One Left: A Novel

by Kim Soom

  Reading she can handle, but she’s never felt comfortable writing.

  I

  That’s as much as she can manage. She caps the marker.

  I?

  What kind of person is she? She’s not sure whether she’s good or bad, cheerful or gloomy, headstrong or pliant, slow or brisk. Is she sad, cheerful, happy, crabby? The mistresses used to compliment her as a laconic, gentle maid while her sisters complained she was blunt and willful. Considering how chatty her sisters are, she doubts she was ever economical in her speech.

  Whenever she thinks about herself, shame fires up first. It’s humiliating and painful to remember who she is.

  In the process of trying not to examine and reveal herself, she has forgotten who she is.

  Her fingers briefly turn numb but then are charged with a burst of energy.

  I’m a victim too.

  What else should she write? She feels lost but realizes all too acutely that she hasn’t forgotten a thing.9

  She may not remember what she did an hour ago, but memories remain of the events of seventy years ago and earlier, down to the detail of how the light bulb flickered in her room in the comfort station.

  She’s heard that people criticize the comfort women for lacking credibility and being inconsistent because they have trouble remembering how old they were when they were taken away, who took them, and where they were taken. Why can’t these people recognize that most of the girls didn’t know the name of their ancestral village and without the benefit of education couldn’t even write the three syllables of their name—how could they be expected to sort through decades of jumbled and fragmented memories?

  She doesn’t remember the name of the comfort station in Manchuria but can vividly recall Kisuk ŏnni dead from opium, her teeth glinting like pomegranate kernels from her own blood; the acidic, fishy smell of the gummy discharge in the sakku; and even the number of weevils sprinkled like black sesame seeds on the rice balls.

  Sometimes, she remembers nothing except the cold and how severe it was.10

  If I remember every last detail, then how could I live this long? 11

  Her experiences at the comfort station in Manchuria are like ice fragments scattered in her mind, each shard so cold and keen.

  It’s not easy to talk about stories kept silent for fifty, sixty, seventy years.

  Just imagine, she couldn’t even tell her own mother lying in her grave. Unable to unburden herself when she visited the grave, she could only pull at the new growth of grass before leaving.

  She hates to remember life at the comfort station but is afraid that if she falls victim to dementia she won’t be able to remember.

  I’m a victim too.

  Mun P’ilgi: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 1.

  Kil Wŏnok: Yŏksa rŭl mandŭnŭn iyagi.

  Mun P’ilgi: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 1.

  Kil Wŏnok: Yŏksa rŭl mandŭnŭn iyagi.

  Kim Haksun.

  Kim Haksun.

  Ch’oe Myŏngsun: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 1.

  Kim Poktong; Kim Ŭnjin: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 2.

  Kim Okchu: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 3; Ch’oe Myŏngsun: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 1.

  Kim Ch’unhŭi: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 2.

  Yi Oksŏn: CNN interview, December 29, 2015.

  8

  SHE STANDS AT her bedroom window, face concealed by the mask, looking out impassively at the alley. “If I die, then that’s that—who would be interested in the wretched life of a woman like me?” Her mumbling lingers between the mask and her face before dying out.

  Her eyes see nothing because they’re not aligned with the eyeholes, but she can visualize every nook and cranny in 15-bŏnji.

  Younger sister number two, mother of five children, all living hectic lives, was on chemotherapy, and she was looking after her.

  To her big sister, who had neither husband nor children, Number Two asked sympathetically, “Ŏnni, what do you want most?”

  When her big sister didn’t answer, Number Two said, “I want a gold ring, 23 karat, doesn’t have to be too big, maybe two ton. . . one ton is too skimpy, three is too heavy . . .”

  After Number Two fell asleep she told herself what she wanted most: A mom. A mom is what I want most.

  The broken bottle that the NCO planted upside down in the yard and then drove his head onto was still there. With the congealed blood it looked like a rusty crown.

  Rumors circulated that Soviet soldiers were sweeping in and otosan would kill all the girls instead of leaving them behind.

  “If we’re gonna die this, that, or the other way, why not get out of here?” said Pokcha ŏnni.

  She herself made plans to escape with Pokcha ŏnni and three other girls—Kunja, Aesun, and a girl from Namhae whose name she couldn’t remember. All the other girls wanted to join as well, but their swollen privates made walking difficult. Hyangsuk wept as she ushered them off.

  Pokcha ŏnni, her lice-infested hair covered with a black cotton cloth, took the lead and ran. She herself chased after; she was in such a hurry she’d put on a pair of mismatched jikatabi, rubber-soled socks.

  The Namhae girl was shot by otosan as soon as she dropped from the far side of the barbed-wire fencing. Leaving her behind, the rest of the girls ran for their lives.

  Their first hideout was an endless field of wild millet. The stalks were well over six feet high and swung incessantly. Pokcha ŏnni, who had promised not to cry, plopped down and broke into tears. Here and there they spotted low earthenware pots similar to soy-sauce crocks back home. Peering inside in hopes of finding something edible, she was hit with a potent stench. The Chinese had buried corpses inside the pots. Rain had seeped in and the smell of the rotting corpses ate away at her nose.

