Toseongnang

Toseongnang

Ki m Sa-r yang

Tr ans l at edbyJ ami eChang

Toseongnang

By Kim Sa-ryang Translated by Jamie Chang

Literature Translation Institute of Korea 1

Originally published in Korean as Toseongnang in Jebang, 1936 Translation ⓒ 2014 by Jamie Chang

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 Toseongnang [electronic resource] / by Kim Sa-ryang ; translated by Jamie Chang. -- [Seoul] : Literature Translation Institute of Korea, 2014 p. 원표제: 토성랑 Translated from Japanese ISBN 978-89-93360-38-7 95810 : Not for sale 833.6-KDC5 895.634-DDC21

CIP2014028985

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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 “Toseongnang” Wonsam, a former servant of a fallen household, wanders into the Pyeongyangseong Fortress in search of shelter and employment. Seondal, a former tenant farmer, takes pity on Wonsam and helps him put together a dugout hut of his own in the slum outside the fortress and settle down in Pyeongyang as an a-frame porter. Their friendship sours, however, when Seondal falls ill and the grateful Wonsam buys rice for Seondal and his family, exacerbating the tension between Seondal and his wife, who belittles Seondal daily by comparing him to Wonsam. In the meantime, Wonsam discovers his concerns for Seondal’s wife has taken a romantic turn.

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Toseongnang

Chapter 1 On the other side of the railroad crossing in the outskirts of the fortress, bustling with ox-drawn carriages, carts, and freight trucks, a narrow, winding path through the paddies stood on the left. The path was muddy from there on, and frogs croaked raucously in puddles to the left and right. A drizzle came soundlessly down on the swamp in the evening.

Darkness descended as the two men walked on in silence. Only the slaughterhouse shined hazily. The faint light of the lamp cast a dim glow on the tips of the ears of wheat, and the frogs jumped noisily into the paddies, startled by the footsteps.

Every now and then a pig let out a shrill cry in its pen.

The two men ran into some other men as they passed the slaughterhouse.

“Coming home just now?” Someone mumbled.

Old Wonsam stopped to say something, but was crushed by the hard look his companion gave him. He laughed sheepishly and hurried along behind him.

“Seondal. They’re beggars.”

The man did not respond.

Toseongnang1, the old battlefield stretched on not very far away. The hill was crawling with dugout huts, cave-like living dwellings built by digging holes on hillsides or cliff sides with floors made of straw hidden under wooded panels and thatched roofs.

By the time the two men arrived, the dugout had sunken in silence in the rain. Smoke rose from here and there. The two men carefully made their way through the dugouts and climbed to the top of the earthen fortress outside the Pyeongyangseong Fortress. The tall poplar tree was swaying to and fro against the watermelon-colored sky. The evening wind came, running its hands over the western plains on its way, and tugged at their wet clothes. The two men quietly took the A-frames off their shoulders, carried them with both hands, and disappeared down the west side of the hill as quietly as shadows.

Wonsam pulled the cover made of a straw sack aside and dragged his large body into his dugout. A tepid stench overcame him and the straw on the floor rustled under his knees each time he moved. The straw on the floor was also damp. He felt around the floor, managed to find the matches, and lit his old lamp. The inside of the dugout filled with dim light and the flame flickered in the draft, making the shadows quiver.

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The site of Pyeongyangseong Fortress. A famous slum along the Daedong River. The Japanese fought the Qing army in 1894 under the guise of suppressing a farmers’ uprising.

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Plumped down in the middle of his small dwelling, he looked like a large statue of stone. His neck was thick, his wide mouth wearily hung open, and his vacant eyes were tediously large. The light glistened all over his greasy body. He quietly took off his wet shirt and then bent down to struggle out of his muddy socks. Tightly folded bills rustled out of his socks and fell onto the straw floor. He cackled as he picked them up and held up each one for examination. Contented, he opened his mouth wide to yawn, stretched, and let out a loud groan.

Wonsam heard a sharp shriek coming from Seondal’s dugout next door. About to drift off to sleep, he awoke with a start, crawled over to the mouth of the dugout, and listened. He was a little hard of hearing and could not make out what was going on.

Earlier, Seondal had gone into his dugout where a five-year-old boy was sobbing.

A woman sat with her eyes gleaming blue in the dark. Seondal set down his A-frame and whispered pleadingly, “Why did you make him cry?”

“Hmph, what do you mean why?” The woman retorted. “Why don’t you ask the child? Imbecile. The nerve!”

The woman promptly lost her mind, grabbed the boy upside down by his ankles, and struck him on the back. Seondal’s anger erupted. The woman was doing this to get back at him for not making enough money.

“Stop it! Stop!” He waved his arms and shouted. When the woman showed no signs of stopping, he charged at her and knocked her down. The woman screamed and the child was thrown into the far corner.

“For heaven’s sake…” Wonsam groaned to himself, his chest tightening with anxiety.

The woman ran out of the dugout to escape but refused to back down as she continued to fuel Seondal’s anger by hurling insults at him.

“If you’re so bent on playing husband, why don’t you bring home some money?

Always living off other people’s rice!”

Wonsam shrank with fear, feeling a sting in his chest. He had, as always, used the money he’d earned to buy the rice that Seondal brought home. Still, Wonsam carefully craned his neck again and peeked out from behind the straw sack door. It was raining, but the woman’s upper body was bare. He looked at her jiggling chest and swallowed sticky saliva. The woman grumbled to herself and she came out with a water pail. Seeing this, Wonsam was about to get up, but quickly changed his mind and sat back down, rubbing his hands together. It had always been his job to take the water pail down to the river on the hillside to wash the millet and fetch water, but he suddenly felt sorry for Seondal.

“Wonsam! Go fetch some water!”

The woman shouted irritatedly, loud enough for Seondal to hear. Seondal loathed Wonsam doing chores for his wife.

At her command, Wonsam crawled out of his dugout like a bear. When the rain hit his bare upper body, he croaked eerily, Hehehe! Hehe! The raindrops became fatter 5

obscuring his view. With his arms hugging the water pail, Wonsam continued to cry comically – Hehehe! – as he took a step into the muddy river. It was cold. He nearly slipped and fell, but found his balance and slowly went further into the water. The river was a dirty creek, and he had to go as deep into the river as possible. When he was about one foot in, he washed the millet two or three times, filled the pail with water, and ran out of the river shouting, Hehehe! Hehehe! At that moment, the rain turned into a torrential shower and a gust of wind rushed toward him with a great whoosh. Wonsam hesitated for a moment and tottered. It seemed the woman was shouting something at him from uphill.

Wonsam was sure Seondal had dragged the woman into the dugout and was bullying her.

He hurried up the hill through the mud with a mind to stop him. But all he could hear as he ran up the hill was the sound of rain and wind getting stronger, and it was as quiet as death in Seondal’s dugout. Wonsam felt lonely and somewhat disappointed.

Wonsam quietly stood outside the dugout for a moment and then reluctantly mumbled a disgruntled, “Here it is, ma’am.”

There was no answer from inside.

“Okay. Bring it over here.” He turned to where the sound came from and found a dark shadow crouched under a spot where the rain did not reach.

