The man i met in the lock up by LTI Korea Library

TheManIMet i nt heLockUp

Ki m Sa-r yang

Tr ans l at edbyJ ami eChang

The Man I Met in the Lock Up By Kim Sa-ryang Translated by Jamie Chang

Literature Translation Institute of Korea

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 Kim, Sa-ryang (The) man I met in the lock up [electronic resource] / by Kim Sa-ryang ; translated by Jamie Chang. -- [Seoul] : Literature Translation Institute of Korea, 2014 p. 원표제: 유치장에서 만난 사나이 Translated from Korean ISBN 978-89-93360-37-0 95810 : Not for sale 813.61-KDC5 895.733-DDC21

CIP2014028970

About Kim Sa-ryang

Kim Sa-ryang(1914 – 1950)’s real name is Shi-chang and he was born in 1914 in Pyeongyang, South Pyeongan Province. In 1931, after being expelled for leading a class boycott during his fifth year at Pyongyang Normal High School, he went to Japan and attended Saka High School, and then graduated from Tokyo National University in German literature. When he returned to Korea in 1943, he was sent to China as a reporter in the Japanese Army but he escaped to the coast, working as a reporter in the Korean Volunteer Army under the Chinese National Revolutionary Army and returned to Korea at the time of its independence. After Korea’s independence he was active in North Korea, and as the Korean War broke out, he participated as a war writer in the North Korean People’s Army. He died in 1950 in the Wonju region while retreating north with the North Korean People’s Army from the US Army’s Operation Chromite. Kim Sa-ryang’s literary activities started after his enrollment at Tokyo National University when he was studying German literature. In 1936, he published his first piece, “Toseongnang” which was written in Japanese in the literary coterie magazine The River Bank (Jaebang). Upon his return to Korea after graduation, the publication of his short story “Into the Light” (Bitsokae) (1939) brought him wide recognition for his creative talent. His main works during the Japanese Colonial Period include writings, such as the short story “Pegasus” (Cheonma) and the full-length novel “Taebaek Mountain Range” (Taebaek Sanmaek). He wrote “Old Horse Ten Thousand Li” (Noma Manri) (1945) in China. Despite the fact that most of his works are published in Japanese, they are highly regarded for their elaborate projection of the nation’s reality of the time and the portrayal of the Korean people’s deep-rooted pain that existed due to imperial colonization.

About “The Man I Met in the Lock Up” In “The man I Met in the Lock Up,” a reporter meets a jovial man named Count Wang in a lock up at a police station in Tokyo. Rumored to be the son of a count, Count Wang one day reveals to the reporter that he is an anarchist. Years later, the reporter happens upon Count Wang in a northbound train filled with people leaving Joseon for Manchuria and refugees fleeing the snowstorm. The drunk Count Wang acts very bizarrely and then lies unconscious on the floor of the train car. When the train pulls into Jeonju station where the reporter must transfer to a different train, the reporter is torn between getting off the train and saving Count Wang from the stampede of passengers piling into the already packed train.

The Man I Met in the Lock Up

We were sitting around a messy table strewn with beer and Tokkuri sake bottles in the restaurant car of the express train from Busan headed to Singyeong. We had run into each other in Busan while on our way to our hometowns for the end of the year holidays. We were college friends who’d all settled down in Tokyo. One was working in advertising, one for a livestock company, one at the Tokyo office of the Joseon Shinbun newspaper, and then there was me. This was the first time we’d spent hours together since graduation, so we talked about this and that while we drank until we were completely drunk. We had grown tired of drinking, smoking, and talking when the reporter said there was one story that he was always reminded of whenever he took a train, and commanded our attention once again. This was his story: There are so many people in the world we cannot make sense of, but this one was especially strange. To this day, I don’t know what his real name is, so like many people, I’ll just refer to him as Count Wang. I’m not very proud of the circumstances under which I first met Count Wang because it was in the lock up of the A district police station in Tokyo. This was only three years ago when I was arrested because of the XX Incident. “Count Wang” was what the detainees, detectives, and guards all called him. The interesting thing about Count Wang was that no one knew what he was in for, but he sure was popular in there. That was because he was the most chummy of anyone and his loud voice entertained and annoyed everybody. Even the guys who kept to themselves were amused and passed the long hours making fun of him or scolding him. It was Count Wang who burst the depressing bubble of silence in the lock up and woke everyone from his anxiety and drowsiness. “Tana! Tana-san!” He would call. It was on my second day in the holding cell that I’d first heard his peculiar accent. It was coming from the cell right across from mine, and the man’s accent seemed to suggest he was from Joseon. “Pokudesuyo. Poku toilet. I want to go to the toilet.” “Count Wang, is that you?” “Hai! Hai!” came the voice so unbelievably grateful that the detainees couldn’t help but burst into laughter. The guard marched down the hall, his sword rattling in his scabbard, opened the iron gate, and went over to the count even though it wasn’t time for a toilet break, although I’m sure he wasn’t giving him special treatment just because he was a count. The other detainees would wake up from their naps and start complaining. They didn’t necessarily have a problem with Count Wang going to the toilet, but complaining passed the time. Some of them even got up to take a peek out at him, grateful for any break from the dreary atmosphere. 4

