The rumors swept Sŏdanggol overnight: Maktong’s father had gone to the upper village to buy an ox and had gotten mixed up in gambling again. And this time he had sold his family’s home, their old, run-down thatched-roof house. It surprised no one that the buyer was said to be the new landlord, Chŏn P’ilsu. One of the local elders, Song Saengwŏn, said he had seen Maktong’s father come back home the previous evening—that’s when he must have sold off the house. All the villagers who heard this assumed that Maktong’s father had sold cheap—if you were a buyer, would you offer a fair price to someone who was desperate to get back to the gambling table? And they assumed that even the proceeds from the house had ultimately been blown. After all, Maktong’s father’s opponent, a gambler from other parts, was said to know every trick in the book. But according to a second rumor, Maktong’s father was cleaning out this man using the money from the house sale. At the same time, it was reported that at Maktong’s family’s home, when the grandfather heard that his son had sold the house he had lamented, “We’re wiped out,” pounding the ground in frustration, and had said that if he caught sight of his son he would cut his throat with the sickle, whose blade he had sharpened to a fine edge.
True to the rumors in Sŏdanggol, Maktong’s father had indeed used all the money for the ox to gamble, had lost that money, and had proceeded to sell off the family’s house plot along with the vegetable plot. And the buyer, the man newly arrived in the village, who the previous April had purchased Min Ch’angho’s paddy and dry fields together, was Chŏn P’ilsu. But in one particular the rumors were wrong: although the land had in fact changed hands, the dilapidated house had not. And contrary to the villagers’ supposition, the purchase price was fair, consistent with the current market. In this respect Chŏn’s sense of propriety was different from that of the average person.
Chŏn P’ilsu had been different from the day he arrived in Sŏdanggol to purchase Min Ch’angho’s house and his paddy and dry fields, at a time when news of the land reform in the northern sector of the peninsula was making the rounds. More than others, Chŏn had long harbored a passion for owning farmland. Witnessing from an early age the hardships and hunger of his father and grandfather slaving away on their measly tenant plot, he had always kept in mind the thought that someday, somehow, he would have himself a healthy amount of farmland. He had operated a small secondhand shop in Seoul, but with Liberation in August 1945 he had skillfully brokered items belonging to the Japanese, and his thoughts had immediately returned to land. With farmland he could expect over time to receive 30 percent of the crop from his tenants, and even if land reform were to come about here in the south, it wouldn’t be like the land reform in the north, which involved confiscation without compensation. And so he decided he would buy farmland at rock-bottom prices. At this time he happened to hear from a broker about the plots belonging to Min and his family. Chŏn had only recently gone down to the countryside from Seoul to look into the land situation. There in Sŏdanggol he had met Song Saengwŏn, who had told him that Min and his family had been run out of town shortly after Liberation and had moved to Seoul, and that Min had declared he would never again come face to face with the ignorant, ingrate farmers who had driven him off. Here we go, Chŏn had said to himself. A disadvantaged seller would sell, and he could buy, for a rock-bottom price. And in succeeding to the position of a landlord who had been run out of town, he could win the hearts of the local people just by doing a little bit of good. Buy, Chŏn told himself. Drive down the price and buy.
In this way Chŏn had acquired Min’s land for a rock-bottom price. And from the day he settled in Sŏdanggol, he had continued to amaze the villagers he met by the way he conducted himself with them. When he had come earlier to investigate the farmland situation, he had first visited Song Saengwŏn and had addressed him most appropriately with great respect, even asking Song not to speak deferentially to him. And with the villagers in general, if his counterpart was even slightly older he would confer the old-time title of Saengwŏn and treat the person very respectfully. This could not but surprise the villagers, because Min, the former landlord, by contrast, had talked down to all of them, with one exception—Maktong’s grandfather, who unlike the other villagers was not completely dependent on Min. And even to him, Min’s reluctant attempts at polite speech came across as mumbling.
Chŏn had devoted considerable thought to these matters. Among the multitude of reasons the previous landlord, Min, had been run out of the village, the most important would have been that he had made no attempt to mix with the villagers. Wasn’t there something to be learned from this, even though not all the previous landlords had been run out of the village? So the first thing for Chŏn to do was get comfortable with the villagers, and the best means to this end, he decided, was alcohol. Chŏn himself was not a heavy drinker, but starting with Song Saengwŏn, and afterward as the occasion arose, he treated the village elders to drinks.
The efficacy of this policy soon became apparent. Shortly after Liberation the young men of the village, together with a group of young strangers from the town nearby, had vandalized the house in which Min was living, leaving it in ruins. But when the time came for Chŏn to move in and he had to restore the house, the only people he ended up having to pay for their labor were Big Nose the carpenter and a plasterer. The others, tenant farmers, all volunteered their labor for the various tasks.
