The Old Garden

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  He pulled my jacket and dragged me outside. He grabbed my hand and shook it, and studied me from head to toe.

  “Look at you, you look awful. Are you still doing that stuff?”

  “Well, I guess so.”

  “Wait, it’s lunchtime soon, I’ll be right back.”

  Sergeant Yim came back with an air force jacket over his vest and his hair covered with sawdust.

  “Let’s have lunch at home. Hey, do they offer you lunch or dinner when you run around protesting? Get a grip! How old are you now, thirty?”

  “I came here to ask you for a job, Sergeant.”

  “Listen to this! Do you want me to get into trouble, too? Anyhow, let’s go in.”

  We walked into his cement block house. Inside, the walls were plastered nicely with clean wallpaper, and the entrance was covered with sleek linoleum. He shouted, “Honey, I’m home!”

  A sliding glass door to the kitchen opened quietly, and a woman who appeared to be older than Sergeant Yim peeked out and put a finger to her mouth.

  “Shhh . . . the baby will wake up! Don’t go into the master bedroom, he just fell asleep.”

  “Hey, you remember this guy? It’s Corporal Oh!”

  Mrs. Yim’s hair was permed curly like ramen noodles, and she was wearing a pair of red rubber gloves. I bowed to her while holding her hands.

  “Yes, I remember the smart university student. Why do you still call him a corporal? I am so sick of your military talk.”

  “Can we get some lunch? I’m so hungry, I’m about to die.”

  We walked into the smaller second bedroom. It looked like a room for a child in elementary school, with a desk and bookcase built by the father, and children’s books neatly stacked.

  “I thought one was enough,” Sergeant Yim said. “But she said it’s not enough. So now we add one this late in our lives, and we can’t sleep well at night. I can’t even watch TV when I want to! By the way, are you serious about finding a job here?”

  “Yes, I am. I don’t know if it’s going to be for a month or several months, but I need to make a living.”

  “You bastard, you’re running away, aren’t you? I know everything. Are you in big trouble?”

  “It’s not me, I just have to disappear for a while for the others’ sake.”

  “I hope I’m not gonna get into trouble because of you.”

  “It really isn’t a big deal.”

  “Okay, fine. What can I do, there is something called loyalty. But I can’t pay you much. You’ll have to be a trainee, so I can’t use you as anything other than an assistant. Still, you’ll be able to eat three times a day. And here, I’m not your sergeant, so call me Mr. Manager. And I’m sorry to do this, but you’re my employee, so I’ll just call you Oh. Agreed?”

  “Agreed, one hundred percent.”

  The lunch table was brought in. It was not one of the slapdash meals prepared by the clumsy hands of Dong Woo and me, it was a real home-cooked meal. The kimchi tasted good, and the seaweed soup was silky. Sergeant Yim, who had been concentrating on his lunch for a while, raised his head.

  “By the way, do you have a place to stay?”

  I shook my head.

  “Of course you don’t.”

  “Would it be okay if I stayed at the factory after work? I’ll clean up nicely.”

  “No, that wouldn’t work. It’s a fire hazard, and I don’t want the others to talk. Let’s see, you have no luggage? You left with nothing other than what you have on?”

  “Yes, early this morning.”

  Flabbergasted, Sergeant Yim looked up to the ceiling with his mouth full of rice.

  “Bastard, why are you doing this to me? Okay, fine, listen, I’ll find someone who can take care of you, and you should stick close to them, be joined at the hip, that’s how you’re going to survive.”

  After lunch, we went back to the factory. Sergeant Yim searched through his jacket and found a 10,000-won bill and gave it to me.

  “Well, this is just a first day thing. There’s a movie theater over there showing two movies for one, so go watch both of them and come back here around seven. You’re going to be such a hassle!”

  I smiled sheepishly and walked down the unpaved road to the business district. There was not a single young man at the movie theater, only a few old people and a couple kids who were let out of school by noon. I took a seat in the middle in front of a wide aisle and stretched my legs out. I spent hours watching the movie and dozing off. I could not stay awake.

