They were dragging him down a mountain, pulling him by a rope around his neck. Tŏkku didn’t recognize the mountain, saw only that the terrain was incredibly rugged.
Jagged rocks and tree stumps gouged his chin, his chest, his knees. And then he was flipped over and it was the back side of him being gashed and scraped. Soon there would only be shreds of him left. He would surely die if they kept dragging him like this.
“Let go of me! I’m not dead! I’m still alive!”
But they continued to drag his bloody carcass down the rugged mountain slope.
When there weren’t enough troops to remove bodies from the battlefield, laborers might be assigned the job, and they would drag the bodies off by a rope around the neck. Tŏkku had been at the front some three months the first time he witnessed this. A forty-eight-hour pitched battle had just ended, a battle in which a height of land had changed hands no less than nine times. Tŏkku had sunk back against a boulder, overcome by a hollow feeling that was partly the relaxation of tension and partly the exhilaration of surviving. He always felt this way after intense fighting.
The sun had risen over the summit of a neighboring mountain. The wind breached a gap in the mountains and swept over him, carrying the odor of gunpowder and blood and the moans of the wounded. He was hardened by then to these smells and sounds, was used to them, in fact.
As he rested against the boulder in the direct rays of the sun, his eyelids had grown heavy. Normally, drowsiness was more of a worry to the men than hunger. They couldn’t help dozing off even when they were marching toward enemy positions. They were like sleepwalkers, waking one moment and nodding off the next. Nodding off and waking up—this had been Tŏkku’s routine since arriving at the front. Back on the farm he’d been able to sleep through the most furious storm.
Finally Tŏkku had dozed off, only to lurch awake at a sound. He flinched at the sight that greeted him—a body lying at his feet. It wasn’t the corpse itself but the rope around its neck that had shaken him. When they pulled the rope and the carcass caught on something, the neck stretched out. The upturned eyes glittered in the lovely morning sunlight. The mouth was half open, the chin bouncing up and down with the movement of the body. Tŏkku jerked his head away.
Beside him, Sergeant Kim had burst into his distinctive high-pitched laugh.
“You coward—haven’t you ever seen a body before? Bet you never knew how convenient a neck can be—all you do is tie a rope around it and you can drag people dead or alive. A neck is just right for tying a rope around, and once you knot the rope, it’s not about to come loose. And a neck can stretch and shrink, so whoever’s doing the pulling has something to work with if the body gets caught on something. Look—it got snagged again. See how the neck’s stretched out?”
Tŏkku hadn’t been able to look.
Sergeant Kim had been right: Tŏkku was something of a coward. His first action at the front had left the crotch of his pants soaked. And the first time he had seen the corpse of a comrade he had burst into tears—but more out of fear than sorrow. To Tŏkku a trench felt like the inside of a tomb.
People adapt to most anything, though, and over time Tŏkku saw so many corpses that nothing shocked him anymore. A severed arm, an unconnected leg, guts looped over a branch, swaying in the breeze—whatever the sight, he would pass a hand down his belly and savor the joy of still being alive. And by now the callus on his trigger finger had thickened. What was it, then, about the corpse with the rope around its neck that had upset him so? Maybe it was the realization that the eyes and chin of a corpse weren’t so different from his own.
In the trench that night he had whispered to Sergeant Kim that if he were ever badly wounded the sergeant should finish him off. So saying, he quietly passed a hand along his neck.
Sergeant Kim had responded with his short giggle. “Sure, as long as I have some ammo left.”
Some time later, at the conclusion of yet another fierce battle, Tŏkku had seen a laborer dragging a corpse by the neck. In a fit of rage, he struck the laborer with his rifle butt.
Sergeant Kim had uttered his giggle and thumped Tŏkku on the shoulder.
“Don’t get so worked up, soldier. I’ve gotten mad like that myself. I even shot one of those fellows in the leg once. But then I thought about it—what difference does it make if they put the rope around your neck or your ankles? Just count yourself lucky you’re not crow bait in the first place.”
Ultimately Tŏkku had accepted this. At home on the farm he had to haul rocks and logs and such. Dragging bodies on the battlefield was no different, he told himself.
And then, during yet another fierce battle, against a large enemy force for control of a ridge, Tŏkku had been struck down by a stray round. The bullet entered through the eyeball, but fortunately at an angle, fracturing the orbital bone before exiting. Time seemed to stand still, and then close by he heard Sergeant Kim. He had never been so glad to hear that giggle.
“Sergeant Kim, I’m dead. My head’s gone.”
Again the giggle. “If your head’s gone, then what happened to your mouth? You’re still talking.”
“I mean it! My head’s gone! I can’t see!” Tŏkku had shouted.