Chŏn himself turned out to help with the repairs. On one such day his eyes came to rest on the house where Maktong’s family lived. It was an old thatched-roof dwelling whose left side was leaning precariously forward. If it were to collapse, the rock wall that helped retain the rainwater in back of Chŏn’s house would be breached. This wall and Maktong’s family’s house were practically touching. Chŏn had had a feeling about that house when he’d first arrived to check out farmland: the day he settled in this area, he would have to buy that thatched-roof house and the land it sat on. His intention was not simply to expand the landholdings in back of his house. Rather, by adding that other lot, and its spacious vegetable patch, to his own, he would have himself a nice square plot of some five hundred p’yŏng to cultivate. He would put the land and the vegetable plot of that thatched-roof house to use. Fruit trees could be planted there, and next to them subsistence crops. And when the trees were fully grown, the yield in fruit would fetch a nice income. Besides, even if land reform went into effect in the future, the land that you yourself cultivated would remain yours, so the best policy for a man like him, who couldn’t do much in the way of labor-intensive farming, was to make the fruit trees behind his house his own, which he could do by tending to them regularly. So when the opportunity came to buy that house and its land, he would act upon it, he told himself.
Min had also been interested in purchasing this land. Min’s motive, though, was that the land in back of his house was too small and he needed more space. So he had sent a few elderly sharecroppers to visit Maktong’s grandfather, and then he had torn down his old house, intending to replace it with a modern one complete with slanted eaves attached to the rafters. This was five or six years ago, and by that time he was sending his messengers to Maktong’s grandfather practically every day, but they were sent back empty-handed. And then the previous year, Maktong’s grandfather, who had farmed his own land until then, had begun sharecropping Min’s dry fields, but he remained attached to the land on which his own house sat and to his vegetable patch, and he declared he would be dead and buried before he would let anybody buy them. What was Min to do about this pig-headed old man, the one person he had failed to get in his clutches? Well, for starters, the new house he had built was a massive tile-roof structure, and there it sat, right alongside Maktong’s family’s house, looming over and dwarfing it, as if to say, Try this on for size; how much longer do you think you can hold out?
Chŏn had a plan for buying Maktong’s family’s land, but his method was altogether different from Min’s. When it came to buying land, Chŏn would not rush into a deal, whether through intermediaries or otherwise; it was best, he thought, to wait for the right opportunity. And with Maktong’s family’s land, he never once hinted to others of his intentions, even when he was treating them to drinks. He had decided to wait until the time was right, and he believed that that time would ultimately arrive. And it did, unexpectedly soon, when Maktong’s father appeared before him in person to offer the precious land.
Chŏn had been unaware till then that Maktong’s father gambled. And in fact Maktong’s father had given up gambling more than a year earlier—it didn’t seem that long ago—and by now his habit was no longer a topic of conversation among the villagers. What Maktong’s father had to say when he showed up at Chŏn’s door he said matter-of-factly: an ox was for sale in the upper village, and he was a bit shy of the money he needed to buy it—would Chŏn advance him some money if he put up his land as security?
Chŏn was well aware that this was not the time of year to be arranging mortgages or lending money, but he also realized that if he really wanted that land, he couldn’t very well come right out and suggest that Maktong’s father sell it to him. So he merely said that he had no money to lend. Maktong’s father grew anxious when he heard this. But then he remembered how Min had tried to buy his family’s land—maybe this new landlord would be similarly inclined. And so it was Maktong’s father who broached the issue: “Then why don’t you buy our land?” The bait was set. Chŏn feigned reluctance, saying that if Maktong’s father really intended to buy the ox, then it so happened that he did have some money he’d been planning to use to buy an ox cart (for working the two plots of well-irrigated paddy he had begun cultivating that year); maybe he could use that money. As for a price, Chŏn decided not to try to negotiate and instead went along with Maktong’s father’s proposal of ten wŏn per p’yŏng. That way there would be no bad aftertaste, as there would if he were to persuade Maktong’s father to lower the price. He considered asking Maktong’s father to include their run-down house in the deal, but ultimately thought better of it. Not only did he have no use for the house in the first place, he had no need to buy with the intention of demolishing it because it would probably collapse within the year anyway and then Maktong’s family would most likely have to rebuild it. And judging from the timber in the corner of their yard, the family knew they would soon have to rebuild, and when that time came, he would provide them a house site elsewhere. And if by chance there were no suitable site, then perhaps the farming shack built by the previous landlord in the lower village, which Chŏn now owned, could be sold to them cheaply.
But when at the same moment Maktong’s father realized he was finally going to unload his family’s land, the image of his father’s frightfully angry face came to mind, and he closed his eyes in an attempt to block it out. I have to win a jackpot with this stake. Then I’ll get the family land back, and just like in the old days we’ll have enough land to work on our own—that’s all I’m hoping for. Maktong’s father was sure that with this stake he would win, so he quickly proposed that if he could not buy the ox, then the very next day he would return the money and Chŏn should give him back the land. Chŏn willingly agreed. From now on, he would have to bend a little in his dealings with the villagers, just as he was doing now. It would be to his future advantage to do so. And this is how Maktong’s family’s land changed hands. The rumor that the buyer had no good reason to offer a fair price, because Maktong’s father was desperate to sell, was inaccurate.
