The Dwarf (Modern Korean Fiction)

by Cho Se-hui

  “Scream,” said Yun-ho. “Your tendons and flesh are being ripped apart.”

  “I don’t feel a thing,” said Kyŏng-ae. “I didn’t like standing up there, so I pretended to faint. I’m completely comfortable now.”

  “I’m going to make you tell the truth.”

  Yun-ho tightened the four invisible posts three turns each. He couldn’t be sure, for there were no specific records, but he imagined the torture chambers in the underground prisons of yesteryear full of screams at that moment. Lips had contorted, flesh had ripped, blood had flowed. Yun-ho rested a hand on Kyŏng-ae’s chest.

  “Your heart is going to burst,” Yun-ho said quietly. “If you don’t confess, I’ll give the posts another turn.”

  “I’m comfortable,” said Kyŏng-ae. “Nothing for me to confess.”

  “All that business about the poor working kids.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “You come to me with all that business about the poor working kids.”

  “I said I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “I don’t know who this dwarf man is.”

  “What about Ŭngang Textile?”

  “I knew it,” said Kyŏng-ae. “It was Grandfather’s company.”

  “What did your grandfather have?”

  “Lots of companies, lots of factories, a beautiful island, a farm outside the city, a big house with a swimming pool, a bar downstairs, and an escalator, lots of machines, lots of cars, lots of cows—”

  “Enough. Now let’s hear about your crimes.”

  “I’m a criminal,” said Kyŏng-ae. “I’ve committed lots of crimes. But the funny thing is, I can’t tell you what any of them are.”

  “Because your entire lifestyle is a crime.” Again Yun-ho turned the imaginary posts.

  “It hurts,” Kyŏng-ae said for the first time. “That really does make me feel like my heart is going to explode.”

  “Talk about your crimes, I said.”

  “I liked it when your family moved in next door. I liked you from the beginning. I think about you when I’m in bed. That’s my crime.”

  “Your bed’s always warm, isn’t it? What was the temperature in your room last winter, when it was so cold that fifty-year-old oak trees split their bark?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You wore short-sleeve shirts even in winter, didn’t you? And you could have a bath in your own bathtub anytime you wanted, couldn’t you? You’ve never woken up cold and hungry, have you? But you know what happened when the dwarf man’s daughter went to work at the Ŭngang Textile factory?”

  “No.”

  “In the cafeteria she lived on ‘rice’ that was actually more barley than rice, kimchi that had gone off, and soup made from dried radish leaves and stems. The temperature in her dormitory room was twenty-seven degrees. And while she was eating that lousy food and trying to catch some sleep in that awful bed, do you know what kind of treatment she was getting?”

  “No.”

  “She—a human being—was treated like a cheap piece of machinery.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kyŏng-ae said feebly.

  “You’ll find out.” Yun-ho started to get up.

  “No!”

  “It’s not a crime for a seventeen-year-old girl to think about the boy next door,” said the torturer.

  “I didn’t know,” said Kyŏng-ae.

  “And that’s your crime,” said Yun-ho. “It’s the crime of everyone who doesn’t know. Your grandfather wielded terrible power, just as he wanted. Never before have so many people worked under the tyrannical demands of one person. Your grandfather disregarded every article of law. Forced labor, restrictions on mental and physical freedom, bonuses and wages, termination, retirement bonus, minimum wage, working hours, nighttime and holiday work, paid vacation, underage employment. And besides his illegal activities that violated these legal provisions, he suppressed labor union activity, threatened to close down the workplace, and committed other violations too numerous to mention. I saw a book that the dwarf man’s daughter was reading. Written in it are the things your grandfather said—things like ‘Now is the time to accumulate, not the time to distribute.’ And then your grandfather died. Who did he share with? When? How? Of all the things he should have given to the dead dwarf’s son and daughter and their young co-workers, he gave nothing. And you didn’t know that, did you? Because you didn’t know, you spent your school vacations on your grandfather’s beautiful private island, you rode in a red car, your dining table always had meat and fresh vegetables, in your warm bed you thought about a boy, and to get close to that boy you fed him that line about the poor working kids, didn’t you? Now you’ve got to free yourself from your crime. Until now the dwarf man’s sons and daughter and all their young co-workers have been sacrificed for the likes of you. From now on it’s your turn to be sacrificed for them. Understand? You tell that to the grown-ups when you get home.”

