Baptism of soil

Bapt i sm ofSoi l

YiI k-sang

Tr ans l at edbyChar l esLaShur e

Baptism of Soil

By Yi Ik-sang Translated by Charles La Shure

Literature Translation Institute of Korea

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Originally published in Korean as Heulgui serye in Gaebyeok, 1925 Translation ⓒ 2014 by Charles La Shure

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and Literature Translation Institute of Korea.

The original manuscripts to these translations were provided by Gongumadang of Korea Copyright Commission.

The National Library of Korea Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yi, Ik-sang Baptism of soil [electronic resource] / [written by] YiIk-sang ; translated by Charles La Shure. -- [Seoul] : Literature Translation Institute of Korea, 2014 p. 원표제: 흙의 세례 Translated from Korean ISBN 978-89-93360-50-9 95810 : Not for sale 813.61-KDC5 895.733-DDC21

CIP2014028977

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About Yi Ik-sang A novelist as well as a journalist, Yi Ik-sang (1895 – 1935) worked as a reporter for newspapers such as The Chosun Ilbo, The Dong-A Ilbo, and Korea Daily News. He was born in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, in 1895, completed his schooling at Boseong High School, and then graduated from the journalism department of Nihon University in Japan. As a university student he was exposed to socialist thought, which was popular at the time, and he threw himself into the progressive literature movement. He made his debut as a novelist with a publication in The Light of Learning in 1921, and in 1923 he became a member of PASKYULA, the first proletarian literary organization in Korea; when PASKYULA merged with the Society of the Blazing Throng (Yeomgunsa) to form the Korea Artista Proleta Federacio, or KAPF, Yi Ik-sang was one of its initial members.

His most prominent works include short stories such as “Frenzy” (Gwangnan), “Baptism of Soil” (Heulgui serye), and “The Banished” (Jjotgieo ganeun ideul). In 1926 he published an anthology of short stories entitled Baptism of Soil through the Literary Movement Society. In both his life and his writing he exhibited socialist tendencies, but not only did he not engage in any specific activities as a socialist, he also did not take the extreme resistance of the individual as subject matter for his works, unlike the fiction of writers like Choi Seohae or Bak Yeonghui, which prominently featured motifs such as murder or arson. In that respect, it could be said that, although Yi Ik-sang belonged to the generation of the Anti-Conventional School, he maintained a certain distance from his writing. He is regarded as an intellectual writer who aspired to an ideal form of socialism.

About “Baptism of Soil” Myeongho and his wife Hyejeong are intellectuals who have chosen to leave behind their lives in the big city and live close to the earth in the countryside. Yet things do not work out as neatly as they had hoped; Myeongho lacks the motivation to begin farming, and Hyejeong becomes more frustrated with her husband as the days go by. When they finally walk barefoot on the rich, dark soil and put their hands to their tools, they feel a joy they have never felt before. Yet the two continue to struggle with the choices they have made for their lives. Yi Ik-sang’s portrait of this young couple breathes life into a depiction of a common contradiction of early Korean history: the disconnect between the intellectuals and the lives of the peasants they held up as a pure ideal.

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Baptism of Soil 1.

Myeongho’s wife Hyejeong was washing the dishes after their breakfast on the front porch when she stopped, turned toward her husband's room, and called to him.

“Could you come out here for a minute?”

A cigarette clamped between his lips and a newspaper spread out in front of him, Myeongho had been staring at the newsprint as he squatted there, but then a hint of displeasure appeared on his face; the sound of his wife calling him must have taken all the joy out of reading his newspaper. So he bent forward, noisily opened the sliding door, and gruffly called, “What is it?”

Hearing his displeased “What is it?” Hyejeong suddenly lost most of her interest in what she had been thinking of saying next. So she simply left it at “Could you come out here?” and stared at her husband’s face for quite some time. Then she figured that her husband must have been wrapped up in some thought or another.

Whenever he was wrapped up in his thoughts, he wouldn’t answer no matter how she called him, and when he did answer he barked gruffly. The fact that these gruff replies had grown more frequent since they moved to this village meant that Myeongho had had more opportunities to be wrapped up in his thoughts.