It was understandable that the two different rumors had arisen about Maktong’s father: that he had gambled away all the money he had raised from selling the land, and that he had made a clean sweep at the gambling table. In fact, early on he lost almost all of his stake. But then he won several hands in a row and was comfortably ahead. As always, though, he didn’t know when to stop, and he began to lose again. Generally speaking, when a man’s family is ruined because of his gambling, it’s because the man doesn’t know when to stop—it all depends on that. When your pockets are empty you have the illusion that if only you have a stake you can empty your opponents’ pockets, and you’ll do anything to get that stake; after you’ve won a good sum of money you feel you’re going to clean up, and in the end you can’t stop yourself—and although this demonstrates how greedy people can be and how strong the lure of gambling is, Maktong’s father was especially vulnerable, and incapable of seizing an opportunity to quit. In comparison, Kaptŭk’s father, a villager nicknamed Slit Eyes because his eyes were narrow like a crow tit’s, was quick-witted and knew when to stop. When Slit Eyes’s losses reached a certain amount he would withdraw for a while and look on, saying he was waiting for his lucky streak to arrive. The way he put it, if you got agitated after losing money, you were as good as done. After a time he would notice that the luck had run from one man to another, and at that point he would join in again. And when after winning a certain amount he started to lose again, he would leave, saying he had to use the bathroom. When it came to luck, he would tell you, it went to one man for a while and then to another man, so when you had won for a while and then began to lose, it was a sign that the luck had begun to move to another player, and the best policy was to withdraw. Slit Eyes would take his earnings home, then head back to the gambling table with his original stake. In this way he became an uncommonly skillful gambler, one who could support his family on his earnings.
Slit Eyes’s feel for gambling was something Maktong’s father had always lacked. Such was the situation when Maktong’s father took on the card player from out of town. True to the one rumor, he lost almost all his money. But then he won for a time, then he began to lose again, and his fortunes proceeded to go back and forth, but after his initial reverse he was never far from breaking even. The following day passed, the day when Maktong’s father was to have returned the money to Chŏn and reclaimed his land. But by then Maktong’s father’s only thoughts were of the next hand; the gambling bout was still going on. Slit Eyes for his part was keeping tabs, joining in and then dropping out, playing for a while and then withdrawing, and when he had sufficient winnings he made sure they stayed in his pocket. At first Maktong’s father didn’t like it that Slit Eyes was playing—he thought it was bad luck—but Slit Eyes kept to his routine, and as Maktong’s father became ever more consumed with the play of the cards, he ceased to pay attention to what Slit Eyes was up to.
When Maktong’s father gambled he was like a man possessed. The end of a gambling bout would leave him with his face drawn, his body languid, as if he had just recovered from a high fever. And he would drink, as if alcohol were a kind of medication. Once, after one of these bouts, Maktong’s father had had his fill of drink and proceeded to cut off the tip of his right thumb with a fodder chopper. To a gambler the right thumb is the most important digit. At the critical moment in a hand, when each plays his final card, it’s the thumb that keeps that card from showing. And if that card doesn’t win the hand, the gambler inevitably curses the thumb, as if it were responsible for the outcome. It was this offending thumb that Maktong’s father had mutilated. This had happened sometime before Liberation, when a rumor had reached the upper village that two young men from other parts were throwing their money around in the local gambling den. This was all Maktong’s father needed to hear, and off he went. Sure enough, the two men, who appeared to be in their early twenties, had a seemingly endless supply of cash. For a while Maktong’s father was winning, but when the following day dawned he had lost his entire stake. Maktong’s father hurried home, saw that his father was out, stole one of his beehives, and returned to the upper village to sell it. But the proceeds were soon gone. He returned home again, intending to sell one of the two remaining hives. If he were ever caught sneaking off with one of the beehives to which his father was so devoted, there would be instant calamity, but Maktong’s father was no longer mindful of that possibility. Fortunately, this time too his father was out. He was leaving with the beehive when his seven-year-old daughter Chŏmsun opened the door from the family room and looked out, only to close the door the next moment.
By the time Maktong’s father returned to the upper village the two young gamblers, who, it turned out, had come from the city of Taejŏn, had disappeared. But instead of taking the beehive back home, he sold it and drank with the proceeds. Some five days later, when he was finally about to return home, another rumor arrived in the upper village: the two young men from Taejŏn were notorious crooks, gambling cheats. Finally, Maktong’s father realized he had been taken. He who had been gambling practically since he was old enough to count—a period of more than twenty years—had been cheated by two guys still wet behind the ears. Why hadn’t he caught them cheating? He would have wrung their necks on the spot! But gradually his anger was displaced by a feeling of shame—he had been disgraced. Damned if I’ll ever touch a card again! The next moment he had rushed outside and chopped off his thumb. And from then on he wouldn’t go near a gambling table. The villagers said that now that Maktong’s father was approaching age forty, the age of wisdom, he seemed finally to be acting like a man should act. Among them Song Saengwŏn praised Maktong’s father, telling the story of another gambler who had cut off his thumb, saying he would never again touch the cards, but before the wound had healed this man was gambling again, and complaining he had cut off his thumb in vain because now he couldn’t use it and all he had gotten out of it was pain. In truth Maktong’s grandfather would not have seen fit to entrust his son with money to buy an ox if his son had seemed less than fully cured of his gambling fever. But it did appear that he was one hundred percent cured.