“Oh, there you are.” Wonsam went toward the woman, the anger on his face unsnarling.

Seondal had become so unusually weak lately that, even though he managed to take his A-frame down to the streets, he spent a great deal of time lying down to rest by the warehouse or in the wrecked ship floating on the elegant currents of the Daedonggang River. He couldn’t earn enough to get by from day to day. His eyes were sunken and his neck was growing visibly thin. The woman’s insults grew more vicious by the day. She always screamed at him as though she was ready to eat him alive.

“Whose fault is it, all of it? What are you going to do about me?”

In the meantime, Wonsam had, for all intents and purposes, become in charge of putting food on their table. This tormented Seondal. He kept his mouth shut and blinked most of the time, but red flames continued to burn inside of him. He’d walked home side by side with Wonsam that day, too, but he felt uncomfortable. He saw himself stopping at the rice seller and allowing Wonsam buy his rice for him. It was humiliating. And as if he wasn’t suffering enough, the woman accused him at every turn for “Always living off other people’s rice” and screamed at him.

It was originally Wonsam who’d owed Seondal. Wonsam was able to build a dugout hut on Toseongnang thanks to Seondal. Wonsam had been living as the servant of a landowning family deep in the mountains. Because both his father and mother were slaves, Wonsam had never owned anything in his life from the moment he was born. Of course, he didn’t have a wife either. Then, fifty years later, he was freed when the household of his master fell into ruin. A new world opened up for him. A loyal slave, Wonsam had knelt and wailed in front of the house of his master who’d been struck with 6

this misfortune, bowed goodbye to every villager in the mountain village, and left without looking back. The mountaintops were still white with snow when he’d left. He could never forget how he’d stood silently on the hilltop facing the ferocious winds, overcome with emotion, looking at his beloved mountain village.

Pyeongyang, which he’d heard of like a dream, was 200 li away. When he arrived there at dusk after three days of walking, everything he saw and heard was chaos. The northerly winds of the moonless lunar February still carried snow and frost slicing through his skin. Wonsam wandered the markets in the teeth-chattering cold. The Aframe porters soon surrounded him and taunted him for his large stature unbefitting his tattered appearance. To the porters idling with no work, Wonsam was a welcome object of ridicule.

“He looks like a bear that just walked out of the woods!” Someone shouted.

Everyone grinned.

“No, he looks like a tiger.”

“Hello, I’m…” The simple man clumsily bowed in every direction.

“Jeong Wonsam. I come from there, that mountain.” He then ran around the circle of men and bowed to each and every one.

“Just like an ox in a mill!”

A roar of laughter erupted out of the forest of A-frames. Wonsam became even more panicked. His large eyes darted here and there as he flapped his arms about, not knowing how to carry his own large frame. The A-frame porters, ever more amused, doubled over with laughter, goaded him, and poked him with their sticks.

One middle-aged porter could no longer watch this and herded him off to a quiet area. The man asked in a hushed voice where Wonsam was from. His eyes were thin slivers and his face was pale. His pant legs clung to his perilously skinny legs. Trembling, Wonsam bowed deeply at him several times.

“I’m from Maengsan. Jeong Wonsam.”

“We’d best get away from here and go to tavern.”

“I, I don’t have any money.”

“How did you get here if you don’t have any money?”

“I’m going to start working from now on.”

The man blinked his small eyes for some time as though he was thinking up a plan, and then brought Wonsam to Toseongnang to get him a dugout hut. This was how Wonsam met Seondal and his family.

Wonsam buried his nightmarish past and started anew. He was over the moon. He now had a dugout of his own just like the other residents of Toseongnang. He spent everything he’d saved on a straw-thatched roof, so it looked much more respectable than other dugouts with straw, wood panel, or tin roofs. He was proud of these little things.

What’s more, compared to most people living on Toseongnang who were panhandlers, Wonsam felt happy as though he had a halo around him as he went into town every morning with his A-frame on his back and his heart beating from excitement.

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Even as he walked down the street, he felt restless. He’d once lifted a heavy load of over sixty kilograms as though it weighed nothing, and raced down the street alongside trams, laughing all the way – Hehehe! Hehehe! The tram conductor hit the brakes and shouted “Moron!” out the window, but this didn’t fail to deter Wonsam from waving at the conductor and laughing – Hehehe! Hehehe! – as he ran. “Thief! Thief!” The old lady who’d hired Wonsam quacked like a duck. People passing by looked on and smiled at the diversion.

Wonsam was secretly happy that he could be of help to Seondal and his family.

Paying them back for all but taking him in was the one thing Wonsam was confident he could do. So he always bought extra rice for them on his way home. He was so overjoyed by the thought of seeing gratitude on the faces of Seondal and his wife that he could not help himself. When Seondal’s wife used every word she could think of to express her thanks, Wonsam waved it off as though she did not owe him any thanks.

“Hehehe, don’t mention it,” he said and looked up at the sky. “None of us has much, so… Things would have been different if I worked tens of thousands of square meters of fields like I did in the past but…” He stuck his tongue out and said, “I didn’t know things would turn out so good for me!” He laughed some more.

In the meantime, the arguments never seemed to stop between Seondal and his wife. Seondal began to dislike Wonsam for no reason. Each time Seondal and his wife fought, she’d fan the anger of her ailing husband by comparing Seondal to the hardworking Wonsam. Seondal grew more and more irritated until he spewed violent insults at his wife and began to resent the kind, trusty Wonsam as well. Around the same time, oddly enough, Wonsam began to sense an inkling of the tenderness that Seondal had for his wife. When the initial excitement of these feelings calmed and the fatigue of everyday life set in, Wonsam felt something akin to a husband providing for his wife.

Each time Wonsam daydreamed about Seondal’s wife, he curled his back, looked up at the sky with a vacant expression on his face, and murmured, “I should get myself a wife, too. I’m… yes. That’s right. I’m seventy-five. I need children, too.”

His fellow A-frame porters liked to tease him with offers to play matchmaker for him. The word “wife” was enough to start Wonsam grinning.

“What kind of wife do you want, old man?”

“Hehehe! Hehehe!”

“What about a brothel barmaid?”

“Hehehe! I don’t need a young woman. I used to have a young wife, a long time ago. And two kids. But they all died in the plague. Really. I’m telling the truth.”

Once, Wonsam was dragged to a brothel barmaid by his colleagues. The barmaid with small eyes and large front teeth chattered on with her arms around Wonsam offering him drinks. Wonsam felt as though his body was melting and his consciousness fading.

He’d never had such an experience before. Wonsam suddenly got on his knees, bowed his head so deeply that it touched the hot stone floor, and said, “Jeong Wonsam, at your service. Pleased to meet you…”

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Everyone present doubled over with laughter. Wonsam returned home that night with his pride a little wounded and muttered to himself, “Seondal’s wife is the only woman for me.”

Chapter 2 It was a starry night, quite rare during the monsoon when it poured every day. All along the earthen fortress, dugout residents sat in threes and fours enjoying the evening breeze. The moon that looked like a gash cast a pale light on an old man’s neck bent like a rusty nail, on the back of the stutterer curled up like a silkworm cocoon, on the chest of a drowsy woman, and on the tense shoulders of Seondal who sat looking white as a sheet.