Furthermore, the fact that he had been given more opportunities to think meant that Hyejeong found herself more often displeased. Their lives before this couldn’t really have been called all that stressful, but their move down to this rustic village had been motivated by the desire to spend their days in a more leisurely fashion. Yet, to Myeongho, “leisurely” had become an adjective that was virtually indistinguishable from “lackluster.”

“Whatever are we going to do about this? You’ll have to plow the fields today, won’t you? Shall we hire Chilbong’s father across the street as a day laborer?” The concern on Hyejeong’s face was clear when she spoke.

Chilbong’s father was the only neighbor whom Myeongho and his wife had grown close to since the day they moved to the village, and the only one with whom they kept company. Whenever a household task came up that they had a little difficulty taking care of, they often asked Chilbong’s father for help. He was a true neighbor, so much so that even if he had things to take care of at home, he would set these aside for the young Myeongho and his wife and take care of their chores. Thus it was only natural that Hyejeong would think of hiring Chilbong’s father as a day laborer today, when they had urgent work to attend to outside.

“Well . . . we’ll have to get it done somehow . . .” Myeongho barely managed this reply and then blew cigarette smoke out the open doorway.

Hyejeong had grown a little sick of these lackluster replies. So the tone of her voice was naturally a little high when she responded: “You think you can just say ‘well, well’? You’ve got to make a start of this somehow. So, shall I go call 4

Chilbong’s father?”

Of course, Myeongho had been thinking since he woke up that morning that he would have to plow the fields, but it had become an almost pathological habit with him to always just think about things but never actually undertake them—and yet there must have been some special reason why he was unable to manage a single word in unhesitating reply even after being urged by his wife yet again. This did not, however, manifest itself as any sort of resentment toward his wife. Nor was there any other particular reason for it. It came down to whether there was really any need for them to live like this.

After quite some time, Myeongho finally came out onto the front porch and barely managed to sputter, “Well, call him, then!” before stretching his arms out wide.

He gave a loud yawn.

Hyejeong gave her husband a lingering sidelong glance as he stretched and yawned, and then she heaved a great sigh. This sigh laid bare exactly what she was feeling at that moment. Then, without a word, she stepped down onto the stone terrace and walked around to the kitchen.

“Why are you sighing?” Myeongho asked, not a little displeased, staring at his wife as she went into the kitchen.

“Think about it. How can I not sigh? How can you be so lackluster in everything?” Hyejeong asked as she filled the wash basin with water in the kitchen.

“How am I being lackluster? Don’t talk about things you know nothing of,” Myeongho said, and he stepped down from the porch into the yard.

Hyejeong came back from the kitchen to the front porch, the basin of dishwater in her hands. “Just think about it. Do you know what season it is? It’s already nearly April. Look at how everyone else is already farming. Who else has left their fields still fallow? If you really intend to adopt this lifestyle, shouldn’t you at least put your heart into the farm work?”

Myeongho just stood there and listened to her. There was no reply he could make. Hyejeong waited for her husband to answer and at last opened her mouth again, disappointed.

“How can you be so negligent in everything? Do you know how long it’s been since you started talking about how you have to plow the fields? It’s been a week already. I don’t know exactly what sort of work farming is, but I do know that everything must be done in its proper time. The sprouts have already come up in everyone else’s fields, haven’t they? And yet our fields have not even tasted the mattock yet. What will become of us? Whether our fields prosper or not, aren’t you ashamed to show your face in public?”

Hyejeong babbled on breathlessly like this for some time, only stopping when she ran out of breath. And yet Myeongho still had nothing to say. If he had had anything to say, it surely would have been in the vicious attitude or words of a tyrant when he is admonished by a faithful vassal.

Hyejeong began to speak once more. This time she pleaded. “Look here. What need is there for us to suffer so in a farming village like this? What if we were to quit this life—this lukewarm life—and go back to the city where we belong? They say that 5

for those whose hands and feet are white and tender, the decision to lead this sort of life is doomed from the start. I just don’t think life in a farming village is proper for a person of your character . . .”