  Kyŏng-ae, though, said nothing. Yun-ho observed her. She was retching. She turned her face to the side and threw up what she had eaten. Yun-ho took out his handerchief and cradled the side of her head, then released her from the four invisible stakes. The others were dancing.

  The others had been waiting for a long time. Heat issued from their bodies. Yun-ho helped Kyŏng-ae to the area beneath the candle. A girl made her some coffee. As Kyŏng-ae drank it she looked at Yun-ho and smiled. The torturer’s shoulders now drooped and he shook his head. Kyŏng-ae remained seated while the others danced. Later she leaned back against the wall and wrote something. Before she left the basement chapel that day Kyŏng-ae prayed: “Saint Thomas Aquinas, I ask you to pray for us!”

  Yun-ho spent that third year quietly. His father spoke no more about the social science departments at A University. He really had backed off unconditionally. It was raining by the time Yun-ho returned with Kyŏng-ae to their neighborhood. The withering flowers stood out in the rain. Kyŏng-ae’s grandfather was not a man born to meet with a happy death.

  Yun-ho watched Kyŏng-ae start to enter her house, then run back into the rain. She handed him a piece of paper and turned away. The driver of her red car rushed out from the house with an umbrella. Yun-ho read the epitaph Kyŏng-ae had written for her grandfather.

  “Here sleeps a terrible miser who was easily angered. He died because of his lust for money and power. He was a man who lived his entire life without a single friend. Although he praised himself for great achievements in developing our nation’s economy, he made not one substantial contribution to the life of our people. Not a single person wept when he died.”

  The following day Kyŏng-ae, dressed in black, attended her grandfather’s funeral. Kyŏng-ae was still young. The same with Yun-ho. Yun-ho, though, told himself that upon his entrance to college he would marry her. During the course of that third year Yun-ho thought often about the goals they should set for themselves. Such things as love, respect, ethics, freedom, justice, and ideals.

  City of Machines

  JULY AND AUGUST WERE extraordinarily hot and humid. The papers were full of articles calling it the worst heat in thirty years. The entire country was tinder dry. But Yun-ho had nothing to worry about. His father had installed an air conditioner and it spewed out cold air without the slightest sound. One day this city of Ŭngang had suddenly loomed huge in Yun-ho’s mind; if not for that he would have been content to prepare for the examination in his pleasant surroundings. The city of Ŭngang left a gloomy outline in Yun-ho’s mind. The sons and daughter of the dead dwarf worked there. To Yun-ho, Ŭngang was merely one part of the surface of a small planet. The dead dwarf’s children survived in this part of the dark surface by performing sweaty labor at a work site of machines. It was easy for them to find work. Not because they possessed superior job skills but because those machines could not operate without people’s help. Already the dwarf’s children had undergone numerous trials. But they were not noteworthy in t
his respect, for they belonged to a group with a minimal standard of living.

  The dead dwarf had used tools of metal. In his last years the toolbag on his shoulder had carried a pipe cutter, monkey wrench, socket wrench, screwdriver, hammer, faucets, pump valves, T-joints, U-joints, screws, and hacksaw. A most peculiar smell came from the neighborhood where the dwarf’s family lived.