Someone looked up, and a light of tragedy and passion flashed in his ash-colored eyes.

Wonsam slowly crawled toward where Seondal was sitting and asked, “What are you all talking about?”

“I rode an amazing one today. In the large store on that street. I rode it on the first floor and it sprang up! Hehe.”

Wonsam sensed the hostility aimed towards him, held his tongue, and quietly sat down next to the woman.

Old man Deogil, who’d been cooped up inside his dugout like a raccoon, had made his way out and was going on in his growling voice. He was driven mad this time last year when his only son was taken away on charges of robbery. Every time he saw someone in a suit, he ranted, “Kidnapper! Kidnapper!” Deogil firmly believed that his son was framed, so each time he thought of what had happened to his boy, he could not control the anger and despair rising up inside of him.

“My son is in prison and my wife has lost her mind.” Deogil sighed. “Humans are really something. I don’t know what I’m going to do to survive… But here I am – still alive.”

“Try not to be so angry, and you’ll feel more at ease,” Seondal’s wife offered him words of comfort. The scowling face with missing teeth looked so much like a skull that it sent shivers through her.

“Well, I’m not angry…” Deogil trailed off, unmistakably angry.

Wonsam suddenly craned his neck toward the woman and cooed at the child in her arms. The startled child burst into tears. Embarrassed, Wonsam took his hand to his messy hair as he snickered.

“You made the child cry!” The woman scolded him fiercely.

Seondal blew his nose hard into his hand, and comforted Deogil halfheartedly, “He’ll be back soon. They won’t detain an innocent man for long.”

The stutterer sitting next to Wonsam suddenly got up with a grunt. It was clear he had strong objections to what Seondal had just said. Deogil began to shake with anger.

Red flames shot out of his sunken eyes like the flames of a soot-filled lamp.

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“What?” Deogil huffed. “What are you trying to say? That my son did something wrong? You’re trying to get it out of me, aren’t you? Why he isn’t out yet?”

“Hmph. You think he’ll be released?” The stutterer scoffed and snarled at Seondal.

It was three years ago that the stutterer had come to this place. He was caught making bootleg alcohol and was in a holding cell for a long time before he was able to sell his cow and household goods to pay the 50-yen fine. The stutterer must have been reminded of that, as always.

“I-I made wine with my own rice. I’m innocent. I’ve been a hard worker since I was young. I’m a respectable farmer.”

“What are you talking about?” cried Seondal’s wife.

“Everyone’s gone a little around the bend lately.”

“Gone. Absolutely gone. It’s hard to take it without going around the bend.”

Silence fell over them.

The glum moment was interrupted by a sharp cackle coming a little ways away from the north like thunder in the distance. It was such an unusual sound. It was so dark around that none of them had known that there had been someone else so close by. All eyes turned toward the sound at once. The man who was lying on his stomach got to his feet, jeering and tottering. Through the darkness, they saw the crippled beggar.

“Hehehe, look at the lot of you. All that work, and for what? Hehehe.”

The cripple beggar cackled louder, making a sound like his liver was being crushed. He unsteadily laid back down on his stomach and fell silent. The company silently looked at each other as if to say, What can we do?

The endless shouts of Deogil’s wife came from the south of the earthen fortress.

She was talking to the ghost of the daughter of Scholar Im who’d drowned in the current.

She was a smart, pretty child and her death was a great sadness to the residents of Toseongnang. After his daughter died, the taciturn Scholar Im could often be found by the river that had taken his daughter away, stirring the water with a stick.

Around that time, the issue of driving out the residents of Toseongnang had been brought up again. The railroad that ran through the length of Joseon was to pass by Toseongnang, and it was deemed an eyesore and an international embarrassment to leave Toseongnang the way it was. The dugout residents gathered in the middle of Toseongnang to protest. That very night, the express train to Bongcheon (present day Simyang, Yonyeongseong Fortress) braked suddenly in front of Toseongnang with a sharp screech of the whistle. The train had nearly tipped over. There was a huge pile of rocks in the middle of the railroad, and when they held a lantern to it, they saw that it was soaked with red blood. Scholar Im was nowhere to be seen after that.

Since then, Scholar Im and his daughter were considered guardian spirits of Toseongnang. The cries of the crazy woman moved farther and farther away. The old woman always ambled to the north and south of the earthen fortress at least once a day.

A silence as cold as ice descended on those gathered. An unending, mournful cry came from the animals in the slaughterhouse. An airplane was heard flying overhead in 10

the far distance. From the sea of light inside the fortress, a few searchlights were sweeping the sky with their blue rays. An airplane was caught in the rays, and the sound of an explosion grew more horrible as delicate rays glittered like mosquitoes. The people looked on vacantly.

“Practicing for war,” Seondal murmured gloomily.

Deogil hit a rock with his long smoking pipe a few times. Red sparks flew.

“This was once a battlefield. The earthen fortress was crawling with dead soldiers.

Nothing scares me anymore. Nothing could. The Gabo War2 was nearly fifty years ago already…”

Seondal’s wife suddenly sneezed. The stutterer did not so much as glance at her, but sprang up on his feet as though he was on fire.

“M-my house burned down when the Qing soldiers came. My mother and brothers all died. The bastards! W-what did I ever do to deserve that? Only I made it out alive. B-but I can’t go on living like this. This is all a graveyard! A graveyard!”

“Don’t make such a fuss.” Seondal cried, irritated.

“I will make a fuss! How can I not make a fuss?” The stutterer waved his head about, foaming at the mouth.

“He’s completely gone mad…” Seondal muttered disgustedly and the rest of them laughed in resignation. But the stutterer was still seized by indignation, as if an invisible, terrifying force were driving him. He grew angrier to think that he was a laughingstock, and stormed off.

On his way down the hill, he suddenly whipped around and shouted, “Damn you all! Y-you’re… looking down on me!”

The woman was nodding off, her hair as unkempt as a bird’s nest, with the child in her arms. She took a deep breath or two that sounded like sobs. Her cow dung-colored breasts swung from her chest, and her two legs sprawled out from under the hem of her skirt, soiled in black, and her shoulders were rolled in like a bow. Once in a while, when the child whimpered, the woman’s long, horse-like face would crumple as she shook her head hard.

“What a pathetic fellow.”

Wonsam stared at the sleeping woman as though he were in a trance. He licked his lips every now and then, but they were still parched.

The moon was setting now. The poplar leaves rustled in the wind.

“A red crescent moon means a terrible flood…” Deogil said to himself. The company looked up at the moon, but no one said a word.

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Gabo War: Sino-Japanese War

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Chapter 3 Tonseongnang was in the throes of a violent storm.

The sound of Wonsam’s singing flowed intermittently from his dugout. He was singing quite earnestly. The uproarious laughter of men and women followed. Wonsam had invited some people over for food and drinks to celebrate jungbok.3 He’d always been eager to show what a generous man he was, and today was his chance. Wonsam went out in the rain to invite his neighbors.

“Hehehe. Will you come to my place? Hehe, I have liquor. Some rain, huh?”