And so it was most peculiar how Maktong’s father had become involved in this latest gambling bout. He had gone to the upper village, and when he located the man who was selling the ox, the man told him he had just sold it to another man from Sŏdanggol, who was going to slaughter it for meat; this other man would be coming back for the ox, and Maktong’s father should talk with him then. Maktong’s father decided to wait inside the gambling den for the man to return, but to his misfortune he saw that a round of gambling was under way, a high-stakes game involving the man from out of town. Before he knew it, he had joined in. When the buyer of the ox returned and told Maktong’s father that he was willing to sell it, his words had fallen on deaf ears.
The news about Maktong’s father’s gambling woes came from the ox-slaughtering man, and the news about the sale of his family’s land came from Chŏn P’ilsu. As soon as Chŏn came to the unexpected realization that Maktong’s father was a gambler, he told himself he had made a mistake. Maktong’s father was old enough to know better, so Chŏn had entered into business with him directly—and to think someone like that was a gambler! He had to be careful and not act rashly. The first thing to do was inform Maktong’s grandfather that he had bought the land. But rather than tell him directly, he decided it was preferable to spread the news and give the grandfather time to get wind of it, and not visit him until he sensed the old man’s anger had cooled. It would be unpleasant if the first thing he did was visit this stubborn old man and be confronted with a denial.
Just as Chŏn had thought, Maktong’s grandfather did not take well to the news. “We’re ruined! You son of a bitch, you deserve to have your throat cut!” He bellowed like a rutting bull, the roars sounding as if at any moment they would bring down the decrepit house. And this was how the rumor started that he was sharpening his sickle to a fine edge to cut his son’s throat. But in truth it was his own throat he felt like cutting. His son had gone and sold their land—it was wishful thinking to hope the family could recover. What remained to them was two plots alone: a tiny paddy that depended on rainwater and drank it up like a sand field, and a rocky dry field. And if that were not bad enough, the previous year his family had felt compelled to begin sharecropping Min Ch’angho’s dry fields. Even so, Maktong’s grandfather had never lost hope that they would somehow be able to get back on their feet again. Now, even that hope had gone up in smoke.
There was no denying that Maktong’s father was to blame for his family’s having to resort to sharecropping the previous year; until then they had been proud, self-sufficient farmers. But their situation also resulted in part from a decision the grandfather had made three years earlier. To pay off a debt, he’d had to hand over to Min Ch’angho a spring-fed paddy. As if this weren’t regrettable enough, he had then sold Min a fertile dry field, and that proved to be a big mistake. Maktong’s grandfather had had it in the back of his mind to use the proceeds from that sale to buy a hilly plot three times as big as the dry field, and then to reclaim that plot and develop it into a productive dry field. Because of all their mouths to feed, the family needed at least that much land to provide them with an adequate supply of grain each year. Maktong’s grandfather considered: there’s no land that’s productive right from the start; it all depends on how you cultivate it. That fertile dry field he had sold wasn’t fertile from the very beginning—it was made fertile by his father, who, winter or summer, went about the village at dawn before anyone else had risen, gathering dog manure to spread on it. This was not an easy task, but then again, he had never seen anything in this world come without effort. Best of all, reclaimed land was exempt from the Japanese grain tax for three years. But as it turned out, developing that hilly plot required several times more labor and effort than he had anticipated. In addition to the grandfather and father, Maktong’s mother and even Maktong and Chŏmsun had to help with uprooting the trees and digging out the rocks.
But in spite of all their labor, when tilling season arrived they still hadn’t cleared the plot of all the roots and rocks, and since they didn’t have access to a plow, they planted their barley crop with shovel and hoe. You couldn’t expect much of a yield in such circumstances, not even enough for seed to plant the following year—though it might have been different had they had enough manure for fertilizer. Since there was no grain tax on reclaimed land, they had initially thought they should fertilize the hilly plot, but if their original dry field didn’t produce and they ended up without enough grain to pay the tax, they would have to supplement it with the yield from the reclaimed land. So whether they fertilized the one plot or the other, the total yield minus the grain tax would be the same. And so the fertilizer ended up going to the original plot, which offered somewhat more assurance of a good yield. As Maktong’s grandfather sowed the barley, he wished and wished he could apply just one sack of that chemical fertilizer they called ammonium nitrate. But that was not something his family could even hope to have. Nothing to do but keep trying to enrich that reclaimed land.