The bald man with three previous convictions squatting next to me shrugged and said, “There he goes again.” “What’s he in for?” I asked in a whisper. “I don’t know. But he’s apparently the son of a count,” he muttered bitterly. “That fellow likes to tease and call me a political prisoner.” “I hear his father is a magistrate somewhere in Joseon,” said the man squatting across from us, a scrawny rubber thief. I thought, Of course. He must be the son of the XX district magistrate. And he was up to something in the cell with the rubber thief. The guards must have found them whispering to one another and had the thief moved. That’s how he knows so much about Count Wang. “I hear he’s a millionaire, too. So you didn’t know, new kid from Joseon? What do you know? Anyway, he’s a very nice fellow.” “How long’s he been in?” I asked. “It’s been over half a year.” “For what?” “I don’t know, but he says it was something big.” The rubber thief said that Count Wang got to go to the special interrogation room every day where he could order whatever food he felt like and read all the newspapers and magazines he wanted. He did get called away every day before lunchtime, and each time, the rubber thief would smack his lips and say, “I bet he’s getting Chinese again today. Ahh… I wish I could smoke a cigarette. Just one…” One day, I finally got to see Count Wang in the special interrogation room. But he wasn’t doing anything like what the rubber thief had described. Down the hall from the holding cells, there were stairs to the right that led to the second floor. At the end of those stairs was a door with the sign that read “Special Interrogation Room.” When I went through the doors, I was blinded by the sudden rush of light and my eyes started to water. I sat down in a chair in the corner to catch my breath and wait for the dizziness to subside. When I was finally able to open my eyes, there was a ghostly man standing in front of me. He grinned. I thought, this must be Count Wang. It was my first time seeing him, and he was in a frightful state. He seemed about in his late twenties, his suit was as worn as that of a Tartan hostage, and his hair was as long and bushy as Jean Valjean’s. Only his white, broad forehead, large eyes, and round face showed signs that he was indeed a human being. But there was a subtle joy in his expression and manner that belonged to a nobler class rather than the merchant class. He had his sleeves rolled up and was holding a filthy rag in his hand. He was wiping the floor without slippers on, so his feet were very dirty with black dirt stuck between his toes. It was clear he was taken away every day like the other political prisoners to write his confession. And perhaps he was assigned extra chores that day.

He kneeled down on the bamboo mat and pretended to wipe as he whispered in Korean, making sure no one would hear, “Don’t make mistakes. If they approve and you ask nicely, you can get yourself a mochi.” He looked up at me and smiled a cowardly, sympathetic smile, gulping at the thought of mochi. He then dipped his rag in a bucket nearby, wrung it out, and slowly crawled under the table. I looked at his sickly, swollen, black legs and thought it was a severe case of beriberi. His beriberi must have gotten worse, for not long after that day, I started to hear groans coming from his cell and he wasn’t called away for some time. One night, I was able to have a brief but private conversation at the toilet. This was when everyone in my cell was at the toilet. Count Wang was standing at the stall alone, away from his cellmates. It looked like he was in pain. I stood next to him. “How’re your legs?” “They’re okay… Thanks for asking,” he replied. But his voice was so frail and he was so out of breath from the pain that I couldn’t take my eyes off his face for a while. He smiled proudly and said, “Well, I’m a regular here.” His face was as white as a sheet, as if he’d been stabbed. “When are you getting released?” “I’m probably getting deported,” his voice trembled sadly, but there was somehow a certain dignity in it. “Is it dangerous work?” “Me? Hahaha… who’s to say?” Then he suddenly opened his big, vacant eyes wide and asked, his voice catching, “What is an anarchist?” “An anarchist? Well that’s a…” I trailed off, not knowing what to say. This was three years ago – one could say three years was a long time ago – so I suppose there were anarchists back then. Count Wang suddenly stumbled as though he’d lost his balance and began to cackle as he shouted, “Hehehehe! That is what I am! That is exactly what I am!” His voice came so unexpectedly loud that I jumped, slipped toward the barrel, and my knees buckled. I was afraid the guards had heard him. Anyway, he was thus truly oblivious, mad, and prone to exaggeration. Even after his illness had gotten serious, he’d take advantage of the guards’ absence to lean against the bars of his cell and propagate to any man in any cell that would listen. “I think at the end of the day, I am an anarchist. I get arrested any time anything happens, you see? But do you know what an anarchist is? Of course you don’t.” No one took him seriously. It went in one ear and out the other. But one day I was able to hear everything about him when I was called back into the special interrogation room. I went into the room to find Count Wang’s father sitting there. He was a fat, amiable gentleman with gold-rimmed glasses and a white beard. He was definitely the magistrate of the XX district. The inspector was explaining to him what was going on with his son. The young count had indeed been in and out of police 6