These words plunged Myeongho into an unbearable disappointment and grief.

“Dear! Put away such foolish words! What use is it to say such things now? If you want to quit, then you should quit and go back to your life as it was before!”

Hyejeong could say nothing in reply to these last words. Myeongho and his wife had argued in the past, and at times they would both grow agitated. But they both knew what it would do to their relationship if they each insisted on their own opinions, so when one would grow excited the other would calm down. This was the most important reason why their marriage had not ended in failure but survived to this day.

In a word, it was the rivet that held the couple fast together.

So it was that Hyejeong wasted no more words but went straight outside to call Chilbong’s father.

Myeongho coughed loudly when Hyejeong, who had said nothing in reply but quietly gone outside, disappeared beyond the twig gate. While others might sigh or shed tears, Myeongho coughed like this whenever he felt irritated or grew excited.

But this cough was not directed toward his wife, who had gone out of the twig gate; it was, in a word, a recognition of his own weakness of character.

Myeongho was ashamed that he had always lacked the force of will to control his own actions, and that in the end he could not even properly live a life that had no taste of stress to it at all. Yet his weakness of will was not the only cause of this; the events of each and every moment, as well as the various new ideologies that he could not be blind or deaf to as long as he had eyes to see and ears to hear, these were the things that drove this union—no, not union but mingling—of flesh and spirit that he called “himself” into a pit of despair, this pit of despair in turn led to ennui, and this ennui finally consumed the little vitality that remained to him.

Thus he could not but loathe his frail will, which left him—unlike the socalled victors in life—unable to overcome anything that lay in his path. He only felt this loathing when he was irritated by one thing or another; at other times he appeared to be quite calm, as if he had never given the feeling a thought. This lackluster nature of his was not something that he himself wanted, but at the same time he was not completely powerless to do anything about it, either. Whenever he looked at himself with a cool, critical eye, he could not deny that his was a dual character, one that always manifested itself in two different forms. In the end, as he realized his own impurity, everything else began to look impure.

As a result, he wanted to look on life from a perspective that denied everything.

To one who denied everything, there was no king. There was no authority. There were no ideals. If there was an ideal, it was the power of life, about which he could do nothing on his own. Even were a sharp dagger to be pressed to his chest, his whole being would not fear this—only his instinct to live would tremble at the threat. He could be so composed, and yet at times he also expressed joy and anger so readily that anyone standing next to him might laugh. And when he heard that a close friend or family member had died, he would not bat an eyelash but simply say, “To be human is 6

to die, so there is nothing to be done about it. We will all die some day . . . as long as we are human. . .” so heartlessly that others would wonder if warm blood truly coursed through his veins. On the other hand, he was also given to gentle emotions, even shedding tears while reading a novel.

This Myeongho could not feel nothing at all as he watched his wife head out the twig gate. It was surely time to express something—anything—of the various mixed emotions he felt.

He felt more keenly than ever that he could not just leave his wife in that sort of torment forever. He went into his room. He changed into some old clothes and came back outside.

While he was changing his clothes in his room, his wife had already come back from Chilbong’s father’s house. She saw her husband coming out of his room, having changed into old clothes, and thought it was rather odd.

“Chilbong’s father has already gone out somewhere else to work. So I guess we’re out of luck today as well!”

“Dear! Don’t worry, even if we don’t have Chilbong’s father. Today I will make a start of things,” Myeongho said, and then he took a pair of old straw shoes out from under the ledge, pulled them onto his feet, and went out into the yard.

Hyejeong found her husband’s attire so bizarre that she covered her mouth with her hand to hide her smile. She found her husband’s actions more and more amusing. No longer was he the husband who only a week ago had begun talking about how he would have to plow the fields, but then just said “well, well” when she spoke to him about it until she thought her tongue might wear away. Then again, when he was irritated, he was not without the ability to boldly take unexpected action, but this was the sort of thing she saw maybe once a year or once every other year, so she could not but think his behavior now quite strange.