At tilling time the following year, though, they again didn’t have enough manure to go around, and most of it went to the original plot. If there was anything better about that year’s yield, it was the seed grain they had left over to plant the next year. But this was cold comfort when the Japanese colonial administration proceeded to institute a grain tax on reclaimed land. This measure was apparently necessitated by the administration’s desperate need for the county’s grain.
But Maktong’s grandfather continued to believe that his reclaimed land, unlike others’ land, would be somehow exempt—until the officials began to press him for payment. He was told that no matter what, he was responsible for paying his grain tax, the amount of which he had already been notified. In that case, he responded to the officials, they could come and watch at harvest time, and he would give them the entire yield from his reclaimed land. The township superintendent then went into a long spiel about how the grain tax was not meant to deprive the farmer of all his grain; rather, what was left after the family stockpiled enough for its own consumption was offered to the nation. And finally he took Maktong’s grandfather by the shoulders and shook him, asking how he could let his no-good son gamble and yet be unaware of his duty to supply the nation with grain. Maktong’s grandfather made up his mind that he wouldn’t give up a single grain more than what he harvested from the reclaimed land, and if that meant being beaten to death, then so be it. Actually it would be better if his old self were beaten to death, he thought, because if he had to supplement the grain tax on the reclaimed land with grain from the original fields, his entire family would starve. Go ahead, let them beat me to death. But his son and daughter-in-law couldn’t countenance this prospect, and in the end they paid the shortfall from the harvest from the original field.
They couldn’t afford to continue working the reclaimed land. He had to sell it, Maktong’s grandfather told himself. Next year’s grain tax will ruin us—I’ve got to sell. The problem was, who would want to buy it? This was the situation when Min Ch’angho appeared with an offer to buy the hilly plot for the same price Maktong’s family had paid for it. Maktong’s grandfather challenged Min, asking if all the labor they’d put into developing the land shouldn’t be reflected in the purchase price. Min responded by asking if the loss of all the trees they had cut down to use shouldn’t be considered as well. The way things were going, he added, the grain tax would be so bad that even if that worthless piece of land were offered for free, no one would take it. Maktong’s grandfather realized Min was right. There was no other way but to sell it for the price they had paid. His family needed that money to subsist on.
But now there was another worry: which field would they cultivate the following year? And so his family had to begin sharecropping a portion of Min’s land. And in that case, thought Maktong’s grandfather, they might as well work the fertile plot they had sold Min some years back. And so he visited Min and proposed as much. Well, well, Min told himself, the old man is finally under my thumb. I’ve been telling him all along to sell me his house and land, but the stubborn old goat never listens. And then, to see how much he could push the old man, he said that if his family really wanted to sharecrop, then they’d have to do it on the reclaimed land they had sold him. Maktong’s grandfather was in a fix. If they were to work that land, he told Min, they would need a couple of bags of ammonium nitrate. There he was again, up to his tricks, thought Min, but for the sake of the field he reluctantly agreed. He knew that under the old man’s care, that land would develop into a nice field.
Spring came and when Maktong’s grandfather applied ammonium nitrate to the reclaimed land, he imagined that he was sprinkling not fertilizer but what they called granulated sugar—he had seen it at the market some time ago. And as far as the land was concerned, perhaps this powder he was sprinkling was as good as sugar. But just as sugar isn’t as good as honey, the ammonium nitrate wasn’t as good as fertilizer made from ash. So finally this year this piece of land is getting a taste of sugar. As if oblivious to the sad fact that the land he now stood upon no longer belonged to him, he felt gratified that the land was enjoying this sugar he was sprinkling on it.
From the time the seeds began to sprout, the reclaimed land produced as well as the original fields. He weeded, he removed rocks, he trimmed the grass along the raised path through the field, and he lamented over and over, “We can’t even get a handful of this for our own.” There was nothing he could do about it, but he remained regretful nevertheless. At the same time, he was happy to see the grain ripening before his eyes. At least we ought to be able to get some gruel out of it. . . . In the meantime the day of Liberation, August 15, arrived. To Maktong’s family, as to other farming families, Liberation held out the expectation that the grain tax would disappear—as if the grain tax by itself were the cause of their scarcity of clothing and insufficiency of food.
Even after Liberation, Maktong’s grandfather ate only enough to stop his stomach from growling, and he made money by selling grain. At the same time, his honeybees were multiplying and he was able to sell one of the hives. And he scraped every last spoonful of the honey that came from the buckwheat blossoms and sold that as well. Once again it was truly a fine world to be alive in. The family would have to get back on their feet again. And now that his son had made a clean break from his compulsive gambling, what more could he want? For farmers there was nothing besides farming. He even laid in a supply of timber for fixing the house. He scraped together the money he had tucked away from the sale of the reclaimed land along with the coppers he was able to squirrel away, and decided to buy the ox that he had had his heart set on for ten long years. This was the money that Maktong’s father had lost at the gambling table—after which he had sold the house and the land. So you could understand the grandfather’s reaction: “We’re all ruined! That son of a bitch deserves to have his throat cut!”—though it was his own throat he felt like cutting first.
