under your ear.”

  Auntie Wart scowled at him but managed to hold her tongue. Can a person change that much for the worse? But she didn’t want to be too hard on a man who had just returned from the army.

  And Yongch’il for his part dealt differently with Tŏkku than he had previously. First of all, he now held Tŏkku a notch higher in his estimation. He himself, through some mysterious means, had been able to avoid every draft notice that came his way. A wastrel and gambler second to none in that area, he couldn’t quite bring himself to stand tall in Tŏkku’s presence once the soldier was back home. Instead, he wished to follow as much as possible in Tŏkku’s wake.

  The two of them took to visiting the Mokp’o House, a good-sized tavern in a larger village the next valley over. It was run by an aged woman from the city of Mokp’o and always featured at least one loose barmaid from Seoul. The young crowd fervently wished they might someday have a drink poured by the hand of this particular barmaid. Yongch’il was already ensconced there, and with Tŏkku in tow, would stay up all night drinking. Naturally, it was Yongch’il who paid.

  The two of them also frequented the drinking house near the market.

  “None of that weak yakchu today,” Tŏkku would say. “Let’s make it chŏngjong instead.”

  This clearer rice brew was brought to them nice and warm. And for a drinking snack they wouldn’t settle just for raw octopus; they liked such succulent fare as grilled meat or ribs to grace their table as well.

  When the young man with the twitch for a smile joined them, Tŏkku had no qualms about shouting him down: “Wipe that sneaky smile off your face!”

  Thereafter the young man was ever cautious about smiling in front of Tŏkku.

  Not a day passed that Tŏkku’s good eye wasn’t bloodshot from drinking and gummy with discharge. Three rounds of drinking took precedence over three meals a day. To all appearances he had fallen in with a dissolute lot.

  And then a shocking rumor made its way back to the village: Tŏkku had gotten into a fight near the market and had knocked a man’s teeth clean out of his mouth. And he had gotten away with it.

  On the day in question, Yongch’il and the victim had been gambling in the back room of the usual drinking house. Tŏkku, mellow with drink, was observing. Most of the money had passed to Yongch’il’s side of the gaming blanket when suddenly the other man snatched the cards from Yongch’il’s hand, spread them out, and shot to his feet. Grabbing Yongch’il by the collar, he accused him of cheating from the outset. Punches and kicks followed, and soon the two of them were rolling about. Yongch’il’s opponent was a tough man to subdue, and Yongch’il on his own might have had to submit. So finally Tŏkku had aimed a quick kick at the man’s face as he sat on top of Yongch’il. The man flew backward and spluttered, spitting out a couple of teeth mixed with bloody froth.

  The men were taken to the local police station. But because Tŏkku was a disabled veteran and had acted under the influence of alcohol, he was released without much of a fuss.

  Tŏkku and Yongch’il reclaimed their drinking table.

  “That other time you played me for a sucker too, didn’t you?” said Tŏkku.

  Yongch’il produced a sheepish smile. “Let’s not talk about the past—men don’t do that,” he said, sticking a handful of money in Tŏkku’s pocket. “If it wasn’t for you, he would have beaten the shit out of me.”

  “And that’s why it’s good to have friends,” Tŏkku said, trying to sound manly. “Besides, we’re drinking pals and neighbors too.”

  This was the life Tŏkku had lived since his discharge during the summer, and he kept it up until the spring thaw of the following year.

  Tŏkku would have been the first to admit that most of the time he was palling around with Yongch’il he had been living off of his friend. Not that he himself had spent nothing. Of the modest sum of traveling expenses he had received upon his discharge, not one copper had gone to the support of his household; instead, it had all been cast to the wind. If he and his wife hadn’t dipped into the grain that she had harvested by herself from their measly plot of land and sold a half peck or so as necessary, they wouldn’t have survived.

  His wife had continued to be a frugal household manager. But she was not one to bawl out her husband or find fault with his every misdeed. That he had survived the perils of the battlefield and been delivered back to her was more than she could have asked for. How thankful she was that he had lost only an eye rather than an arm or a leg, and so was still able to do farm work. Besides, she wanted to believe in her husband: he wouldn’t always be the way he was now. So whe
n he returned after a night of dissipation, she prayed he would eventually mend his rough ways, just like she had patched his tattered army uniform.