Whatever the case, Hyejeong was glad. She even regretted getting angry at her husband and speaking so rashly to him. Yet a small part of her harbored doubt, wondering if he would not just say, “I can’t plow this field. It is so bothersome . . .” and then toss his mattock to the ground and dash back into his room with mudencrusted feet.

“Are you serious. . .?”

“I am serious!”

“Then shall I come along and assist you?” Hyejeong went into her room, tied her clothes fast around her waist with a string, and put her hair up in a towel. Then she came back outside.

Myeongho shouldered the mattock, while Hyejeong picked up a short-handled hoe. Then the couple went out to the fields behind their house.

2.

The sky that spring morning looked gray and pale through the haze that hung in the air like a fine mesh. The sunbeams that shone through this mesh were warm.

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The wind that blew at times caressed the couple’s cheeks, shining in the spring sun, with its warm hand. When they stepped on the clumps of earth, still damp from the rains a few days before, they felt a strange sensation. The sunny spots beneath the wall were verdant, and the harmony of the newly sprouting grass and the branches of the poplars outside the fence, so lustrous and crimson that they seemed to have been brushed with purple paint, against the spring heavens gently thrilled the eye.

They took off their shoes, placed them on the ridge that bordered the field, and stood on the field in their bare feet. Their pale feet looked so incongruous against the dark soil. Every time their soft white flesh touched the hard, uncomfortable soil of the field, mixed with sand and pebbles, their feet reflexively shrank back. The soles of their feet broke through the dry crust of earth and into the soil. They stepped lightly on the ground, using only their heels and toes. At least, when they at last set foot on this ground, they sought to tread on only their heels or only their toes, as if in reverence, but the strength of the earth demanded the whole area of the soles of their feet, as if it sought to grab them and draw their whole beings deeper and deeper into the soil.

Hyejeong looked at Myeongho. “Ouch, it stings! It tickles!”

Myeongho, too, looked at Hyejeong with an odd grimace on his face. “Shush!

Let’s start at once . . .”

He lifted his mattock and began to dig in a corner of the field. But even though he put all the strength of his arms behind the swing, the blade of the mattock did not sink that deep into the soil. Hyejeong used her hoe to break up and smooth out the clumps of earth her husband dug up.

The white tops of their feet were soon covered with black soil. And the nerves in their feet capable of feeling the burning and the stinging were already growing numb. The tips of Hyejeong’s delicate fingers were covered with dirt.

They were intoxicated by the warm rays of the spring sun and the scent of the soil. In each of their hearts that morning was a joy they had not expected. In fact, it wasn’t so much that they had become intoxicated by the spring breeze or the scent of the soil, but that they had become intoxicated by the joy of this moment. Hyejeong thought of her husband as a hero who would always courageously set his hand to his work like this. She hoped that he would forever be a worker who would exhibit such valor in all things. And she wanted to be someone who would always follow her husband and attend to him. This was where she wanted to find her joy.

For his part, Myeongho felt that he was at last today being baptized into the life that he had always yearned to live. He even felt pious. And when he looked down at Hyejeong at his feet, who alone broke up with her hoe the clumps of earth he had dug up with his mattock, he felt that he had finally gained the partner that had been denied him, one who understood him, and whom he in turn understood. He desired in his heart that she be a steadfast, trustworthy companion with whom he could suffer together.

With these happy thoughts keeping their minds as active as their hands and feet, they continued to work.

The strength left Myeongho’s arms. He buried his mattock in the earth, looked 8

back at his wife as she broke up and sorted through the clumps with her hoe, and let out a long, hot breath. “Dear! This is really hard! I just don’t think that people with fair hands and feet can do work like this!” He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his right sleeve.

Hyejeong lifted her soiled hands before her husband’s eyes. “Look at this. I think my fingertips are worn down. They ache so much!”

When she said this, her face, flushed from work, looked all the more beautiful beneath the white towel on her head. Sweat hung in fine beads on her forehead and lips.

Myeongho looked into his wife’s eyes as they shone beneath the towel, and then he began to till the soil again. “Dear!” he said. “It would seem that it is the fate of people like us not to be able to do this work! It is so hard I can’t bear it! My arms ache and my breath is so short that I can’t do it anymore! What shall we do?”