stations several times. I supposed he’d been right when he’d said that he was a regular. And his crimes were always very strange. No matter who it was, when the count caught wind of someone who’d gotten arrested, he would send them a suspicious letter. Each time the police investigated the source of the letter, it invariably led to the young count. This time, when a college student who was in the same boardinghouse as the count was arrested for some charge or other, the count went into his room, took his incriminating books and evidence, and moved them into his own room. When the detectives went to search the college student’s room and saw that things had been moved, they’d asked around and found the books and evidence in piles in all corners of the count’s room, with Count Wang himself lying spread eagle in the middle of it all. When they asked him to accompany them to the station, he’d gotten to his feet immediately and followed them. “Frankly, we don’t know what to do with your son, Count.” The inspector scratched his head. “He’s going a little too overboard to dismiss it as a youthful fad, and besides, it’s no longer a fad to subscribe to these radical ideas.” “What is this ideology?” The old count asks grimly. “I guess you could call it anarchy.” Two or three days later, I was sent over to the prosecution with my files. But for as long as I live, I will never forget the way the poor anarchist looked at me. That morning, I was taken out of my cell, gathering my things to go. I was putting on my shoes for the first time in almost two months when I caught Count Wang and some other detainees leaning against the bars staring vacantly at my face. “Ask Tana-san for a cigarette when you get out,” he said. “Thank you.” For reasons I can’t explain, I suddenly felt uneasy and turned to look at him. There were three or four deep furrows on his once smart forehead, his vacant eyes seemed vexed, and the corners of his mouth, buried in an overgrown moustache, twitched. “Take the car if you can.” I draped my coat over my body bound with rope underneath, pulled my hat down as far as it would go, and nodded at him. I was about to step out of the lock up when Count Wang’s hoarse but loud voice reverberated in my ear, “Umaku yare yo! (Good luck!)” Even as I tell this story, I can hear his voice as clearly as if he were saying it right now. And I can’t recall that voice without this feeling – like my heart is breaking. “Pour me some more beer, will you?” The reporter took a break and emptied another glass. The train sped through the darkness on and on, northward, without rest. He continued. About two years ago, I became a free man again. Or perhaps you could say that I’d been given a new start. I was on this very train home when I ran into Count Wang 7

again. But it turned out to be a horrible affair. Absolutely irreversible. It feels strange to recall it. Tormenting. Remorseful, too. I feel as though I’d committed another great crime on my way to starting a new life. That night, the moon was not as bright as it is tonight. It was raining at the Busan Port when I’d gotten off the train. And when the train reached the Chupungryeong Valley around dusk, a typhoon from the continent was in a fearsome clash against the Taebaeksanmaek Ridge. Heavy snow fell against the dark blue sky, and pines and bushes were shivering along the rocky cliffs. The train passed the valley and forged on into the desolate night that opened its dark jaw. A flock of countless crows cawed as they soared into the sky, and that was when the sinister night began. The train was full of people migrating to Manchuria. People were sound asleep, curled up, hunched over, and sprawled out next to their luggage, asleep with limbs spilling out into the aisles. Slumped in the aisles hugging their spittoons. They must have all been exhausted because they were completely out. Not a single person stirred. A child whimpered once in a while and a woman would throw up. A drinking gourd tied to a stone mortar made a rattling sound. I was curled up in one corner. I had my eyes closed, vowing not to think of anything and bury the past in the past. But I was not discouraged. Rather, I felt a new blood and energy of life surging up inside me. And the people of this peninsula were setting out for the vast wilderness since the recent flood and typhoon had destroyed fields, rice paddies, and homes, I was determined to be courageous and build a new life for myself as well. I vowed that I would find myself a new life. I was getting so worked up that my body was starting to feel warm and I was on the verge of turning red in the face. In the meantime, the train headed for the border continued to blow its whistle and run full speed ahead. It ran on the same track as this train we’re on, and each time we stopped, a local crowd of people headed across the border would get on the train. Because of the racket, I opened my eyes and looked out the window. It was still snowing heavily outside. Several hundred people were headed across the border, each with bundles in their hands or on their heads, then would scream as they rushed to the back of the car like ocean waves. Before long, scores of them rushed into our car and then muttered something amongst themselves and rushed out again. But I saw a man about medium height in a black coat and white silk scarf stumbling into the car after the crowd had gone. He stood by the door for a while, looking vacantly around the inside of the train. He frowned several times and pouted his thick lips as though he was in pain. His face was red. There were three or four deep furrows across his forehead. He seemed out of breath. I thought he was drunk. But at the same time, I rose to my feet, flabbergasted. He must have recognized me too, for his eyes grew wide and then he grinned. I yelled to him. This was without a doubt the same face that appeared in front of the special interrogation room at the A police station and grinned at me. It was Count Wang. He