  It had seemed Tŏkku would ride his high horse forever, but he was not quite the same after his fight near the market. In the army, the loss of a tooth or two was nothing to men who could dispatch bullets at will and kill with little effort. It was kill or be killed.

  Tŏkku realized he hadn’t knocked out that man’s teeth because of a threat to his life. But as long as he was under the influence he could actually feel proud of what he had done. Yongch’il, you no-good, I’m different from you, he would tell himself. You swindled me out of that money I got for my grain. That’s not something I’d do; you wouldn’t catch me emptying someone else’s pocket. I respect my friends among the neighbors.

  But when he was sober and thought back on it, that fight weighed on his mind. If he were in that other man’s shoes, he’d be mad as hell. Unknown to others, he was afraid of encountering the man again. And so his visits to the marketplace grew less frequent. He began to revert to his former meekness and his cowardly tendencies.

  Closer to home, he could no longer frequent Auntie Wart’s drinking house. His tab had reached the point where she refused to serve him. And by now there was no more grain, or anything else at home, to sell. He and his wife were reduced to two meals a day of barley gruel, and even that was more radish leaves than barley.

  Already the villagers were fertilizing their fields for the new crop. But Tŏkku was reluctant to set himself to work. The callus on his trigger finger had disappeared, but it was not the lack of toughened hands that discouraged him from working but rather the life he had led since his discharge. He had somehow come to think that his neighbors might feel awkward witnessing a disabled veteran having to farm for subsistence.

  About this time, Yongch’il returned after a considerable absence. Immediately the two men began hanging around again at Auntie Wart’s. If you don’t drink for a while and then take it up again, you become intoxicated more quickly. Before Tŏkku knew it, the corners of his eyes had reddened.

  “No matter what people say, this is the best,” he said. “Down the hatch, and all your worries wash away.”

  “What about your wife?” Auntie Wart broke in.

  “I’ve got my booze, and she’s got this,” he said, pointing toward his crotch. “What else does she need?”

  “That’s right,” Yongch’il chimed in. “And a tit for a baby, and shit for a dog.”

  “No problem there. I got no kid and no dog.”

  Auntie Wart was reluctant to interrupt the blithering of these two customers even though they were acting like bums, but she felt compelled to remind Tŏkku, “Mr. Cho, you’re going to be a father soon.”

  “Right—I’m going to snap my fingers and the little bastard’ll pop right out,” he said. “Heads it lives, tails it dies.”

  In spite of his bluster, Tŏkku had always felt ill at ease about his lack of children. A neighbor had once mentioned that Tŏkku’s ancestors had never been blessed with plentiful offspring. When Tŏkku was drafted into the army, he wished he had at least one son to return to. And now his wife was in her eighth month. These days she was taking in sewing. He could picture her sitting in their room, the upper part of her heaving with every breath she took. Although Tŏkku couldn’t get her out of his mind, his chaotic life made it easier to set these worries aside.

  As he returned home from Auntie Wart’s that night, Tŏkku told himself he had better do some serious thinking once and for all. Various thoughts had been accumulating since his discharge, but there was no specific question he could make sense of and act on.

  He felt the urge to urinate and did so in the yard. Suddenly he was hit with a realization: if he was going to urinate, the decent thing to do was use the urine crock. At that moment, this thought stood out more clearly than any other.

  From then on, Tŏkku began to apply himself, little by little, to household matters. He wove straw sandals; he went up in the hills for firewood; he even began to think about borrowing an ox, since it was time to plow the fields.

  And then three weeks ago something very unseemly happened in the village. The elderly woman who lived in the Chinese Date House at the foot of the hill behind the village lost a brood hen. She was sure she had seen it in the morning, but toward sunset when it should have come home to roost, it had failed to appear. Neither weasels nor wildcats had ever been seen about the village, which meant the hen must have been stolen. Secretly fingers were pointed at Tŏkku. The neighbors began to keep a closer watch on their chickens.

  Around this time Yongch’il had returned to the village after another of his absences, and he and Tŏkku were drinking at Auntie Wart’s.

  “Tŏkku, my friend, I had you figured wrong,” said Yongch’il. “You’re quite the sly fellow.”

  Tŏkku asked what he meant.

  “You’ve been sneaking over to the Mokp’o House,” Yongch’il continued. He kept batting his eyelids in a knowing way. “What’s it like now? Do they have a new girl from Seoul? That last one, her mug was kind of cute but her body was no good—she could have used more meat in the butt. What about this one—decent body?” And then Yongch’il lowered his voice. “A boiled chicken goes good with a few drinks, eh?”