“Well, then, let’s rest a little.”

“Yes, we need a rest . . .”

“But who is there who would do this sort of work from their youth? People end up doing this when they have no other choice, no?”

“No one would do this just because they enjoy it, but because they have to make a living.” Myeongho dug up a large stone with his mattock and set it on the ridge at the edge of the field. “Do you think anyone could make a living doing this?”

“You’re plowing a field right now, aren’t you? Do you think we’ll be able to put food on the table by this alone? Others do this sort of work in an effort to gain life, but to us this seems to be no more than an amusement or distraction. Wouldn’t you agree?” Hyejeong said this as she gasped for breath.

These words pierced Myeongho like a dagger to the heart. “Well then. What if we call this work that we are doing now practice labor for the livelihood we will have to earn in days to come? Then we will not be violating the sanctity of the enterprise of those others who strive at this for their whole lives. And we will be gaining a certain facility for living as well.”

Hyejeong smiled broadly as Myeongho finished speaking. “Then we will not blaspheme the sacred enterprise of others by thinking it some amusement. This is, of course, not simply a justification for our attitude, is it?”

Myeongho smiled as well.

From the day Myeongho had moved to this rural village, he had struggled in his heart with a host of conflicts and contradictions. In short, if the wages for his work could not comfortably support his lifestyle, and he got by on a little of his inheritance from his parents instead, then was he not blaspheming the sacred enterprise of those who worked to survive? At first he had felt that it was reckless for him to move to a rural village. It was not so much that he feared he would be cut off from the world in a rural village, but that he believed there had to be something else more suited to him.

When he looked at his hands, where the bluish veins could be seen beneath his pale skin, or when he regarded his wife’s lovely face and frail bearing, these thoughts became even more desperate.

And for him—the same person who had, according to his ideology, said that 9

Tolstoy’s turn as a farmer while he lived as a penitent, or some Japanese general’s hoisting a manure pail on his back in imitation of a farmer, were simply treating the occupation of others as mere amusement and thus concluded that they were hypocrisy—to have engaged in this blasphemy himself was a kind of revenge that life had taken on him.

And yet, he often could not escape the dispassionate realization that his views on the entirety of life had changed, and that he had moved to this rural village solely because of his trivial complaints about this society of his and the disappointment he felt that he among so many should be unable to achieve his goals; at times like this, his conscience tormented him over his own passive lifestyle. Meanwhile, as one who had given himself over completely to a life of ideology, he deeply regretted that he had not become a terrorist who went around with a bomb in his pocket. His innate effete nature had not allowed that. Whenever he was terribly provoked by this everchaotic society, he began to believe that becoming a terrorist or, if not that, living the extreme life of a recluse would revive the vitality with which he had been born.

After mulling over these two possibilities for quite some time, he found himself returning to this warm region of “T” in the south of the country. Even his wife had approved of the idea. When he’d come to the crossroads—rebel or recluse—he had chosen the path of the recluse, yet this idea of blaspheming the occupation of others had made him hesitate to pick up his mattock all this time.

Then, by some odd chance, Hyejeong’s impulsively calling him “lackluster” this morning had stimulated his nerves, frayed from long thought, and drawn him out into this field.

And so for the next several hours they continued to work, dreaming of the many possible futures in their lives.

Shortly after midday, they had nearly finished plowing the field. They were joyous once again. They had plowed the earth with their paltry strength, and thus realized that an energy lay dormant within them. They were so happy they nearly forgot how tired their bodies were.

“We’re all done? Now we need to seed it,” Hyejeong said as she brought out the seeds.

Myeongho leaned on the handle of his mattock and gazed out over the overturned soil of the field. The smell of the soil that played beneath his nose was so fragrant he wanted to scoop up the soil with both hands and sprinkle it all over his body.

Hyejeong walked with haste as she brought out the box with the seed packets in it. She set the box down on the ridge at the edge of the field, opened the seed packets one by one, and told her husband the names of each: “These are green onion seeds! These are mallow seeds! These are lettuce seeds!” Then she walked along the furrows and scattered the seeds.