stumbled over to me, nearly falling in the process, and embraced me. He reeked of alcohol. “My Tokyo comrade!” He cried out without any reservation. The alcohol made his Japanese sound even more heavily accented than before. “As I live and breathe! How have you been all these years? You don’t look very good.” “Here, have a seat.” I got up to offer him my seat, but he jumped back and waved me off. He then stumbled backward and fell on his bottom in the aisle. Then he chattered on. “I like it better here. Here. Right. But see here, Tokyo comrade. I was worried when you were sent home. Gravely worried indeed. I thought since it was your first time you’d turn into a dog-tired hetabaru in no time, you see?” “Thank you, but I think you should get some rest for now,” I chided him quietly. He obediently drew his legs together under his coat and bowed his head. Then he began to groan as though in pain. Just then, the train began to pull out with an ear-splitting screech. People on the platform and in the train cars began to cry and exclaim, creating a thunderous sound. Both parties had begun to cry now that it was time for them to part. Count Wang suddenly lifted his head as if someone had thrown boiling water on him. “What’s this noise!” His hands and feet were shaking as though he was stricken with fear. But there was a flash of perverted joy in those large eyes of his. He hiccupped a few times and then said, “What is this noise!” Then he answered himself, “Of course, of course…” and he started to titter like a madman. And then, suddenly, he started to wail at the top of his lungs. Others in the train car all turned to look at him. They hushed and watched his strange behavior. The train left the station and the other passengers grew quieter. Outside, the snowstorm had abated and the wet peaks of the faraway mountains passed us by, bathed with the pale, silvery white moonlight. It grew very still inside the train car. But Count Wang’s crying grew louder and more inconsolable. He whipped his head up as though he was about to have a seizure and then began to talk again, this time in Korean. “I want to wail, too. I want to shout and wail. I love to cry, you understand? Cry. That’s why I like to get on the immigration train.” He suddenly stopped his crying, lowered his voice, and his face muscles appeared to twitch. I realized that this insane man was feeling a despairing sense of loneliness that every one of us is also prone to. He was always buried in an absolute loneliness. I could only imagine what a terrifying despair he must have felt. I wanted him to quickly calm down, but his jaw chattered with increasing violence. Then he suddenly shrieked at me and shrank back. “You… you’re here to get me, aren’t you? You want revenge…” There was silence for some time. He studied my face for a while, his mouth hanging open. I felt my heart racing. 9

“That’s right. Everyone wants to have his revenge on me. You’re no different, are you? Are you? Look, the expression on his face is changing! Look how it changes!” “You must be seeing things, my friend. You are being chased by illusions,” I smiled sympathetically at him. In truth, I didn’t know what to make of his behavior. If this was an illness he suffered from, it seemed it’d worsened since I’d last seen him in the lock up. Trying to comfort him, I added, “I can’t make sense of what you’re saying.” “Don’t you play dumb. You want to have your revenge on me, don’t you? Don’t you? Hehehe.” “What happened to you?” I pressed him a little. “Well… the thing is…” Then he started to groan in pain again. “Ahh, I’m having vengeance upon myself at the moment. I’m strangling myself. I have no hope, no sadness, no purpose… I’m only happy when I'm here on the immigration train. I can cry and shriek with the rest of these people.” “But these people are going because they haven’t lost hope, not because they’re grieving.” “What does it matter why they’re going? I’m just glad I’m in the same train traveling in the same direction. And crying and shrieking with them. But when they cross the border – what to do? what to do? – I have to return home on my own. The thought of it makes me…” He was sniffling again. I was at a loss. But I somehow sympathized with him and found myself wishing I could be sad with him. Of course, if you think about it rationally, these people who deserve our sympathy, they’re a dying breed. “Stop it. You’re being a fool.” Count Wang shrank back and began trembling again. His eyes wide and his teeth chattering, he tried to get to his feet. I felt helpless for a moment. His face was ashen and his muscles constricted, like a dying person who’d been denied admission to heaven. Thrashing his arms about as if he was denied the last pleasure he had left, he roared, “How dare you try to stop me?” Spent by the outburst, he slumped where he stood and fell down. He was soon lying face down in the aisle, drooling. He had dirt all over his face. I cruelly thought that it was a relief and that he’d be asleep soon. “It still grieves me so to think that I was relieved at that moment. You don’t know how I’d been torturing myself these past two years replaying that moment,” the reporter said grimly. “Pour me another, will you? Pour me another.” “So what happened?” The livestock company man pressed, curious. “Give me a moment. The train was about to stop in Daejeon. As you know. I have to transfer to the Honam Line in Daejeon. So as I was getting ready to get off, I thought, should I wake Count Wang to say goodbye, or should I leave him? He was lying on the