Blood flowing from his left eye had covered his sound right eye.
The sergeant had brought his mouth close to Tŏkku’s ear.
“Relax, soldier—the only thing missing is one of your eyes. Now, you asked me a favor, remember? I just happen to have a bullet left—how about it?” This time he burst into an even higher-pitched giggle.
“No!” Tŏkku had screamed. “No! No!”
Two months later Tŏkku had been discharged.
And now here they were dragging him by the neck down a rugged mountain slope. Little was left of his chin and his knees. There was no more of his back or his skull to gouge open. And he could no longer feel pain. He was dead—there was no doubt about it. Still, he wanted to know what son of a bitch would take a man who was still alive and drag him by the neck with a rope.
With an effort he lifted his head and groped for the other end of the rope. And that was when he received a shock. The man bent over pulling the rope was Tŏkku himself.
“Hey, let go, damn it! It’s me—Tŏkku! Can’t you see? What happened to your good eye?” And then the Tŏkku pulling the rope vanished.
Thank god, thought Tŏkku. But the rope kept dragging him. Something the size of a man’s fist had attached itself to the other end and was rolling down the slope, pulling the rope behind it. Tŏkku looked more closely; it was a bloody lump of something. The rolling lump grew like a snowball. And the larger it grew, the faster it pulled the rope. From the size of a fist it grew to the size of a large brick, and then a large pumpkin. A cliff loomed ahead. This meant death. With a final supreme effort he shouted, “Help me!”
The shout startled him awake.
He was at the foot of the hill behind his village. The evening sun was slanting across the ridge of the mountain to the west. Its outline was clearer than when it was directly aloft; it looked larger now, and more crimson.
Tŏkku had returned home after his discharge, his empty eye socket hideously shrunk and misshapen. But there was something else about him that startled the villagers: he was a changed man.
Tŏkku had been as diligent a farmer as you could find. He never borrowed an ox except to turn up the earth of his dry field and paddy, at which times he called upon Samdol’s father, who lived a couple of houses away. Otherwise, whether he was fertilizing, harvesting, or doing some other chore, he packed everything on his back. Whatever work one man alone could do, he did himself. But despite his large frame, there was something meek and tight-fisted about him. Once, when he was raising a pig, a neighbor’s pig got sick and died overnight. Thinking that swine disease was going around, Tŏkku immediately sold off his own pig for less than half the market price. He learned later that contaminated feed had killed the other pig. Even so, he stood by his decision and he never again raised a pig.
Another peculiarity was that he never bought liquor or tobacco. It wasn’t that they didn’t agree with him. If he happened to attend a celebration at one of the neighbors’, he would empty bowls of makkŏlli until the skin around his eyes turned red. It amounted to this: if it was free, he drank it. In this respect he tended to be stingy.
The autumn before Tŏkku was drafted, he was taught an expensive lesson. He was on his way home from the market, where he had sold some unhulled rice, and he stopped at a drinking house along the way. He had in mind not just a quick bowl of makkŏlli but also the soybean-paste soup that customers were served along with their drinks. To this soup he would add the ball of steamed barley he had packed before leaving home.
He was just about to drop the hardened ball of barley into the steaming bowl of soup when he heard someone call his name. He looked up to see a face gazing at him through the glass door to the back room. It was Yongch’il, a man who hadn’t been seen in the village for some time. Tŏkku couldn’t very well ignore him, and he forced a wan smile. Diligent farmers such as Tŏkku didn’t need to be any more friendly than that with dissolute gamblers such as Yongch’il.
Yongch’il threw open the door to the back room and invited Tŏkku inside, where it was warmer. The day was gray and overcast, and where Tŏkku sat it was cold enough to make him shiver. Still, he told Yongch’il he was happy where he was.
“Oh hell, you’re stubborn as a mule. Get in here. I’m telling you, it’s cold out there.”
This display of goodwill convinced Tŏkku, and he stepped up into the back room with his meal.
Sitting across a small drinking table from Tŏkku was a young man he had never seen before. In the warmth of the room Tŏkku’s thoughts returned to his bowl of soup and barley.
“Not so fast—you can eat that stuff any time of day. First warm yourself with some of this.” So saying, Yongch’il passed Tŏkku his drinking bowl and filled it for him.
Tŏkku didn’t always eat three proper meals a day. In winter, when the days were short, he took only breakfast and supper. Today was special: he had planned to treat himself to lunch because of his trip to market. And besides, a meal suited him fine on a cold day like this when his stomach was growling. But he had to admit that the thought of a drink had also crossed his mind. And so, pretending he couldn’t resist the offer, he accepted the bowl from Yongch’il and drank.