The stutterer did not answer, but sat curled up, mumbling a strange incantation to himself. Wonsam peeked inside the stutterer’s dugout for the first time. There was an altar made of an oil drum in the dark corner, and a clean bowl of water was placed there.

The stutterer had long been a follower of Sangjegyo.4By thus receiving the ancestors’ spirit, he believed he would be rewarded handsomely later when heaven was built on earth.

“What are you doing?”

“Gyudagyuda taeeulcheonsangwongun…”

The stutterer’s strange incantation went on.

Wonsam had no choice but to move on. When he invited Seondal and his wife, Seondal’s face suddenly darkened. Wonsam had brought them liquor for Jungbok, but wasn’t it all to make his wife happy? The thought made Seondal’s ears turn red, and then his cheeks, forehead, and the corners of his eyes.

“This is no time to be drinking!” Seondal snapped. “I hope you drink like a toad and croak!”

Seondal picked up something to throw at Wonsam, who quickly ran away.

Seondal’s wife crawled out behind him. Seondal’s hand trembled as he glared at them.

Onward, ox.

Whoa, whoa Tsk,tsk Whoaaaa, tsk, tsk.

When the song was over, Wonsam grinned, wiping the sweat dripping off his neck.

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Chobok, jungbok, malbok in the cheonseryeok calendar are referred to as sambok. Jungbok falls on the fourth Friday following the summer solstice. On a bok day, it was custom to get away from the heat by writing poems or drinking near beautiful mountains and water, or wash one’s feet in clear water (a ritual known as takjok). Bok day food includes gaejangguk (dog meat boiled with scallions, chicken, and bamboo shoots) with rice, red bean porridge, barley rice, and scallion soup. On a bok day, people drink spring water from the mountains.

4 A denomination of Eastern Learning. Founded by Kim Yeonguk, who built a temple in Gyeryongsan Mountain.

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“This is very hard. My wife would have done a better job singing…” It made Wonsam happy simply to use the word, “wife.”

“It’s unbearably lonely to think that she’s gone now.”

“Where did you say your wife was?” Deogil took the bait, the hand holding his glass shaking from the stroke.

“I’ll bet he sold her,” the crippled beggar offered cruelly. Seondal’s wife scoffed.

“Absolutely not!” Light flashed in Wonsam’s eyes. “How many times have I told you that she died from the plague?”

“Aha.” “She did. The child, too. Both of them. The poor kid. He was my son. It’s such a horrid fate that they died. Well… what’s the use in complaining?” Wonsam looked like he was about to burst into tears.

“Stop it. Enough. We want no more of your tall tales.” Seondal’s wife talked back, now pleasantly drunk.

“What?” Deogil threw down his pipe.

“Tall tales? I’m not lying! You don’t know anything. It’s true. I’m not lying. I’m not lying.”

“Ha! Ha!” incredulous, she threw her head back and laughed.

“Didn’t you tell us last time that you had two kids?”

Wonsam groaned, turned around, and guffawed like a fool. Lightning flashed blue somewhere and the sound of thunder shook the ground. Wonsam used this distraction to steal another look at Seondal’s wife. When he looked at her, their eyes met and he grinned. It must have been the alcohol making its way around his body, but his heart was racing and she looked more beautiful than her usual self.

Outside, it was getting darker thanks to the worsening storm. Raging winds came whirling through the paddies and hit Toseongnang noisily. The several thousand dugouts on Toseongnang were buried deep within the mist. The poplar tree bent so hard it seemed about to snap. Water spiraled and it rushed down from the top of Toseongnang.

A mouse suddenly ran toward the box inside the dugout, and Wonsam threw himself on the box to protect it. The panicked mouse made a racket in the box as it darted here and there, and suddenly jumped out of the box. Fear-stricken, the mouse paused for a moment in the middle of the floor and then crawled under the straw between Seondal’s wife’s knees. The woman screamed. Wonsam laughed – Hehehe! Hehehe! – and threw himself at the woman. The mouse got out, scurried over Wonsam’s back and ran off, but something truly amazing for Wonsam happened at that moment: He grabbed the woman.

Wonsam found himself somehow hugging the woman’s plump thighs. He’d fallen over her and ended up with his face buried in her thighs. He couldn’t breathe, and felt a shiver running through his entire body. The woman waved her hands and tried to free herself.

“Mouse! Mouse!” Wonsam whispered.

13

Deogil and the crippled beggar doubled over with laughter. When Wonsam finally pulled himself together, he let go of her thighs and dusted his hands awkwardly, and got up. The woman clapped and laughed as well.

“Very clever things, mice.” Wonsam chuckled. “I bought some rice for the party, and it sniffed it out so quickly and came to steal it!”

Mice aren’t the only things that sniff things out, the crippled beggar and Deogil thought as they swallowed hard.

Soon, they were back to drinking and talking as before. Wonsam recovered in no time and chattered on and on about how proud he was to be an A-frame porter, and his intentions of renting a small room inside the fortress for about 45-yen.

“What do you want to rent a room for?” The woman taunted.

“So he can have you over,” Deogil teased the woman. Wonsam quickly waved his hands in rebuttal.

“Really? You don’t want me to come over?” said the woman and drunkenly shook her body as though she were trying to find out Wonsam’s true feelings.

Worried that she’d seen through him, Wonsam thought about what she must have meant over and over. To an old man like Wonsam, her words had not sounded like a joke.

He felt a glow growing in his chest.

“Hehehe, you’re lying again.” The cripple beggar turned up his nose and laughed.

“You people think you’d be able to get out of here? Take one step and you’ll find yourselves in hell! Swarming with ghosts waiting for you!”

The crippled beggar abruptly stopped laughing and listened with his eyes wide because he thought he’d heard unpleasant whipping sounds. It had sounded like it was coming from close by. Everyone hushed and looked at each other nervously. Then came the crack and thud of something breaking.

“Someone’s breaking their dugout again,” Deogil murmured grumpily.

“Who is it?” Wonsam crawled over to the entrance and looked outside where the storm was raging. At first, the rainwater falling on his face in heavy drops made it difficult to see. But suddenly, a shadow about a meter away caught his eye. It was making sharp lines as it moved. Wonsam darted out of his dugout, alarmed. He crawled up, slipping in the mud and falling to his knees. The rain came down mercilessly. The wind screamed as it whipped Wonsam’s body. Wonsam threw his arms around the man from behind, afraid that the man would fall over, but the man gnashed his teeth and kept shouting, “Let me go! Let me go!” as he wielded the poles from the dugout over his head in a ferociously crazed state.

It was the stutterer.

“What’s going on!” Wonsam cried. “What’s the matter?” The raving stutterer jumped up, waving both his legs in the air, making both he and Wonsam fall backwards.

“Stop it! Stop it!”

Wonsam cried like a madman.

The storm, caught in an increasingly more violent wind, circled above their heads.

14

The rain stopped around dusk and the wind calmed. The poplars quietly revealed themselves as the fog lifted. Several dugouts were found destroyed in the relentless rain on the earthen fortress that now lay with it the vegetation stripped and its red skin exposed. Next to the destroyed dugouts, people were huddled like drowned rats and sat with empty expressions. The stutterer’s dugout lay in complete ruin. When the red water broke through the dike from above and poured in like a waterfall, this devout follower of Sangjegyo ran out of the dugout, pulled out one of the poles holding up the roof, and demolished the roof to pieces in a blind rage. The stutterer was now nowhere to be seen.