  I saw two movies in a row, but it was not even five in the afternoon by the time I got out. I walked out of the theater and into the traditional market. I bought underwear and socks and toiletries, and also a duffle bag to pack them in. I got a pair of pants and a new shirt. I decided to take a bath, since I might be conspicuous if I looked too disheveled. There was no one at the public bath; the whole place was mine. I used a disposable razor to shave my stubble cleanly. I changed into my new underwear and socks, and I felt like I was back home. Lastly, I walked into a restaurant and ordered a spicy beef stew for dinner. I pledged that I would support myself with my daily earnings.

  “Oh, say hello to Mr. Park, the best employee at our factory.”

  Sergeant Yim introduced me to a tall young man blanketed with sawdust. Park readily offered his hand, as if we were meeting at a social occasion, and shook mine.

  “I heard a lot about you from Mr. Manager here. Welcome.”

  “Good. Oh, I need to talk to you before you leave.”

  He took me into the factory where the machines had stopped running.

  “Listen, I told that guy that you’re a brother of a friend of mine from the country. I thought you should know that. That guy, he’s really cheerful and he’s a good guy. You should be roommates. They all do that to cut the living costs. You pay half the rent and meals, things like that. Now, go.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  “Bastard, I told you! Call me Mr. Manager!”

  I followed Park along the Anyang stream. A cluster of barracks was standing on a hill, and next to them was row after row of long storage structures that together looked like a weird chicken farm. Later, I learned those were called the honeycomb houses and were common in an industrial area. Around the entrance to the village were a handful of little stores, all lit up, and it looked like the marketplace in the slum I had just left.

  “So where in the countryside are you from, Mr. Oh?”

  “Not too far, in the Kyunggi province.”

  “It’s hard to make a living in the country these days, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I wasted too much time after high school, and then I had to do my military service, and now it’s too late. I thought maybe I should at least learn some sort of a skill before I get married.”

  “Let’s go grocery shopping. We need something for dinner.”

  “I already ate.”

  “You did? Okay then, you want to get a drink?”

  “Okay, I’ll buy you one tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “Call it a newcomer’s bribe,” I said cheerfully, trying to match his spirit. “Hopefully you’ll be nice to me.”

  Park laughed out loud.

  “I wonder if one drink will be enough. Let’s see.”

  He walked into a little pub among other little stores and restaurants at the entrance of the honeycomb village. As he sat down on the long wooden bench he said, “I come here a lot.”

  The pub was about sixty square feet. There were three tables, and the kitchen was just big enough for one person to turn around. Still, on the wall was a menu neatly written in calligraphy, and the smell of grilled fish permeated from the kitchen. Inside, a group of three men were drinking soju.

  “The usual, please.”

  “Okay.”

  I was curious and asked Park, “What’s the usual?”

  “Well, there’s a sequence. First, a bottle of soju and a grilled mackerel. Then poached tofu, but since I haven’t had dinner
yet, I’ll add one order of ramen.”

  “Sounds pretty substantial!”

  A whole mackerel, scored and grilled with a little salt, arrived on the table still sizzling, soon followed by a bottle of soju. With his fingertips, he lightly shook off my hand reaching for the bottle, poured the liquor into my glass first, then handed me the bottle. I poured him a glass. Park raised the glass and said, “Cheers! Congratulations on your new job.”

  “Great to meet you.”

  We emptied the glasses in one shot. Park poured himself another glass and finished it again. His head was still covered in white sawdust, and his fingers holding the little glass were dirty and stubby; they looked like a bunch of little twigs. But his neck muscles, exposed whenever he poured the alcohol down his throat, seemed so healthy and impressive. His eyes were bleary with exhaustion, but his fatigue was that of a satisfied man who had finished the labor that was assigned to him.

  “Mr. Oh, do you have a girlfriend?” he asked me, without pausing from stuffing himself with the mackerel’s flesh.