It was yakchu—fresh clean yakchu and not the thick, bland makkŏlli that folks drank out here in the boondocks. He sampled a chunk of the raw octopus that the others were having with their drink. It was sleek and chewy, and very tasty. Never before had he eaten raw octopus.
The young man now offered Tŏkku his bowl. Tŏkku declined, saying the first one had warmed him up just fine. But the other continued to hold out the bowl. A peculiar smile came to his face, only the lips moving, the other features, eyes and all, dead still. Again the smile. Go on, take it, he seemed to be saying.
Tŏkku told himself it wouldn’t do to accept a bowl from one man but not the other, and finally he took it and drank. He felt a prickling sensation growing in the pit of his stomach, followed by a warm glow. Those are the times when drink goes down most easily. And now Yongch’il was offering Tŏkku yet another bowl, saying the latecomer had to drink three bowls in a row.
“Say what you want, liquor’s the thing when it’s cold out. All the quilted clothing in the world won’t help if you don’t line yourself on the inside too.”
Tŏkku considered. When country folk drank and one person bought a certain amount, the common practice was for the next person to buy the same amount. If he were now to gulp down what the others offered but fail to reciprocate, it would be awkward. And so he drew a deep breath, made sure his money belt was secure about his middle, and said, “I’d better get home while it’s still light out.” He turned back to his barley and soup.
“Will you listen to this?” said Yongch’il. “He wants to go home. You miss the little woman’s butt, don’t you?”
Tŏkku was caught off guard. It hadn’t been a year since he had taken a wife, and he had yet to experience the connubial bliss that newlywed men were supposed to feel. He merely felt thankful that his wife was a thrifty household manager.
“What’s wrong—afraid I’m going to stick you for the drinks?” Here Yongch’il struck a nerve. “Relax. Who do you think I am, anyway? Is old Yongch’il ever out of money for booze? Come on, don’t be a pussy. Drink up and give me back my bowl.”
As timid men will do at a time like this, Tŏkku attempted an excuse: “No, it’s just that . . .”
He was about to protest that a couple of days earlier he had drunk too much and his stomach was still unsettled. The fact of the matter was, he had attended a birthday celebration for Samdol’s father two days ago, where he was treated to two soup bowls full of makkŏlli. And he would have liked an equal amount more, but Samdol’s father, always stingy, hadn’t offered and Tŏkku had gone unsatisfied.
In any event, Yongch’il was not persuaded.
“It’s just what? Come on—your friends are better than the little woman, and your drinking friends are the best.”
Finally Tŏkku accepted the bowl. And then he passed it back, empty, to Yongch’il. Twice the empty yakchu kettle went out to the kitchen and twice it came back full.
Tŏkku’s face began to redden—not just the skin around his eyes but the tip of his nose and the rims of his ears. He grew talkative, as people of few words are wont to do when they’re under the influence. And the more timid a person is, the more he brags. The villagers could say what they wanted, Tŏkku now declared, but no one could live it up like Yongch’il. As long as he was an able-bodied man, he too wanted to live it up just once, and then he could die without regrets. He’d worked himself to the bone farming, and what had he gotten out of it?
“Yongch’il, my friend, we live in the same village—let’s get to know each other better. It’s just like you said—a friend’s better than the little woman. Or like they put it in the old days, sell the wife and buy a friend!”
The young man punctuated every sentence of Tŏkku’s with the twitch of the lips that was his way of smiling.
When they had finished their third kettle, Yongch’il suggested they take a break. He then produced a fistful of paper money and paid the bill. Tŏkku had never seen such a green profusion of thousand-wŏn notes. Yongch’il must have cleaned up at gambling, he thought.
Yongch’il and the young man withdrew to a closetlike room. Tŏkku followed and found the two men spreading out a blanket on which to gamble. In no time the blanket was heaped with thousand-wŏn notes.
Tŏkku looked over their shoulders as they played. Surreptitiously he undid his money belt, extracted a ten-wŏn note, and placed it beside the thousand-wŏn bills on the blanket. In gambling parlance, he was “investing” in one of the players.
The young man gave his little twitch of a smile, picked up the note with two fingertips, and flicked it aside. The smile this time was contemptuous.
“Better stay out of this,” Yongch’il followed up, as if admonishing a youngster.
Tŏkku was feeling the alcohol and couldn’t help taking offense. So, they were looking down on him, were they?
He placed two hundred-wŏn notes on the blanket. And for the next round, three. And then five. He began to feel expansive. Occasionally the money he bet would return to him, doubled.
But as the night wore on and he began to sober up, he discovered that his money belt was almost empty. He grew fretful and broke out in a sweat. The hand that held the money trembled like someone shivering in the cold. Why had he ever started in the first place? But repentance had come too late—his pockets were empty now.