As time went on, the residents crawled out of their dugouts one by one. They looked like chickens that had scattered to find shelter from a heavy rain coming out of hiding and shaking water off their wings. The sky was overcast. The fields were drowned in drizzle and the river rushed savagely.

Seondal and his wife were in a brawl off to one side. Seondal was about to go into town to make money in spite of his illness when he saw his wife coming home, her face red from drinking and a bag of rice swinging in her hand. This made him so furious that he swung his A-frame at her, aiming for her shoulders. He’d missed and struck her on the head. She let out a quiet yelp, and fell on her bottom in a mud puddle. The bag burst open, and white rice spilled on the ground. The terrified child had begun to wail in the dugout.

She leapt at him like a leopard. “You son of a bitch! Kill me! Kill me!”

Seondal lost his balance. Her hair was wild and her shoulders were shaking violently.

“Kill me! Ow, ow, ow. Kill me!”

He kicked and punched her and then grabbed her by the hair and dragged her about. Mud splattered everywhere. She was thrown down to the ground. Before anyone could catch her, she fell with her legs flying over her head.

“Seondal, something the matter?”

The dumbstruck Wonsam asked as he carefully approached him. But it was a barely audible grunt. The dimwitted Wonsam was not the least bit aware that he was the reason Seondal was taken over by such wrath. The flames of his anger fanned by Wonsam, Seondal grabbed him by the collar.

“Seondal, what did I do?” Wonsam croaked. Wonsam saw Seondal’s head flying toward him, and suddenly, he saw sparks flying as his head spun. Wonsam fell like a black bear that was hit with a spear.

The woman lay on the ground and wailed, banging her fist against the dirt.

“Aigo! Is there greater injustice? What did I ever do to you? What kind of man turns his wife into a wretch like this? Aigo!”

The crippled beggar scooped the rice back into the bag and said to himself, “Well, at least you’re still alive. Fight all you want while you can.”

A dark procession of dugout hut residents stretched along the earthen fortress as the sun began to sink. When the swamp to the east turned into a large river from the 15

heavy rain, they scrambled to find a way to get to the railroad. Their stomachs empty, they were headed into the fortress to beg for dinner. Old men were leaning on sticks, children were grumbling endlessly, and women were huddled together with worried faces, whispering amongst themselves. Ash-colored hunting caps, pork-pie hats drawn down to the nose, greasy wet hair, headscarves – and barefoot – every one of them.

A freight truck honked noisily as it crossed the stone bridge off to the north.

Chapter 4 Seondal did not sleep a wink that night. No sooner did he lie down than he had to get up again because his coughs were suffocating him. He looked down at the spatter of blood he’d coughed up on the back of his hand. The spatter glimmered in the dark.

When the first cock signaled a new day, he gathered his A-frame and set out to work. The woman watched as her husband dispiritedly went down the hill. The rain had stopped completely overnight, but menacing clouds still hung in the morning sky. It had rained harder upstream and the water rose, cold water vapor bloomed over the river. Her neck stretched long, the woman yawned wide and long, and glanced at the murky rapids.

She then spat angrily and lay back down on the straw-covered floor.

Around daybreak, when the morning sun surrounded by cloud spilled dazzling light on the river, two men in suits came up to Toseongnang. They made their way around the dugouts with their large ledger and a black leather satchels. The red currents were rising visibly by the hour swallowing up the earthen fortress from the bottom up.

The whirling currents had already come up to within a dozen feet of the dugouts. There were dugouts here and there that were very close to being swept away. The mountains of waste that were piled up on the other side of the river had turned into islands, and the muddy waters were licking the paddies and fields swallowing them one by one. White foam and bales of hay floated in the middle of the river, and a handful of swallows flew overhead. It was eerily beautiful.

Wonsam looked forlornly down at all this and felt sad as he thought this was the end of his life in Toseongnang. An indescribable loneliness and despair closed in on him.

But one thought never left him. The enigmatic thing the woman had said the night before.

How was he to understand it? Did she mean she would come to him if he’d found himself a room inside the fortress? Happiness returned to Wonsam’s heart that began to flutter.

And so when the two money collectors appeared at his dugout, Wonsam greeted them with a sunny smile.

“I’m going to pay, but I would also like you to find me a room inside the fortress.”

The men were at a loss for words. Wonsam curled his back and grunted as he took off his old sock. Three coins fell out. He quickly picked them up and counted them.

“Ten… five… ten…” He handed them to the men and said, “Twenty-five. Make no mistake about that. Because I’m Jeong Wonsam. And I paid.”

16

He thrust his rank head of hair over the ledger of the money collector and ran his finger down the page as though he was looking for his name. The money collectors jerked back as if they’d touched a hot stove, and shot a glare at Wonsam. Only then did Wonsam grin bashfully, flashing his yellow teeth.

“Am I not on the list?”

The men laughed with him, but suddenly became somber again and left without a word.

I know. I’ll go ask the lady now, thought Wonsam. But after he slung his A-frame on his back and carefully made his way through the mud to the dugout, Wonsam’s courage flagged as he remembered Seondal.

“Seondal, have you left?” called Wonsam. “…”

“Some flood.” “…”

Wonsam thought it strange that no one replied, and peered inside. The next moment, he jerked back and leaned against the dugout wall. The woman was lying half naked on the floor breastfeeding the child. Seondal was already gone. His heart was racing. Like an ambush, the emotions that he’d been repressing were on the brink of exploding. His throat was too dry to make a sound.

“Ma’am.”

The woman seemed to be sound asleep.

Wonsam cleared his throat and called again, “Ma’am.”

The woman woke with a start and sprang to her feet.

“Who’s there?”

Wonsam slouched as though he wanted to disappear, but it was no use.

“It’s… it’s… me. W-wonsam.”

“What is it?”

“I… um…”

He couldn’t find his words, but smiled to think, Yes, I’m here to ask her a question.

“So… that thing you said… the other day… that is… I have a question for you.”

“What is it?”

“So… what I mean is… I’m sorry to ask you this… ma’am… but… will you really… um… go into the fortress?”

“What are you saying, old man?” the woman asked suspiciously.

“Well… ma’am… You said last evening. Uh… if you would come… if I got a room inside the fortress… I’m… gonna find one right now.”

“Oh, haha,” the woman laughed and then heaved a sigh. “If I could do that with my body, I’d have nothing to worry about.”

“Really?” cried Wonsam, his eyes shining. “Then, uh, I’ll be back.”

17

The rumor that Wonsam and Seondal’s wife had an affair began to spread around Toseongnang after Deogil’s old wife witnessed this very scene. The old woman, who was clinging to the last vestiges of her sanity, cackled lasciviously with her eyes like black beans shining on her dirty, wrinkled face. Wonsam jumped at the sound and turned to find the old woman running in the direction of the earthen fortress as though she’d sprouted wings.