  Tŏkku finally caught the drift of this last remark.

  “Listen to this crap.” I’m not going to defend myself every time you say something—I’m not like you! he told himself.

  But a short time later when Tŏkku stepped outside, his right eye bloodshot from drinking for the first time in a while, he shouted in the direction of the village, “Hey everybody—keep an eye on your cows too, not just your chickens!”

  And then the previous day, Yongch’il had returned from yet another foray. He and Tŏkku were reunited at Auntie Wart’s. Ever since the theft of the brood hen, Tŏkku had lapsed back into idleness.

  The night was getting far along when the two of them left, drunk.

  “I am damn angry,” said Yongch’il, who went on to explain that a disreputable character had shown up at the market with a wad of money, and Yongch’il had been unable to fleece him. Before he would gamble, the fellow said, he needed to see if Yongch’il had any money.

  “Here’s this big fish, and I can’t reel him in—it’s ridiculous. A wad of money looking me right in the face. So I come over here to borrow some money from Samdol’s father. But the old fart just looks at me like he’s bitten into a lemon—doesn’t say a word.”

  Drunk as he was, Tŏkku wondered if his friend had lost his mind. No way Samdol’s father would lend a copper to a gambler like Yongch’il. And Yongch’il should have known that. Had he actually lost some money to this guy, and was he now so frantic he was trying to cover his losses? It somehow seemed that the distressed look Yongch’il wore tonight was different from his usual expression—something was bothering him for sure.

  But Tŏkku felt no need to reveal these suspicions to Yongch’il. Instead he replied, “You know that old fart—he’s as tight as they come. I tried to borrow some barley from him and he told me to get lost.”

  Three days earlier, Tŏkku had asked Samdol’s father—one of the more affluent farmers in the village—to lend him a mal of barley.

  “Come back after you’ve thought about that soy sauce you wasted,” the other had shot back. The implication was that he wouldn’t consider lending the barley until Tŏkku resumed the ways of a frugal farmer.

  Idiotic bastard! thought Tŏkku. Just you wait and see, you old fart! I’ll never again ask to borrow your ox, and if that means I don’t plow my fields, then so be it!

  “Shit!” said Yongch’il, who had hoped Tŏkku would stand in for him and ask Samdol’s father for the loan. “The pigheaded old fart—he’d be the last one to help someone out in a pinch.”

  “You’re right,” Tŏkku chimed in. “The cussed old bastard—he’s such a skinflint, he won’t even go peacefully when he drops dead.”


  That night a fire broke out at Samdol’s family’s house.

  Tŏkku had just returned home and sprawled on the floor when a clamor erupted outside. Tŏkku’s wife hurried out, then frantically rushed back in.

  “Honey! There’s a fire at Samdol’s!”

  “Hmm? Fire?” Tŏkku replied in a sleepy voice.

  “Yes, a fire! Aren’t you going to help?”

  “Why shouldn’t the damned house catch fire?” Tŏkku snorted. “It’s not made of tin, is it?” And with that he turned away.

  The next morning Tŏkku’s wife observed her husband carefully. As luck would have it, only the ox shed at Samdol’s family’s house had caught fire. And because the fire had been spotted by a family member emerging from the outhouse, the ox had been led away unharmed. But to Tŏkku’s wife, the extent of the damage was not the issue. Rather, she wondered how the fire could have started in the first place. Samdol’s family seemed to think it was because the ashes from the evening fire had been disposed of carelessly, but this was difficult for her to believe. There was no doubt in her mind that the fire had been set, and no matter how she looked at it, she had to suspect her husband. There was something fishy about his attitude the previous night. All the neighbors had rushed out to help fight the fire, but her husband, living practically next door to Samdol’s family, hadn’t even stuck his head outside. And that wasn’t all. “Why shouldn’t the damned house catch fire?” he had said. How could he talk such nonsense! The more she thought about it, the more her heart was troubled. It was too much for her. She would rather have had him swilling liquor and loafing around. It had been all she could do to put up with the whispers among the neighbors about the disappearance of the brood hen belonging to the elderly woman in the Chinese Date House. And now this.

  “Honey, we can’t live here anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  Tŏkku, hung over from the previous night, looked up from his watery gruel of dried radish leaves, his bloodshot eye glaring at her.