But Maktong’s grandfather didn’t have time to kill himself even if he’d really wanted to. His immediate priority was to do something about those weeds in the rainwater paddy—everywhere it was open to view, all you saw was weeds. The first thing he had to do was go out to the paddy.
One day Chŏn P’ilsu went out to check on the sluice gates of his paddies and saw Maktong’s grandfather off in the distance. Looks like he’s simmered down, he thought. He waited until Maktong’s grandfather had gone home for lunch and paid him a visit.
Maktong’s grandfather had just stepped outside, intending to go back out to the fields. Maktong had come down with malaria, and the old man had decided to dig up some granny flower roots, which were supposed to be good medicine, and send them home with Chŏmsun, who was in tow.
After greeting the old man, Chŏn said, “I’m afraid I’ve made a huge mistake. I never dreamed that Maktong’s father frequented those places. No one in his right mind would have done what I did knowing that. I just now found out. Please, sir, don’t think ill of me. I will cancel my agreement with him right now.”
“Why should I think ill of you? It’s all because that no-good son of mine is in a damnable state of mind. I’m right thankful for your offer, but where am I going to get the money?”
Thinking he had done well to show his generosity in offering to cancel the agreement, Chŏn said, “People are saying I bought very cheaply, your house included, but the house was never part of the bargain, only the land, and I paid ten wŏn a p’yŏng.” By saying this he wanted Maktong’s grandfather to think that even if the money for the land had disappeared by now, he had paid a reasonable price for it. “Well, the price isn’t the point—if I had known what kind of man Maktong’s father is, I wouldn’t have bought at any price,” he added by way of reiterating that Maktong’s grandfather should not think ill of him.
The damnable person in this affair was sure enough his own damned son, Maktong’s grandfather thought. Near the pass behind the village he began digging for granny flower roots, but he couldn’t seem to get this thought out of his mind, and only when Chŏmsun took his arm and said, “Grandfather, what are you doing?” did he realize that he was digging up plants other than granny flowers.
After he had dug up two granny flower roots they went down to the stream, where Maktong’s grandfather washed them as clean as he would have washed a gutted fish. And then, as if he had just begun to feel the hot sun, he left the roots spread out on some grass where they wouldn’t get dirty, took off his clothes, and waded into the water. It would be good to take a dip before going back to work in the paddy.
The water level didn’t come up to a man’s navel, so he had to crouch down in order to get in up to his neck. After giving his face a good splashing of water, he finally seemed more composed and he turned to Chŏmsun: “Come on in.”
The girl obliged.
“Come here,” he said in the gentle voice of a grandfather.
But Chŏmsun had no mind to venture deeper than where the water went up to her knees.
Her grandfather came to her and swept her up in his arms. She clung fast to his neck. Even before the water reached her waist, she cried out and tried to squirm upward.
“My goodness, you’re falling, you’re falling,” her grandfather said as he lowered her into the stream. White whiskers trailing in the water, he produced a broad smile that revealed a mouth with no front teeth. Where in that wrinkled, leaden, dead-looking face had that smile come from?
But after he had washed Chŏmsun’s face, emerged from the water, and dressed, the smile disappeared before you knew it, and there again was his wrinkled, leaden, dead-looking face. Placing the two granny flower roots in Chŏmsun’s hand, he said, “Give these to your mom,” in a tone that was no longer gentle.
Straightaway he set out for the lower village, where his family’s paddy was located, plodding like an ox and weighed down by the thought that he should hurry up and do his weeding while the ground was still wet, and that if Maktong weren’t sick in bed, his mom could be there to lend a helping hand, and that the damnable person in this whole affair was his own damned son.
The two granny flower roots were placed in Maktong’s ears. The roots were potent enough that they first needed wrapping in a scrap of cloth, but after a night of this treatment the insides of the boy’s ears were swollen and puffy and no one could tell if the roots were having an effect on the malaria. From daylight the next day Maktong began to shiver uncontrollably, and then his entire body was on fire. This was clearly a case of diurnal malaria.
Eleven-year-old Maktong was by himself in the family room, lying on his back. His mother had joined the others in the fields. Chŏmsun was in the front courtyard playing house beneath a blazing sun.
The fever-ridden boy kicked away his ragged quilt. A swarm of flies buzzed about his blackened mouth and his nose, but Maktong kept his eyes closed and didn’t move. The only sign of life was the rapid heaving of his chest. All was still, both inside and outside the wide-open door. Now and then Chŏmsun would mutter to herself, but her voice didn’t carry into the room. A rooster crowed, the sound as long and lazy as this midsummer day, as if to say there was life in the world outside. But the crowing was slower and more feeble than the beating of Maktong’s heart. When it faded, there was only dead silence.
Suddenly Chŏmsun rushed inside. “Brother, Brother, come look, look!”
Maktong didn’t move.
“Brother, look there! The bees, the bees!”
Finally Maktong opened his bloodshot eyes and stared at Chŏmsun, unable to make out her words because of the granny flower roots in his ears.