  Yun-ho had visited the dwarf’s house, leapfrogging some half a dozen drunks sprawled underfoot. The dwarf’s wife had rinsed, readied, and boiled barley and had peeled potatoes. To Yun-ho, going to college was the number one problem. Before failing the entrance exam he had never thought about inequality. He understood the English word poverty only as a current-affairs term. In his mind poverty was connected with the English words population and pollution, and he memorized them as the three P’s. Such were the things taught in the public schools, at the cram schools, and in study groups, and such were the things that stifled the pupils. The dwarf had sat in his yard by the bank of the sewer creek tending to his tools. Yun-ho saw his death as the end of an era. Even when Yun-ho had slept with girls he had thought of the dwarf’s death. The girls didn’t like this.

  “Please,” said one girl. “Would you please not talk about the midget?”

  “Why not?”

  “He reminds me of a worm.”

  “He was a human being, not a worm.”

  “Whatever.”

  The girl lay naked.

  “You’re the one who’s a worm,” Yun-ho had said.

  Ŭn-hŭi was different. She sat silently for a time. She was a very pretty girl.

  “It’s strange,” Ŭn-hŭi said. “I can’t describe what I’m thinking about.”

  “And what are you thinking about?”

  “It’s hard to explain. Everybody deserves a chance, but they took his chance away.” Ŭn-hŭi spoke carefully. She was the purest and most innocent of the circle of first-time entrance-exam repeaters.

  The year that Yun-ho became a second-time entrance-exam repeater, Ŭn-hŭi started college. Her first impression of college was not especially favorable. She would visit Yun-ho, sit without saying a word, then leave. The one thing those first few months of college had given Ŭn-hŭi was freedom. It was the peculiar freedom of leaving home in time for class and, from that moment on, not having to accept parental interference. Her driver dropped Ŭn-hŭi off in an alley where the main entrance to the university was in sight some two hundred yards off, then returned home. When the other students saw Ŭn-hŭi they thought immediately of her father. By Yun-ho’s moral standards, Ŭn-hŭi’s father was not a person deserving of respect. The other students were not even comfortable talking about the weather in front of Ŭn-hŭi. They were on their guard with her; they felt vulnerable in her presence. Ŭn-hŭi’s father’s role as a lawyer was even more important than Yun-ho’s father’s role. And so the students’ reaction was well founded. The lawyers held their meetings in absolute secrecy. When Yun-ho talked of the dwarf’s children, Ŭn-hŭi had listened in rapt attention.

  Yun-ho had an influence on Ŭn-hŭi. She too thought of Ŭngang as being chock full of dark machines.

  “It’s because of you,” Ŭn-hŭi said. “You’ve got me in your clutches.”

  “Wrong,” said Yun-ho. “I haven’t forced you into anything.”

  “No, it’s not force. It’s just that you want.”

  “Me? Want what?”

  “You want me.”

  But in this respect Ŭn-hŭi was the same.

  “What have I done to you?” Yun-ho asked.

  “It’s not that,” said Ŭn-hŭi. “It’s just that I can’t do it with other boys.”

  “I can do it with other girls.”

  “That’s what you said. And that’s why I cried. I don’t like it if it’s not you.”

  And Yun-ho knew that. Still he had gone to the small hotel and slept with other girls.

  A frayed red carpet covered the floors of this hotel in the gloomy, unlit alley. Yun-ho always felt depressed after sleeping with a girl. The depression reached deep inside him. The act felt infinitely foolish—even called into question the very meaning of his existence. It seemed as foolish as the body before his eyes. Yun-ho should have been quicker to give his love to Ŭn-hŭi.

  That summer Yun-ho made up his mind to love Ŭn-hŭi. Ŭn-hŭi thought that perhaps Yun-ho would become a labor activist or a social activist. She certainly did not think of him simply as someone who had to take the entrance exam a third time. And so the image of Ŭngang, where the dead dwarf’s children worked, loomed large in her mind, as it did in Yun-ho’s. When Yun-ho thought of Ŭngang, he sensed his own shriveled self.

  Ŭngang is large, its inner workings complex. When Ŭngang people speak of their city, one of the things you might not immediately understand is their use of the word claustrophobic. Located not far from Seoul on a peninsula on the West Sea, Ŭngang has the ocean on three sides.