  They spent the night in the field with shafts of moonlight diffusing through the rustling millet leaves.

  Before they knew it, the girls were separated from one another.

  Less than five days after their escape, she was on her own and found refuge in a Chinese home, the only habitable dwelling in sight. Spotting only men’s clothing hanging from the collapsing earthen wall, she realized soon enough that a widower lived there. The man threatened to report her to the Japanese authorities if she left, and that would mean her death, so she was stuck there. She wasn’t aware that Japan had lost the war and Korea was liberated.

  The man’s supernatural instincts told him she was a runaway from one of those places they called a comfort station. He seemed to know what had gone on there.

  For nine months she lived with the widower, who had lost all but three of his teeth, in the earthen hut with mice scurrying between her feet at meal time. The man worked at a distillery and constantly feared his new bride would run off and leave him. Several times she awakened at night petrified at the sight of him watching over her. The moonlight coming through the window gave his bony back the appearance of a washboard.

  One day he came home toting a sack of sweet potatoes. She steamed them, leaves and all. He picked snails from the leaves and offered them to her.

  She had never seen a hand as filthy and ugly. The viciously thrusting hand of the old kitten hunter in 15-bŏnji was not as horrifying.

  But there was compassion in the widower’s hand, dirty and hideous though it was.

  When the dog at the alteration shop licked her hand, she thought of the widower’s hand and wished the dog was licking that hand and not hers.

  She lied to him that she would never, ever run away, that she would stay with him because he was a kind-hearted man. And when he put his worries aside, she ran.

  In her wardrobe is a set of long underwear she has kept for the widower. She has a hunch that he is no longer of this world.

  She wishes to see him if only in a dream, so she can tell him what she’
s kept in mind all these years.

  You know I really wanted to stay with you since you were a kind man and treated me like your own daughter, but I missed my mother terribly . . . I just wanted to see her face before I died . . . I’m so sorry . . .

  She sneaked out of the hut and walked off with no idea which way was which. Along the way she saw several men with pickaxes kill another man in a potato field.

  Pickaxes dug into a person’s back instead of the soil, axes chopped off heads, hands, and feet instead of tree limbs, and sickles cut into hearts instead of stalks.

  A head severed by an axe fell to the ground and the eyeballs popped out and rolled free.

  She also saw charcoal black pigs gnawing on the charred face of a woman’s corpse.

  After the seething exodus of the Japanese soldiers, Soviet soldiers appeared. When they saw the girls, they took them into the fields—corn, millet, beans, or potatoes. Some of the girls managed to scramble away after the soldiers left, others never left.

  She stole a dead boy’s clothing to disguise herself and avoid being caught by the Soviets. She felt as if she were stealing his soul. The boy looked like he was taking a nap and at any moment would get up, brush off his clothing, and continue on his way.

  She also took a white chŏgori from a girl whose death had left her grimacing. Instead of wearing it she rolled it into a bundle and clutched it to her bosom.

  Farther along she heard someone speaking Korean. “Please take me to Chosŏn,” she begged the man.

  A group of people seemingly blood-related agreed to do so, but not long afterward she found herself alone again.

  A peddler told her he would guide her and not to worry, then took her into a cornfield. He ditched her among the tasseled ears of corn.

  She still can’t figure out how she managed to reach the banks of the Tuman River on foot, penniless and directionally purblind as she was. And it’s amazing she was able to avoid all the bombing of those past years.

  Lacking a mental roadmap, she struck out toward hills where during the war Japanese soldiers had lit fires to flush out bandits.

  Past the charred hills she saw a rocky peak the color of lead. She arrived there after a day and a half to see people slinking down the nearly vertical slope. They lived at the foot of the mountain and came down to feed themselves on hidden staples under cover of darkness before climbing back up at daybreak. They were taking shelter from strangers who murdered innocent villagers and raped young women.

  If a girl looked in any way Korean, she rushed closer to scrutinize whether the girl was Pokcha ŏnni, Kunja, or Aesun.

  She caught up with a girl whose slender waist reminded her of Kunja and found she was also a comfort woman. This girl was from Ch’ŏnan and learned about Korea’s liberation after those who ran the comfort station disappeared.

  “I heard the Soviet army would rush in and burn down the comfort stations,” said the girl.

  They walked together for three days straight. The refugees swelled into a human tide. Carried by the tide, the girl was beside her one moment but gone the next.

  She saw an old woman plodding along with a hen held to her chest. Wondering if she was the woman in the white ch’ima and chŏgori at the Taegu train station with her hair in a bun and a hen held close, she went up to her but the old woman panicked and ran off screaming.

  The water whirled round and round, reminding her of a rotating millstone. It was the Tuman River, people told her. After her five months’ wandering from the Chinese widower’s hut, the sight of the river turned her legs to jelly and she plopped down on the spot. The river was abysmally murky and turbid, and all she could think of was the river the girls had crossed on their way to the military outposts.