“Look there!” Chŏmsun blubbered, pointing toward the beehives. “The bees!”
Maktong sprang to his feet. He saw that the bees were on the move, a basket-sized swarm that was one moment rounded and the next moment elongated, already high up and moving off into the western sky. Oh my god! Before he knew it he was running off after the swarm. He remembered his grandfather saying a few days earlier that there were too many bees and he needed to move some of them—now he could see why. If he didn’t get those bees where they first lighted, they would be gone forever. A couple of years earlier something similar had happened, the bees swarming out on their own because they hadn’t been divided up and given more space. The bees had lighted at the pass behind their house, where some villagers gathering wood had spotted them. But by the time Maktong and his father and grandfather had run there to retrieve them, the swarm had taken off, and for as long as they chased it the bees didn’t light again and finally were lost. This time he had to get them when they lighted. Oh my god! Beneath the blazing sun he ran after the bees on shaky legs, calling out to them. Chŏmsun didn’t know what else to do and ran, whimpering, after her brother.
The swarm came to rest in a willow tree outside the entrance to the village. Maktong ordered Chŏmsun to stay there and ran off toward home. He reappeared shortly, coming around the village drinking house, a net on a pole resting on his shoulder and inside it a clump of wax from the beehive. He went to the base of the willow and, before he had stopped panting, began crawling up it. Before he could reach the first branch he slid helplessly back down. He had to catch his breath and he did so clutching the tree, a cheek resting against it, his eyes closed.
At the cost of repeated stings, he finally managed to get the swarm, with the queen bee in the middle, to settle around the clump of wax inside the net, and then he returned home, where he collapsed on the floor of the family room. A feverish moaning escaped his lips. Beside him, inside the net covered by the ragged quilt, the bees buzzed as if to keep Maktong company until the adults returned.
The following morning when Maktong’s grandfather left for the fields he looked back at the house seemingly for the first time in days. It was leaning more than ever. Someone seeing it for the first time might have been reluctant to venture near, thinking it was about to collapse. Because the family had more important things to do at that time, their only recourse was to temporarily shore up the leaning area with wood.
They called Big Nose the carpenter, and as he was selecting some of the timbers obtained by the family for the repairs, he saw Chŏn P’ilsu rounding the corner of the rock wall out front. He looked as if he had been keeping an eye on the house and waiting for this moment to visit.
After the customary greetings Chŏn spoke to Maktong’s grandfather: “Goodness sakes, this is going to need more than a couple of timbers. I’ve been meaning to mention this, but I wasn’t sure what you’d think and so I kept quiet. . . . You know that farming shack down in the lower village? What would you think about moving there? It doesn’t have doors, but we could hang these good doors there and move you in right away.”
Maktong’s grandfather couldn’t help but feel thankful. Big Nose the carpenter said, “That’s a good idea. Then I can fix the house up right.” And so the family began preparing immediately for their move.
It so happened that Slit Eyes was home just then depositing his winnings and learned of the move, and he reported this to Maktong’s father when he returned to the gambling den. For a time Maktong’s father simply stared at his cards as if he hadn’t heard; then he flung the cards down and rose.
On his way to Sŏdanggol Maktong’s father kept thinking he was forgetting something. He wondered if it was because he had left in the middle of a winning streak. He kept asking himself what he had forgotten and finally realized he hadn’t bought that ox. But that other man, the one who had bought the ox, had probably slaughtered it by now. Oh well, he could always buy an ox later. First he had to get the land back. But the agreed-upon date had passed—what if Chŏn refused? I’ll beg. I’ll beg him if it kills me. But what if he still refused? What if he flat-out refused? A dismal feeling came over him.
He crested the pass and looked down to see that his family seemed mostly to have left already. There was only his father off to the side of the yard, near the beehive.
Maktong’s father went straight down to Chŏn’s house. As soon as Chŏn saw him he noticed his face was frightfully distorted and wondered if he would soon be hearing some outrageous story about the loss of a gambling stake.
Inside, Maktong’s father produced a wad of money from his pocket and slid it toward Chŏn.
“I want my land back.”
Chŏn slowly counted the money, kept only the amount that covered the land sale, and said, “This is all I need.” And with that he returned the rest of the money and the sales contract to Maktong’s father.
Maktong’s father left, dazed by this unexpected display of generosity and vowing never again to sell the family land, no matter how desperate he might be. A good portion of daylight remained and he told himself he would wait until dark to go home. In the meantime, how about a drink at the village drinking house? On his way there he encountered some villagers on their way home with beef they had purchased. He had thought that Chungbok, the middle of the three Dog Days, had already passed; he realized now that it was the very next day. He decided he ought to buy a few pounds of meat for his family. He went to see the slaughterer, who lived in Magpie Hollow, and there he learned that the meat was from the ox the man had purchased in the upper village and had slaughtered that very day.