  “No, I don’t have one, it’s too much of a hassle.”

  “You want me to introduce you to someone?”

  “Not really—I mean I can’t even support myself.”

  Park winked at me.

  “Don’t worry. Whatever you earn as a daily wage, it’ll never be enough. You know, I’m considered a technician, but I’m always in the red at the end of the month. I can never save a penny. How can I get married and have a family?”

  “So why do you need the additional headache of a relationship?”

  “Girls have the same problem as we do. But we can’t spend this golden age in our lives just working all the time, what kind of life is that?”

  In no time we had finished a bottle of soju, so we ordered a second bottle and another order of grilled mackerel.

  “Fine, I get it, one day it’ll get better. We’re just trying to somehow make it with subcontracts from the electronics factory, but if we want to make real money we need to change direction and do furniture. Manager Yim knows that, too.”

  Then Park asked me, out of the blue, as if it just occurred to him, “Mr. Oh, are you really a brother of Manager Yim’s friend from the countryside?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I think that’s a lie. You don’t look like a country bumpkin. You smell like a bookworm.”

  “I hear that a lot. In the army, too.”

  “It doesn’t mean that I think you look like a obedient boy. And look at your hands!”

  “Hands of a lazy man.”

  “No, hands that write.”

  “That’s why I want to learn from you, Mr. Park.”

  “There’s nothing to learn. From tomorrow morning, you start cutting the things that are allotted to you.”

  Before he finished the sentence, he sprang from his seat. He hurried to the door and shouted outside, “Hey, Maeng Soon, where are you going?”

  I could not see the woman, but I heard her voice.

  “Where do you think I’m going? I’m done with work, and I’m going home.”

  “Come in here. Have a drink.”

  A woman’s white face peered in. She looked around the pub.

  “I haven’t had dinner yet.”

  “Just come in. I’ll buy you something good to eat.”

  They sat next to each other, facing me. He punched her back playfully and said, “Introduce yourself. This is a new guy who will be my roommate starting tonight.”

  “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “Mr. Oh, this is my girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend? Since when?”

  She searched the menu on the wall.

  “You didn’t have dinner yet, right? Excuse me, one order of ramen noodles, please, with kimchi and scallions, as fast as you can!”

  “I don’t want ramen. Do you have any rice here, ma’am?”

  “Yes, we do. Would you like a walleye stew?”

  Park’s eyes widened.

  “What are you doing, Maeng Soon? Do you know how much a walleye stew costs?”

  “If you don’t want to pay for it, fine. And why do you call out to me like that? Call me Miss Yi Myung Soo, say it properly.”

  Amused, I watched the affectionate tug-of-war between a man and a woman after a day’s work. Park asked, “Hey, Maeng Soon, you know your roommate?”

  “Which one, Kyung Ja?”

  “No, not that one. I’m talking about the skinny one.”

  “Ah, Soon Ok.”

  “Yeah, where does she work?”

  “She’s a seamstress at a dress shirt factory.”

  “Yeah, that one. Let’s introduce her to our Mr. Oh here.”

  “And what’s in it for me?”

  “Tonight’s dinner. How about that?”

  “Hmmm, I think she’s worth more than one dinner.”

  “Okay, fine, I’ll take you to a movie in Youngdeungpo next week.”

  Myung Soon calmly gazed at me over the table.

  “Hey, I have a better idea! Why don’t you bring Soon Ok over to our house later?”

  “No, she’s working overnight tonight. I was doing overtime, too, but managed to get away.”

  While she ate dinner, we finished the second bottle of soju. Then we started the third bottle, ostensibly ordered for Myung Soon, who had finished her dinner. Park was getting drunk and his voice was becoming louder.

  “I don’t think I can work with Manager Yim any longer! Listen Mr. Oh, you don’t know us. Well, I don’t care if you tell him. Since when is he the manager? We started working almost at the same time, and he said we should do our own business, and he said all he can count on is my skills. Then what happened? I don’t get a monthly salary, I get daily wages—this is not the way to treat a technician, is it? I can’t stand it any longer, I’m going someplace else.”