From then on, each time the old woman met someone, she would say in a hushed voice, “Hey, you there.” She would wave her brown hand at them and ask, “Have you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“What do you mean, ‘What?’ You still don’t know?” Then she would approach them eyes twinkling, cupping her hands over their ears and whisper, “Wonsam and Seondal’s wife rubbed bellies with each other.”

Seondal’s illness took a turn for the worse after the rumor reached him. His sunken eyes grew even more gaunt, and his lips were perpetually chapped white.

Unlike before, he left at dawn in spite of the rain for two, three days in a row. And he dragged his feet along the streets at dawn where the thick misty rain cast yellow rings around lampposts, the marketplace where carts loaded with vegetables or melons came and went, or the Daedonggang River dock slowly being soaked in the rain. He would sometimes stop abruptly as though startled, or mumble to himself.

Seondal often thought of his hometown. He tried to banish the bad memories by quietly shaking his head, but before he knew it, he was picturing the vast paddies of his hometown. It was a town with acacia trees on the hillsides. When he was young, he used to sing as he rode the ox home along the paddy ridges after cutting hay.

There was planting in the spring, weeding in the summer, and harvesting in the fall. A row of several farmers was bent down in the middle of the field and sang farmer work songs as they went down the rows. Women with large baskets on their heads would stand on the paddy ridge waving and yell, like music to his ears, “Where are you?

Lunchtime!”

In the winter, men went to town to sell the rice, the bell of the ox-drawn cart jingling loudly in their wake. But this quiet, happy life did not last. An invisible, enormous force slowly stole their livelihood from them, and their lives became impoverished. What little leased land they could cultivate was sold by the landowner, and Seondal had become a mere poor tenant farmer. It wasn’t long before he received notice that his tenancy was over. It was the end of the summer. The ripe crops bowed deeply in the fields. Seondal gnashed his teeth in despair and anger, and sparks flew from his eyes.

His wife had gone to the land agent to beg. He remembered what she’d looked like when she returned late at night: she was stricken with fear, her hair unkempt, her blouse wrinkled, and her white skin visible through her blouse. He’d wondered how hard she’d begged that she returned looking so disheveled.

18

Seondal suddenly woke up from his daydreaming and shook his head hard, as if to shake off a nightmare. Slowly, he pulled out a small pipe from his breast pocket. When my tenancy was restored thanks to my vulgar wife who sold herself for it, I should have killed her and killed myself, too. But instead, I was dragged away from the village.

Seondal was passing under the awning of a warehouse down by the river when he tripped on something and jumped back. Someone was lying on the ground with a straw sack over his face. Seondal thought he saw the person twitch. When the man under the straw sack groaned and stretched his neck out, Seondal was so horrified that he took off, nearly tripping as he ran. It was the stutterer. Seondal felt as if he’d seen his own future.

To free himself from the terrifying image, Seondal kept himself busy with work all day.

As a result, he was able to bring home rice for several days without relying on Wonsam’s help.

One night, Seondal was in an exceptionally good mood as he whispered to his wife, “I’m starting warehouse work in two days.”

Her eyes grew wide. Warehouse work was only available to union members. Aframe porters or migrant workers were not permitted to hold warehouse positions.

“You’re allowed to do that?”

“A man offered to help.”

Seondal had run into Byeonggil, a man from his hometown, on his way home.

Byeonggil was a big-boned man who was once a manservant, but was now a union member. Perhaps Byeonggil had felt sorry to see how far Seondal had fallen, for he said he’d go out of his way to find Seondal a position at the warehouse. Seondal was speechless. He was so dejected that he was in such dire circumstances that he had to ask a former manservant for help.

“Come to the warehouse at four in the morning the day after tomorrow,” Byeonggil patted him several times on his frail shoulder and, laughing, disappeared around a corner.

“It pays three yen. Byeonggil said so.” Beaming, Seondal whispered to his wife.

“You saw Byeonggil?” She quietly exclaimed.

Seondal was very still as he looked at his wife in the dark. Then he nodded.

Chapter 5 It rained again for two days thereafter.

Tonseongnang floated in the middle of the flood like a whale surfacing in the middle of a vast ocean. A row of poplars stood along its spine; the wind laden with cold moisture sometimes shook its leaves. Fog seeped through the surrounding area and the noonday sun hung in the misty sky. The flooded area already looked like an ocean, and the strong currents were swallowing the vegetable fields, rice paddies, and other crops.

Only a random electrical post or an old tree stood with their heads still above the water.

19

The acacia trees planted along the road to the north were also underwater, and only the long, stone bridge sparkled above the waves.

The murky, red water that started pooling turned into a terrifying current that swept over the earthen fortress and created whirlpools with white foam. The mud walls of flooded dugouts barely had the chance to put up a fight before they caved in and took the roofs with them. Straw roofs floated away in the water. Mice struggled to swim toward land as the cold water carried them away. The dark faces of people in neighboring dugouts appeared to see what the racket was about, and then disappeared again. The middle of the river was still bloated. This meant the water level would continue to rise.

Pillars, furniture, animals, and stable roofs bobbed in the waves as they flowed away in the rapids. And to the south where the wreckage was headed, a wide-open view sparkled like the sea.

The swamp to the east of the earthen fortress had turned into a lake, and the slaughterhouse was also flooded. Several dozen men were trying to evacuate the pigs from a pen with a wooden fence around it. They jumped around in the excrement and mud shouting something unintelligible to the pigs as the black hogs squealed at the top of their lungs and ran for the railroad on higher ground across the street. The black train that had just blown its whistle as it went by turned slowly around the bend, wary of the water that had all but reached the tracks. Beyond all this was the tall, red, imposing prison and the city represented by the forest of chimneys quietly looking on.

A hawk spread its wings and flew down from high above, headed for the slaughterhouse. It circled the sky once, its greedy beak poised to attack, then suddenly retracted its neck, wiped its beak with its claws, folded its wings like a fan, and shot straight down. It was as fast as an arrow. It had gotten quite close to the herd of hogs when it turned its course and flew up into the sky again. In the sky, the heavy clouds were gone, and only humid winds wandered above the flood. Tens of thousands of dragonflies flew about the earthen fortress as if they were planning to cast a net over it.

Wonsam was too distracted to work. He sometimes sighed heavily as he packed his wooden pillow, rubber boots, and socks soiled black in his oil drum, getting ready to leave. But he couldn’t simply roll up his straw mat and quickly move on like everyone else. He hadn’t found himself a room inside the fortress, yet, even though he’d spent the last three days wandering everywhere and knocking on every door in search of a room.

“Please, I would like a room to let,” Wonsam bowed, rubbed his hands, and begged time after time. He was sure he could afford a room for 45 yen a month, but no one heard him out. An old woman from what seemed like a fallen family looked at him with suspicious eyes and asked, “How many family members?”

Wonsam was so delighted that he exclaimed, “Four including a child. The house floated away in the flood.” He’d said they were four without meaning to.