Maktong’s father bought a couple of pounds of beef, and returning to Sŏdanggol, he found an idle boy and sent him home with it before continuing on to the village drinking house. Red dragon-flies flew low in the sky, as if they had sensed an oncoming rain shower. Maktong’s father had just finished his second bowl of makkŏlli when Song Saengwŏn passed by outside on his way home from the fields.
Catching sight of Maktong’s father, Song came inside, saying, “Is that you?” and half hoping Maktong’s father would feel inclined to buy him a bowl of makkŏlli. Maktong’s father did just that. Song drank the bowl in a few gulps, then licked his lips clean.
“I heard you won big,” he said with an insinuating look at his counterpart, thinking it would be nice to have another bowl of makkŏlli.
“Not really.” Maktong’s father displayed the sales contract for the land.
“So you got it back.” Seeing this, Song told himself, Maybe there’s hope for this guy after all. “Well done. . . . So he just gave it to you? Didn’t make a stink?”
“Yes, just like that. No argument.”
“Good for him. That Chŏn P’ilsu is some kind of man. So, all’s well that ends well.”
It was the perfect occasion for Maktong’s father to be treating, thought Song, and with that he had the barmaid refill his bowl.
Song was about to drink from his newly filled bowl when the interior grew dark and from a distance came the sound of raindrops. The next instant they felt a gust of moisture-laden air, and then the rain came pouring down. Bowl still raised halfway to his mouth, Song said, “A good soaking downpour—” What came next might have been “would be nice” or “is just what we need,” but whatever he said was lost in the clamor of the rain shower.
Song finished his second bowl as quickly as the first, and as he was licking his lips and his mustache the shower abruptly ceased. There followed crimson twilight that was uncommonly bright, and then dusk began to settle. Song had not had supper, and the two bowls of makkŏlli on an empty stomach did the job. To Maktong’s father, who had silently been drinking his makkŏlli, he said, “Well done, I mean it—but I’m not so sure you can quit. I guess we’ll see. And you cut off your thumb as a reminder, but . . .” Even though he was tipsy, Song realized he shouldn’t talk that way, especially since he was being treated, so he added, “Still, I say well done—I mean it. Getting back the land you sold. . . . You know, you ought to build yourself a new house. Well done—really. . . . Well, we’ll see what happens. . . .” Song had meant to say something pleasing to Maktong’s father, but decided that in his tipsy condition the words might come out wrong again, so he rose. “Well, I ought to get going.” And out he went.
So, he thinks I can’t stop? And I’ll end up selling off the land again? Damned old man, I ought to rip out that yap of yours. . . . Well, it was true that he’d gambled in secret from the time he could count, and when caught by his father he’d been beaten with a pine bough until the side branches broke off, and still he hadn’t stopped, and even now. . . . But this time was different. I’ll quit if it kills me! But as Song Saengwŏn had said—No, no way!—but—No, no way!
When Maktong’s father emerged from the drinking house it was pitch dark. There was no moon.
The following morning the body of Maktong’s father was discovered beneath the ruins of the house. He was embracing one of the pillars on the side of the house that had been leaning—evidently he had pushed it, causing the house to collapse on top of him. But the villagers couldn’t decide if he had been trying to kill himself or if in his drunken state he had been trying to take down the house but couldn’t escape once it gave way. The collapse of the house had knocked out part of Chŏn P’ilsu’s back wall. Maktong’s grandfather, afraid the bees wouldn’t find their way back to the hives because of the evening rain shower and the onset of darkness, had decided when the family moved to leave the hives behind until the following evening. He had now buried those hives, but the bees continued to crawl out and fly away. It was as if they were departing the body of Maktong’s father.
That night a vigil was held in the farming shack and Chŏn arrived with a crock of makkŏlli. He sat with the village elders as they offered each other drinks, then turned to Maktong’s grandfather, who was sitting next to the boy. Whether it was the granny flower roots or the shock of the events of the past two days, Maktong had recovered from his bout with malaria, though he was still drawn. To Maktong’s grandfather Chŏn said that until their new house was built they could continue to live in the hut; he asked only that they repair his back wall.
The circle of villagers nodded in spite of themselves, acknowledging the compassion of this man Chŏn. Song Saengwŏn, observing the gathering, was as moved as anyone by Chŏn’s benevolence, but it suddenly occurred to him that the more compassionate such a man became, the more likely it was that Maktong’s family would eventually come under his thumb. But when it was his turn to be offered a drink, he put such thoughts aside. Let’s have that drink! And he proceeded to gulp his bowl of makkŏlli with a flourish.
The day after the burial of his son, Maktong’s grandfather took his family to Chŏn’s house and they set about repairing the wall. No one spoke. A solitary bee circled the ruins of the shed and flew off overhead while Maktong and his family went to work. Perhaps it had lost its way, or maybe it was flying by instinct to its former home.
No one seemed to notice the bee except Maktong. No sooner did his drawn face look up than his field of vision was blocked by a gigantic tile-roof house. But the next moment his gaze had streamed over the roofline of the house and out to the skies beyond.
August 1946