  When the tide is in, the first thing the people of Ŭngang discover is the motion of the ocean’s surface. That surface, rising and falling twice a day, makes you feel as if the whole of Ŭngang moves according to the gravitational pull of everything beyond the earth. In area Ŭngang is seventy-six square miles, in population 810,000. Compared with the major cities of our country, it is large in area and the population is about right for its size. Still, you have to wonder why Ŭngang people use the word claustrophobic. Is it a matter of their temperament? Or is it the profound skepticism, invisible to outsiders, that has spread throughout their lives? Social control does not enter into this view. No one there would speak out in dissatisfaction about restraints on individual action as a means to maintain order. You might think that a genuine social scientist could give an adequate account of the society’s realities, structure, temper, and changes. But few people fulfill their responsibilities, a characteristic of our times. In a sense, Ŭngang is a forsaken city.

  Office of education, city hall, police department, tax office, courthouse, prosecutor’s office, port authority, customshouse, chamber of commerce and industry, cultural center, correctional facility, churches, factories, labor unions—these and more are there. The workers can quickly get used to their factory jobs, but it is not such a simple matter for them to understand what people actually do in these institutions, organizations, and assemblies. The people of Ŭngang see Seoul people filling the docks and leaving for the islands. The Seoul people go to the islands to dig the clams and catch the crabs that they lack at home. How foolish they are, the Ŭngang people think. The Seoul people aren’t interested in seeing the oil slicks. The wind is blowing from the ocean toward the land. In Ŭngang there can be nothing more important than the wind. The Ŭngang people realized that too late.

  In school the children learn the history of Ŭngang. Opened to the outside world in 1883, it developed into an international treaty port and an industrial city. Ŭngang’s industrial zone has thriving sectors in metals, ceramics, chemicals, petroleum, shipbuilding, wood products, plate glass, textiles, electronics, motor vehicles, and steel, and Ŭngang is singled out in the textbooks as the leading producer of plate glass in Korea. And although high tide can differ from low by almost thirty feet, the installation of floodgates has eliminated any inconvenience.

  Downtown is a place of ups and downs with its many hills, and since the hills in the heart of the city spread east and west, the urban district is divided into north and south. The industrial zone is to the north. Black smoke rises from countless smokestacks; inside the factories machines are turning. This is where the workers work. And this is where the dead dwarf’s children are working. Mixed with the air they breathe are toxic gases, sooty smoke, and dust particles. All the factories, in proportion to the amount of manufactured goods they produce, spew wastewater and sludge in various shades of brown into the waterways. Wastewater from the factories upstream is reused by factories downstream, is again spewed out, and flows on down to the sea. Ŭngang’s inner harbor is a basin collecting polluted seawater. Life in
the vicinity of the factories is slowly dying.

  Flowers bloom in Ŭngang as elsewhere, but spring there is a season when the cold, dry northwest winds give way to the monsoon from the southeast. High pressure over the ocean gives rise to these seasonal southeast winds that usher in the summer heat.

  The typhoons that arrive from summer through early autumn blow through Ŭngang and into the interior. The cold, dry seasonal winds from the northwest usher in winter.

  With winter’s arrival snow falls in Ŭngang as elsewhere, but the factory workers can’t see it fall and accumulate. The waterways don’t freeze over no matter how cold it gets, and snow amasses only in the residential areas.

  In Ŭngang the prevailing winds are onshore during the day and offshore at night. These winds carry the toxic gases and sooty smoke from the factory zone either to the ocean or inland. One night in May, however, the people of Ŭngang realized the wind had suddenly shifted. There was no wind blowing toward the ocean or toward the interior. Instead there was a calm above the factory zone followed by a wind blowing directly toward the residential area. This wind followed the contours of the downtown hills and crossed into the residential area, where it settled and spread out. Small children who had just fallen asleep were the very first to know the wind had shifted. The adults saw that the children were suddenly having trouble breathing.