“That won’t do,” said the old woman and retreated into the house, dusting the seat of her skirt. Wonsam had the door slammed in his face, and was angry at himself for not saying it was just two – he and the woman. Wonsam entered the gate of another house 20

and told himself that from then on, he’d say that they were just two. But no one else asked, they simply chased him out of their yard. He had no choice but to wander up and down the streets again. Outside the government building, bank, and pagoda, people from the country who’d lost their homes and crops in the flood were squatting in hordes. He sympathized with them, which made him more determined to stay in Toseongnang even if it meant clinging to the last bit of dry land. The earthen fortress was known for its annual flood. Dugout residents flowed into the fortress with no place to go each time the fortress flooded. When the flood retreated, the homeless inside the fortress returned to build dugouts again. And thus, the cycle went on. The dimwitted Wonsam realized only then that their dugout would certainly float away. The murky water had already come up to within a few feet of his and Seondal’s dugout. Cold rose from the water and gave Wonsam the chills.

Wonsam crawled out of his dugout and looked vacantly up at the sky. When he looked down and saw a piece of his wall fallen off, he became unspeakably gloomy. The wall was so completely soaked with water that it was no use trying to patch it up with a new layer of mud. He tried reinforcing the base of the wall so that the water flowing down from higher ground would not take the wall down, but Wonsam felt no joy in this construction work.

He sometimes sighed at the sight of Seondal’s dugout, which seemed moments away from collapsing. He felt he ought to fix it right away, but something held him back.

What was Seondal’s plan? He had been leaving for the warehouse at three in the morning, apparently unconcerned about the state of his dugout. The woman, whatever she was doing, stayed hidden inside the dugout all day and did not show her face. Since the rumor about them started going around, Wonsam had not had the chance to sit down with Seondal and his wife to discuss future plans. Each time Wonsam approached her, she would wave him away.

“Don’t come closer. People are watching.”

Wonsam had crossed his arms in response and, his broad chest exposed, nodded his bearded chin up and down.

A handful of dugout residents with their paraphernalia in tow evacuated over the stone bridge to the north. An old man with a dark, gaunt face bent down and poked his dugout with a stick to see if there was anything else he’d forgotten to bring. Seeing this, Wonsam was seized with a blinding despair.

Just then, he heard a commotion from behind. He turned to look up at the earthen fortress and froze where he stood. Dugout residents were rushing toward him carrying a bloodied man who seemed to be a laborer. Wonsam jumped to his feet with a horrid premonition. It was Seondal. His bandaged head was bobbing like a grasshopper over the shoulder of the man carrying him.

“Get out of the way!” Someone shouted.

They flocked toward Seondal’s dugout. Some of them stood outside the dugout, blocking the entrance and gesticulating wildly as they continued their raucous exchange.

21

Paralyzed by a terrible fear, Wonsam was momentarily unable to lift even a finger.

He was huffing in agony and felt he was about to collapse. But he gingerly approached them, determined. He stood in front of Seondal’s dugout his feet firmly planted in the ground, and calmly said, “Let me through.”

The cause of the tragic event was that the other laborers caught wind of the job at the warehouse. Around four in the morning, about thirty warehouse laborers worked in a tense atmosphere, afraid even to breathe too loudly. They had done a good portion of the work by the time the sun was starting to rise. Once they’d emptied over a third of the crops in the warehouse, there was no one outside to send them more.

But around seven in the morning, a few union members discovered that there was work available at the warehouse that they did not get. Warehouse work was an excellent but rare opportunity, and those who missed out were bound to become jealous, resentful, and eventually aggressive. So the thirty who did get the job had to keep their heads down and move quickly as the rest of the union members intimidated them with hostile looks and insults. Two people loaded a large bag of rice on one person, and the worker holding the lantern had to light the way down a long, wooden plank off the ship to the warehouse.

Seondal was, of course, beside himself with anxiety and agitation. He had no right to be there to begin with. He was too weak to do anything else but be the lantern carrier, which made him feel doubly, triply guilty, on top of which the union members had turned up to hurl insults at them. Seondal was so consumed with his guilty conscience and the fear of being found out that he would have dived into a mouse hole if he could. When Seondal was caught by a dark-faced man who grabbed him by the arm, Seondal had punched him and knocked him down in the heat of the moment. The two wrestled each other to the ground, and a crowd gathered around them to shout insults and egg them on.

Thanks to Byeonggil’s swift intervention, the fight was quickly broken up.

Seondal kept his wits about him and was hardly injured. But when Byeonggil helped him off the ground, a great sadness welled up inside him. He frowned hard and clenched his teeth, but warm tears ran down the corners of his mouth.

Seondal climbed up the plank shakily. He had to make money today, no matter what.

“Give me a bag!” He cried.

The men were taken aback, but were subdued by Seondal’s compelling intent that they loaded him with a bag of grain. He began to stagger down the plank. It required a strength beyond his imagining. Heavy drops of sweat dripped from his forehead as he made his way down the plank with a look on his face like he was inches away from death.

Perhaps he’d wanted to show everyone that he was just as capable of hard work as anyone else. He felt his back was about to crack in half and his legs were shaking. The load was far too heavy for him.

At the blink of an eye, Seondal saw the world spin before him as though he was standing on the edge of a cliff, then everything went dark. That was the end of Seondal.

22

Flies big and small buzzed around Seondal’s body. No one – the deceased nor the mourners – tried to shoo them away. Seondal lay in his blood-soaked shirt and pants, his slight torso bandaged, his legs as black as branches, blood still glistening on his closed eyes below the bandage, and his nostrils were stuffed with cotton. Deeply saddened by the gruesome state in which Seondal lay, Wonsam gazed at him with terrified eyes unable to move from where he stood.

Byeonggil, who’d carried Seondal home, sat on the ground with his legs folded on his hands on his knees, staring absently at the wailing widow. He had pockmarks on the side of his nose, and his face twitched from time to time.

The woman blinked her red, irritated eyes as she wept. She threw herself on her dead husband’s body and begged for forgiveness. The child was exhausted from crying.

He had tears streaming down from his grimy face, past his protruding ribs, down to his round belly.

“Why did you die? What am I supposed to do now?” cried the woman, her shoulders shaking.

“Take it easy,” said Byeonggil. “No use crying over this now. You and the child won’t starve to death, I assure you.”

She began to wail louder still. Wonsam’s hands shook and his expression shifted as he stared at Beyonggil. Where did this guy come from? He wanted to know. Byeonggil was wearing a faint, enigmatic smile on his face. Wonsam went over to the woman and clumsily tried to comfort her, his breath short and his gestures graceless.

“This is very sad for me, too. I’ll give Seondal a proper burial tomorrow. You can come along. I’ve been to Bemisan Mountain a few times for burials.”

The woman stopped crying when she heard this. At this, Wonsam gained courage and continued. He’d seen that he was able to stop her crying whereas the strange man’s words of comfort had only made her cry even harder.

“And it’s dangerous here now, so it’d be best to move inside the fortress. I’ve been looking for a room and couldn’t find one, but I will, uh, definitely find one.”

Wonsam was triumphant that what he’d said was three times as long as what the strange man had said.

Deogil, who’d been sitting quietly in mourning, began to wince as if some part of his body was aching. He then clenched his teeth, crossed his stroke-impaired legs, paused like a broken clock, and said, “What have I done to deserve this?”

The woman let out a deep sigh so as to hold back her feelings. Nevertheless, she immediately began to wail so hard that it seemed she was having a fit.

On the top of the earthen fortress, rescue brigades were waving red flags.