  Her eyes followed Soviet soldiers moving on horseback and in trucks along the riverside, and she spotted corpses floating in the water. Bodies were also to be seen in the riverbank grass.

  The Soviets were camped here and there, guarding the crossing of this river that formed the border between Manchuria and Chosŏn.

  She eavesdropped on whispered exchanges of information— which parts of the river were deep, which were shallow, where there were drop-offs in the riverbed.

  People crossed the river at dusk, bundles kept dry on their heads.

  Watching the swell of refugees, she burned with worries: what if she couldn’t make the crossing that night?

  A woman with a bundled infant on her back walked into the river. Instantly the water was up to the woman’s waist. Her heart burned as she watched the river swallow them only to spit out the still bundled baby, and she heard the onlookers’ laments: “Oh lord, they’re going down!” “Aigugu!”

  The swirling river sucked another woman under, her ink-colored skirt ballooning above the surface. What happened to the woman and her baby? Did they make it? She couldn’t spot them.

  A girl with a bulging belly was pulled under.

  Casting aside her dread and timidity, she clutched men’s arms and pleaded, “Ajŏsshi, please help me across!”

  No one offered a helping hand. What if they were sucked down trying to hold on to a girl so feeble she could barely stand? She stamped her feet in frustration as a group of girls slogged hand in hand through the water. She counted them, seven in all, and every single one made it safely to the other side.

  She followed the river upstream, searching for a narrower crossing she might be able to wade, and came across a sprawled-out woman who had been shot and killed.

  When the sun rose, fewer people attempted the crossing. A woman with a black head-towel walked toward the river hand in hand with a girl who couldn’t have been more than 5. The woman sat the girl down at the side of the river and washed her face with the water through which the corpses were calmly drifting.

  “Ajŏsshi, please help me across the river!” she begged a fortyish man.

  The man wore knickers, a garment favored by otosan. “Hey, what have you got for me?”

  “Ajŏsshi, are you married?”

  “Married? Sure! A long time ago.”

  “Ajŏsshi, I have no money, only this nice chŏgori. Can I give you that?” She handed the rolled-up jacket to the man.

  “My woman would fancy that!”

  The man took her wrist instead of her hand. She knew that in an emergency it would be easier for him to release her wrist.

  9

  THE OTHER SIDE of the river was home, or so she thought. She never expected it would take five more years to get the rest of the way there.

  A month’s walk brought her to P’yŏngyang Station, which bustled with passengers, job hunters, fortune-tellers, day laborers, beggars, and porters with back-racks. Her heart fluttered in anticipation of catching a train, and yet she was fearful.

  Tagging after a rice-cake peddler, she begged him to take her somewhere she could work for meals.

  The peddler considered her spotted, bony face and said, “Tell me, are you old enough to be having your period?”

  “I’m over 20.”

  He found her a place behind the train station, an eatery serving hangover soup and drinks. It was run by a hunchback woman with a dogged belief that her son, who had been drafted into the Japanese army, would someday return home. She was saving up to buy a house for the two of them. She herself received three meals a day and clothing but no payment. She and the woman slept in the room attached to the back of the eatery. She needed money to get home, but dared not broach the subject.

  A month after she started working there she related her story to an old laborer who came every night for the soup. Skipping the part about Manchuria, she told him she had gotten on the wrong train and ended up here in P’yŏngyang instead of Taegu and to make matters worse had lost the bundle with her traveling money and so she was stuck here and unable to go home.

  “Then you should go sell yourself.”

  Which she took to mean that he was going to send her back to the comfort station. And so that night she took a few notes from the money
belt the hunchback woman had taken off before going to the toilet, and rushed to the train station. There she caught the train to the capital, Kyŏngsŏng, and transferred to another train that she assumed was bound for Taegu. When she got off she found herself in Pusan instead.

  A granny with her hair parted down the middle, the part looking like a line drawn by chalk, was plodding along but kept glancing at her. Finally she approached.

  “No place to go, little baby?”

  She registered the old woman’s use of baby.

  “No.”

  “Why’s that? Where’d you take the train, anyway?”

  “I’m not sure—I can’t read, you see.” She couldn’t bring herself to reveal that she’d been at the comfort station in Manchuria.

  “You sure you don’t have a place to go?”

  “I swear.”

  “Then how about going to my place to babysit and do some errands?”

  The place to which she followed the old woman was a Japanese-built bathhouse. She looked after a seven-month-old baby and ran errands but received no payment there either.

  Twelve years had passed, seven at the comfort station and five on the road. She didn’t know the address of her home, only the name of the locality, Kkamakkol. She asked at the bus station how to get there. It was in a secluded area, requiring an hour-and-a-half bus ride from Taegu to the nearest town, and from there a thirty-minute ride on a bus that departed at two-hour intervals. On the local bus she could tell from the vibrations beneath her feet that the road the bus sped along like a mad bull was the same road taken by the truck that had made off with her and the other girls twelve years ago.