floor completely unaware of what was going on. So I thought I shouldn’t bother waking him up.” The train must have been pulling into the station since the whistle blew. I got up with both my trunks in my hands and was ready to get off. But the train jerked and I fell on top of Count Wang. He was now flat on the floor. I scrambled to my feet, but he lay motionless on the floor. It became much harder for me to say goodbye to him. I could see that the train was approaching the light of the Daejeon Station platform. I thought I should wake him up. “Count Wang,” I called. He didn’t answer. I thought he’d passed out. The train was slowing down. I saw the crowds on the platform and could soon hear the hubbub. I felt anxious to get to the door. “Count Wang. Wake up.” He still didn’t stir. It hadn’t yet occurred to me to put down my trunks and shake him. So I felt even more anxious. “Count Wang. Get up. You’ll be trampled if you stay there. Wake up, friend.” The train stopped. Announcements blared from the loudspeakers and people on the platforms rushed toward the train. I instinctively took a few steps toward the door and then stopped to look back. Someone was shaking Count Wang and trying to get him to move out of the way. Just then, passengers rushed into the train car through the door in front of me. I was trying to find a way to get out when the man who was trying to wake Count Wang hollered behind me. “Ahh!” I swung my head around and looked. By then, I was already trapped in the masses that had pushed into the train car and could barely move an inch. It was pandemonium. I don’t know what happened to Count Wang after that. I couldn’t see him. The task of getting off the train was overwhelming enough. I sighed out of relief when I finally made it off the train, but when the train began lurching forward, I ran after it with all the strength in my body and cried, “Count Wang! Count Wang!” “He must have had been dead for a while by then,” the ad man said sympathetically. “But that’s just it. I don’t know if he died. You don’t know how it torments me to this day. Perhaps he was dead before I got off. Thinking about this makes me feel so guilty. I shouldn’t have gotten off the train. If only Count Wang were still alive!” The reporter wiped off his tears as he wiped his sweat. Then he fell silent. When the livestock company man asked him if he’d ever run into Count Wang since then, the reporter continued abjectly. I went into the mountains in Gangwondo Province last summer for research. I had rotten luck because there was a thunderstorm that lasted ten days. There was a great flood 11

at the mouth of the Han River that sent ferocious currents downriver. One day, I heard cries for help coming from upstream. I ran outside, thinking the voice sounded somewhat familiar. A roof was floating down midstream. I saw the silhouettes of two, maybe three people on it. The cries for help were coming from them. The silhouette of one of them somehow seemed familiar. It must have been my imagination, but I wondered if it wasn’t Count Wang. I returned to Seoul some time later and heard that a young lumber dealer who’d floated down on a roof lost his life. No one knew what his name was. “That can’t have been Count Wang,” said the ad man. And then there was the man I saw this spring when I was in Seoul on business. I had gotten on the streetcar in Jongno bound for Dongdaemun. I think it was the day of the anti-communist drill. The streetcar was about to cross the intersection at the 5-jeongmok. There were firefighters being trained on the side of the street. A man of medium height was giving orders to a group of firefighters standing in single file. I only saw him from the back, but now that I think about it, it might have been Count Wang. “Very possible!” I slapped my knees and cried. I don’t know why I shouted as I did. It just sounded likely. “That must have been him,” said the reporter. “I’m sure it was Count Wang himself. He must be happy now that there’s a war and our country is facing real suffering together, forging on in the same direction under the Nation-building Cooperation System. Perhaps he’s found his purpose and meaning in life. I’ll bet he’s found himself a position as a fire department chief.” Everyone nodded in agreement. “I hope so,” said the reporter. He looked down at his beer for a long time and sighed. He continued, “And then there was this other time…”