Myeongho lit his pipe and stood there as he watched her.

“You sow seed quite well! When did you learn how to do that? I didn’t think we would ever be able to sow seed so evenly . . .”

“You know, I really enjoyed this sort of thing when I was young. Even when I 10

was a student, I sowed all the seed for our large field,” Hyejeong said as she went here and there with bent back, scattering seeds in neat rows. She then sprinkled a thin covering of dirt over the seeds. In this way she sowed nearly the entirety of the plowed field, leaving only a small patch of earth about four yards square in one corner of the field. Then she brushed her hands clean and let out a long breath.

Myeongho watched her do this and thought it strange, so he asked, “Why did you leave that spot? If you’re going to sow, you might as well sow the whole field.”

Hyejeong smiled. “I’m going to plant flowers there!”

“What’s the use of planting flowers?” To himself, Myeongho wondered if women were always like this.

“Flowers are not without their uses. It’s fine to have food for the mouth, but isn’t it nice to have a treat for the eyes as well?” Hyejeong looked at her husband.

The sun had dropped low in the sky. But they could still feel its warmth. The smell of the soil intoxicated them.

3.

Night fell. Myeongho and his wife were exhausted from the first day of farming they had ever done. Their arms and legs were stiff. They hurt so much they could not even bend them. But they did not go to sleep immediately, staying up instead to talk in Myeongho's room, which they thought of as their parlor. Myeongho and Hyejeong sat across from each other with the low writing desk between them.

Hyejeong read a paper that had arrived that day from Seoul, while Myeongho had opened his journal and was writing about the day’s events. They may have called the room a “parlor,” but it was a parlor in name only; in reality it was no bigger than a servant’s room might be in a house in the city. The ceiling was low, so anyone even moderately tall would have to bend their back or legs to walk around inside. But it had not been long since they had papered the walls, so the room had less of the dingy atmosphere of other country rooms. The room was narrow, which, added to the fact that the walls had recently been papered, made the lamplight shine all the brighter.

The only furniture to speak of in the room was a bookcase filled with neat rows of books and the desk, covered in a white tablecloth.

Yet it was exceedingly rare for them to have their neighbors in the village as guests in this comparatively tidy room, so they spent their days in this room reading or engaged in idle chatter. So it was that, when evening came, Myeongho could often be found here deep into the night, laughing with his wife. In truth, it was difficult to tell if this room was a parlor or a bedroom. The reason Hyejeong often spent her time here, rather than in the bedroom, was that the lamplight was much brighter here. Thus when she had something to do and they had no guests, she would come out to the parlor.

Hyejeong looked at her hands in the lamplight as she held the newspaper.

“Look!” she said, holding her hands out to Myeongho. “My hands are blistered!”

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“You poor thing! Just leave them. You don’t want to touch them.”

Myeongho then looked down at the palms of his own hands. It was only then that he discovered that his hands were blistered as well. He held his hands out to his wife as she had held her hands out to him. “I’ve got two blisters myself!”

“Our hands will blister now whenever we do any work!” Hyejeong said, worry creeping into her voice.

“Of course they will!” Myeongho laughed. “If they keep blistering, they’ll end up looking like Chilbong’s mother’s hands . . .”

Hyejeong thought of Chilbong’s mother’s hands. There were no words to describe those hands. Those fingers, like splints of firewood! The backs of her hands, wrinkled like summer squash! Those knuckles that poked out like fists! She shivered.

Then she looked down at her own hands, marked by their fine and delicate lines. This smooth, soft flesh! The gentle bulges of these knuckles! These lovely nails, so clear that they seemed to reflect her face like crystal! Ah! When she thought that all this might change she shuddered violently. She looked back at her husband. His wavy hair, his keen eyes, his pale and yet elegant face seemed all the more charming to her.

“Then you, too, will end up no different from Chilbong’s father. After some ten or twenty years, that is?”

“Indeed I will! People are people, so given the same environment, why would I alone not change? It is only natural to change so!”

Hyejeong’s head begin to spin again. Then she grew so dizzy that she almost fainted.