  He was full of hot air, but he changed his tone when he turned to me.

  “What do you think, Mr. Oh? Friendship is one thing, but money is scarier, isn’t it?”

  “Have you looked around to see if anyone will hire you?”

  “Sure! I have so many options. Furniture factories are in desperate need of skilled carpenters. You can’t compare that to this subcontract work, making television and radio frames. The most profitable thing for us is a record player, do you know why? Because it needs lots of decorations. With furniture, you make money by charging for its design.”

  Myung Soon had been quiet, but she could not resist any longer. She took a glass and emptied its contents down her throat, then opened her mouth.

  “Even if you end up leaving, you should remain quiet until you actually do. Why are you such a big talker? You just don’t think about things first.”

  “Hey, Maeng Soon, I’m doing all this to take care of you. You need to get married someday.”

  “Wow, I am about to weep, I am so grateful. Why don’t you take care of yourself first? I don’t need your help, I just want you to stop pestering me for money to pay all your debts at the end of every month. Phew, I should go home now.”

  As Myung Soon got up from her chair, Park stood halfway to stop her.

  “Are you leaving already? Come on, have another glass. So far, it’s been our Mr. Oh’s treat, but I’ll buy the second round.”

  “I want to go home, wash up, and go to bed. I have the first shift tomorrow morning. Excuse me.”

  “Hey, you’re not listening to me . . .”

  After Myung Soon left, Park did not say much. I felt that he regretted what he had told me before, that he was thinking about switching jobs. Without saying a word, he pushed around little pieces of fish on the plate with his chopsticks.

  “Actually, I came to see Mr. Yim looking for something to do for the next couple of months,” I said as I poured more soju into his empty glass. “Once I get the hang of it, I guess I’ll look for a better job.”

  “There’s not much of a prospect here. You’d be better off finding work at the indu
strial complex, doing something electrical or working on a lathe. You’re a high school graduate, you’d become a technician within a year.”

  Park and I left the pub and climbed the hill. On the slope were row after row of long rectangular structures, hastily built with cement blocks. Like a train, there were windows of the same size and shape punched through the long wall, many of them still lit. There were tiny skylight windows on slate roofs, too. Park walked into one of the rectangular houses and gestured with his chin to follow.

  “Come on in. This is the 0:50 train from Daejun.”

  As soon as he pushed open the plywood door, I heard water gushing from a faucet. Just beyond the door was a small courtyard the size of a single room with a communal faucet and draining floor in the middle, a suitable place for washing clothes or dishes. One woman was cleaning a chamber pot, while another was using a small bucket to pour warm water down the back of a half-naked man who was frozen in a push-up position on the ground. Park spoke to them as though he knew them well.

  “You’re home already? You came back early tonight.”

  The man remained in his push-up position but lifted his head to talk back.

  “I didn’t feel good today, so I came home early.”

  “It’s one thing to make money, but he hasn’t slept for the last three nights.”

  His wife, standing next to him, sounded like she was pleading.

  In the middle of the house was a narrow corridor, wide enough for one person to pass from one end of the building to the other. On both sides of the corridors were identical sliding doors, connecting rooms that really did look like honeycombs. On the ceiling of the corridor was a blackened fluorescent light that seemed to have little time left. I found it baffling that there were no shoes in front of any of the rooms. Park opened the door of the room at the end of the corridor and fumbled for a light switch on the wall. Above the sliding door was a wooden plaque with the number sixteen. He took off his shoes and entered the room carrying them. The room was stuffy with the smell of unwashed feet and sour kimchi. It also smelled of briquettes, and I guessed there was a fuel hole right under my feet. I entered the room, too. From other rooms came the sound of a man and a woman bickering, an old man coughing, and a baby wailing almost out of breath. Park kicked away a futon and blanket, both which had clearly not been washed for a long time, to make space for me to sit.