“Evacuate over to the bridge! The earthen fortress is coming down! Hurry!”

The dugout residents rushed up to the earthen fortress, one after the other. They thought they would prefer a watery grave, but they found themselves heading for the bridge all the same. They were being dragged to safety by a will to live that was as strong as chains. People heard the woman’s savage wailing as they walked by Seondal’s dugout.

23

“It’s over… it’s over… it’s over…”

On the other side of the earthen fortress, the hoarse voice of the crazy old woman rang like a reverberating gong.

“Kidnappers! Go away! Go away!” The voice grew fainter as it chased the men in suits far away.

Chapter 6 Wonsam slowly crawled out of his dugout to the shouts of the rescue bridge. The earthen fortress was deserted now. Suddenly afraid, he slowly climbed up the hill. When he got to the top, he stood off to the side with his jaw clenched. The sunset was undulating in red waves on the river that filled his view. The vivid spectacle sliced the current lengthwise and came toward the earthen fortress. Rain clouds were gathered above the jagged peaks of Yongaksan Mountain off to the west, and the sun hung above it like a globe suspended in the air by a magician.

Wonsam squinted hard in the sunlight. His large, thick lips distorted. White lights glittered at the corners of his large eyes.

A flock of swallows flew over midstream. Scores of swallows soared up into the sky in unison and seemed to be flapping their wings with a golden halo around them, then instantly alighted again like leaves scattering in the stormy winds. The roof of a hut turned widthwise and lengthwise like a hippopotamus as it swam along in the clamorous currents. The flock of swallows saw this and quickly landed on it.

Suddenly, what remained of the diagonal evening light vanished. Toseongnang was as quiet as if something had died. There wasn’t a single person to be seen, not even a shadow, the shouts of the mad old woman were also gone, and the cries of the animals from the slaughterhouse had ceased as well. The poplar leaves shook in the wind without making a sound. Only the murky waters tumbled on noisily. It was a moment of stillness.

Wonsam thought he was imagining the sinister sound of something whooshing somewhere. It seemed to be getting louder. Had the southern end of the earthen fortress begun to give out? Was it the sound of the rapids rushing toward the swamp to the east?

Wonsam stared numbly at the currents when he felt he, too, was being swept away. He felt his head spin. He planted his feet firmly in the ground to stop himself from falling over, but his heart beat violently as though it was tied to a stone oil mill.

“Seondal is dead. What’s going to happen to his wife and child?” Wonsam made a fiercely determined face and said to himself, “I will truly repay him for all he’s done for me. I will help them.”

Wonsam wanted to believe that this was the only way for him to repay Seondal, and Seondal’s surviving family had no one to depend on except Wonsam. The woman… the woman… A fresh bliss came over Wonsam, who smiled from ear to ear. His warm feelings for her were already aglow in his heart. But his daydreams were shattered 24

immediately by a vision of the blood-soaked Seondal. His blood-crusted lips twitched, and his mouth opened to reveal two bloody rows of teeth as he tried to push words out.

Wonsam stumbled back a few steps and held his breath. He managed to pull himself together and looked around nervously. He saw the shadows of two people approaching him. It was already getting dark. One shadow seemed to belong to a limping old man leaning on a cane. The other shadow seemed to belong to the old woman. She was carrying a large bundle and grumbling to herself. The Ajinomoto spice tin in her hand flashed red once. It was Deogil and his wife. They were also heading toward the stone bridge to save their lives.

Wonsam froze where he stood, feeling he was caught red-handed. Deogil recognized Wonsam and came up to within inches of Wonsam waving his coal-black hand in his face.

“You are wasting your time,” he said, catching his raspy breath. “It’s time to go.

Get a move on.”

The mad old woman flashed a toothy grin. “Lecher, hehehe… Feeling blue?” She cackled as she ran ahead.

The couple disappeared north along the dark path. The clanking of the tin pail made an eerie sound each time Deogil tripped. The bridge was lit with dim streetlamps of equal heights that cast long rays of light on the flood. As if suddenly bewildered, the inside of the fortress was a sea of light.

Wonsam stood in his place for a long time, as if he’d lost his mind. In the meantime, the sound of the current grew ever louder, ready to swallow the earthen fortress whole. The sound of a nameless bird noisily settling down in its nest for the night came from the poplar tree. All of a sudden, Wonsam instinctively fell flat on the ground and, stricken with terror, held still with his face to the ground.

He’d heard a loud noise that shook the ground. The end of the earthen fortress about a meter away had finally given out and collapsed underwater. The water splashed up a dozen feet high. It created a burst of silver in the dark. The rumbling sound of dirt being washed away came from nearby, and then another thunderous roar came tearing through the stillness. The earthen fortress was coming down. The current attacked the weak spots all at once and, howling, it poured toward the lower grounds eastward. The ground shook, explosive noises resounded, and the rushing water sounded like a waterfall.

A chill shot down Wonsam’s back. He curled his back and groaned as he grabbed fistfuls of mud. He did not even try to get up on his feet. I must get to her and get her out of here, he thought. But he could not get up. He lifted his hip, extended his leg forward, and tried to find his footing. His hands slipped on the mud and, within seconds, he’d slipped a few feet down a muddy slope. Below that was the terrifying current. He tried to crawl on his knees, but his knees slipped as well.

“Ma’am!” Wonsam screamed.

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The woman heard him and looked out. But by then, he was already a dark object tumbling down the hill. The woman and Byeonggil ran out of the dugout, but it was too late. All they could hear was a splash as he hit the water.

“Wonsam! Wonsam!”

The faint shadow of Wonsam was already floating away. The woman screamed as she ran alongside him. Byeonggil followed, his feet splashing in the water. Wonsam was from the mountains and knew nothing about water. He wasn’t far away from the slope, so he sometimes tried to jump out of the water by kicking the ground. It also sounded like he was trying to say something. He screamed – Ah! Ah! – as he swallowed water. He was able to get a few words out.

“Ma’am! Get… out of… there! Ah! Ah!” “Wonsam! Wonsam!”

The woman ran, shouting as hard as she could, sometimes tumbling forward or slipping on her back and getting back up.

“Ah! Ah!” “Wonsam! Hang on! Wonsam!”

“Get… get out of there!”

His voice drowned, and he was never heard again. The water was red and the river was black. A white object bobbed out of the water a few times as it was swept further into the deep waters. The whirling current licked like a tongue. Tottering, the woman continued to run with all her might.

“No! It’s dangerous! Watch out!” Byeonggil, who was running ahead of her, stopped her by hugging her tight. She tried to free herself by thrashing about. But one foot ahead of her, someone’s collapsed dugout blocked the way. It was too late to help him. Wonsam was already a dozen yards away. A whirlpool pulled him under, pushed him up and down the surface a few times, and swallowed him for good.

The woman buried her face in Byeonggil’s chest. Byeonggil stood for a long while, looking desperately at the spot far away where Wonsam disappeared. The murky water continued to flow triumphantly, forming a disheartening current. From a distance, the sound of another corner of the earthen fortress collapsing made a ghostly roar.

A few days later, on the night of the sixteenth, the moon rose and the current spread its demonic limbs in the golden moonlight.

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