Chilbong’s father’s boorish face! His fawning smile! His eyes, wan and dull like rotten fish eyes! The veins that bulged out like fingers on his hands and legs! All these things appeared before her eyes. She let out a quick, low sigh.

Myeongho finished writing his journal entry for the day and said to Hyejeong, “Dear! Let me read you my journal.” He began reading in a clear, thin voice. “I failed to become a terrorist. It is to my great regret that I do not have the character for such adventure. I could only walk for so long with that horde of ogres who agonized only over superficial problems for the sake of honor and material gain, which are so far from a genuine human life. I am pleased that, rather than choosing such a base livelihood and thus becoming a social success, I instead became a social failure so that I might not deceive myself but instead answer my true inner calling.

“With this first test I have sullied the sanctity of the occupation of others. Yet because I believed that here lay the path forward in pioneering a new life for myself, I paid no heed to the lateness of the hour but practiced living for the first time. I have learned the first step! Yet I cannot believe that this can forever put to rest our tortured spirits. This is because I believe in nothing in this world. When the time comes— when the time comes that we are persecuted once again—let us set fire to this place, uproot my fields, abandon my rice paddies, and set out once again on the path of the wanderer! And if there is none to go with me when that time comes, let me go alone!

To an endless place. And if along the way I should fall over and die in the meadow, so be it, or if I should drown in the ocean, so be it! I do not fear that day. Rather, let us greet that day with gladness! For on that day shall all my problems be solved . . . And 12

yet . . . yet the scent of the soil today was more fragrant than musk. I wish that I could always smell that scent . . . It is only now that I have received the baptism of the soil. I have received the baptism of the soil.”

He read this far before closing the book and putting it on the shelf. “What comes next is not worth reading.”

Hyejeong had been listening intently, so as not to miss a single word of the journal entry. Tears glistened in her eyes.

Myeongho looked at his wife again and, with a smile wrapped in loneliness, said, “My dear, I understand! If this life does not suit you, you may always do as you wish. No matter what you do, I will not resent your decision in the slightest . . .”

Hyejeong said nothing as she stared at her husband, until finally she spoke with resentment in her voice. “Why do you say such things now? Of course this is so.

If I should someday grow weary of this life, or if I should need to part ways with you, even if I should not heed your words, will I not do as I wish? That is what we promised each other when we first met, after all. And you, if someday you should no longer be able to deal with me, or if you should be unable to do what you must because of me, then please say so. Then I will leave you for your own sake, though I swallow my tears as I go . . .”

Myeongho stared up at the ceiling for some time.

Hyejeong turned her tear-filled eyes back to the newspaper. The silence between them continued for a short while longer.

Hyejeong hunched over the paper silently for a while before calling to her husband. “Look at this. Jeongsuk has already married and become a lady of a fine family!”

She held the paper out to her husband. Myeongho looked at where she was pointing.

In the Lifestyle section of “S” newspaper was a photo of Jeongsuk and her husband standing in a study decorated in the Western style. The article below reported in somewhat exaggerated terms how both of them were engaged in socially significant enterprises. The article also took pains to mention that Jeongsuk was a woman writer.

“Jeongsuk is already a prominent woman writer,” Hyejeong said. “Those who succeed in society are fundamentally different!”

“Why do you say that?”

“Jeongsuk is younger than I am, but all through our school years I had no idea what sort of person she really was. After we graduated, of course, we didn’t really keep in touch.”

Myeongho understood what ambition had driven his wife to say this. He realized that within her heart as well, more than anything else, the instinct to win just a little more fame for herself was still quite strong. When he thought this, the loneliness that seized his heart tormented him twofold. Myeongho closed his eyes.

Hyejeong sat there quietly reading the newspaper, and then: “We will probably grow old and die here with no one to know who we are—except for the villagers here—and no one else will even care to know, will they? They’ll just say that an old man and an old woman died, won’t they? If we should have offspring, they may miss 13

us for a while, but then they will forget about us, no?�

Myeongho said nothing.

They were exhausted in both mind and body. The curtain of darkness shrouded the two souls as they fought against the solitude.

14