He wished he were dead. He wanted to die right there where he sat.
Yongch’il ordered more liquor. When it arrived, Tŏkku, without waiting to be offered, poured himself a bowl and gulped it down. Again he wished he were dead. He wished he could drink until he passed out and then never wake up.
But alcohol works in strange ways. Even while his stomach was warmed by the bowls he drank, his emotions cooled. Be a man, he scolded himself. If you’re going to gamble, can’t you afford to lose a piddling amount of money? What about that guy who lost everything gambling? He’s still alive, isn’t he?
Tŏkku looked up and gazed in turn at Yongch’il and the young man.
“Make sure you keep that money safe.”
Spoken like a gambler. If they didn’t squander the money they had won from him, he would win it back someday. He rose deliberately. They asked him to stay until daybreak, but he wouldn’t be swayed, and out he went, wanting to put up a brave front. From the market street to his village was a good five miles. As he walked through the cold, moonless night he realized he’d made an expensive stop at that drinking place. “So what?” he muttered. What was wrong with having some expensive drinks for once in your life?
The cold air soon sobered him. The image of his wife rose before him; she was most likely waiting for him. She would ask about the money. Well, he’d spent it drinking with a friend. No, that wouldn’t work. But hadn’t that no-good Yongch’il told him that a friend was better than the little woman, and a drinking pal was best of all? And if Tŏkku was such a friend, then was it right for Yongch’il to have cleaned him out? Might as well pull a knife and rob me, he thought. And who the hell was that asshole with the sly smile? How could he have let himself be taken in by those sons of bitches? Regret settled in his heart.
His throat was choked with sobs. But the tears wouldn’t come, frustrating him all the more.
Reaching the entrance to the village, Tŏkku knocked on the door of Auntie Wart’s drinking house. The door opened to reveal the woman rubbing her sleepy eyes.
“Mr. Cho!” Her voice registered her shock. “What are you doing up at this hour?”
“I was coming back from the market and I got robbed.”
“My goodness, what a terrible thing to happen. Come in, come in.”
“A couple of guys jumped me, they must have knocked me out. When I came to, they’d taken every last copper I got for my grain.”
“Heavens! Well, it’s good you weren’t hurt.”
“Give me a bowl of makkŏlli, would you?”
He drank that bowl and then another.
“I’ll pay later if that’s all right.” True to form, Tŏkku was happy to postpone payment.
“Don’t worry about that, just get yourself home. You can imagine how long she’s been waiting.”
Despite the makkŏlli, Tŏkku for some reason felt wide awake. He’d have to tell his wife the same story about being robbed—what else could he say?
But this excuse and every other one he framed in his mind seemed flawed. He should have brought that money home at all costs, even if it meant risking his life at the hands of robbers. Again he wished he were dead. As he entered the twig gate to his home, he had an urge to strangle himself with his money belt.
The soy crock in the yard caught his eye. He’d guzzle the stuff until it killed him. He rushed to the crock and scooped a gourdful. But by the fifth swallow he was on his knees vomiting. Everything came out, including what he had eaten at the market. All he could think of was that he had wasted a gourdful of soy sauce.
For three days he kept to his bed, sick at heart if not in body.
He became a laughingstock among the villagers. “Got enough soy sauce to last the year?” they would ask. Tŏkku, red-faced, would say nothing.
But the Tŏkku who returned from the army was nothing like Tŏkku back then.
The villagers had raised money, and they welcomed him with a party the day he returned. Tŏkku managed not to overdrink, but he had something to say: on the battlefield, the dead were no different from a chunk of wood or a rock you might see alongside the road. And so the sight of a corpse wasn’t so awful; in fact, it didn’t faze him at all.
When the villagers registered surprise at this, Tŏkku responded with a short, high-pitched laugh in direct imitation of Sergeant Kim.
While Tŏkku was recuperating in the army hospital in the city of Taegu he had received word that Kim had died in action. Whereupon he had adopted the sergeant’s giggle. And now, surveying the crowd as he giggled, he added, “Long as you’re alive, you should eat what you want and do what you please.”
As if to translate these words into action, Tŏkku proceeded virtually to take up residence at Auntie Wart’s drinking house. And when intoxicated he would say things he wouldn’t have said before; he even flirted with her.
“Auntie, how old are you?”
“What’s gotten into you? If you really want to know, I’m thirty-seven.”
“What rotten luck. If you were five years younger, I’d settle down with you.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“No. It’s just that I’ve fallen in love with that wart under your ear.”
Auntie Wart scowled at him but managed to hold her tongue. Can a person change that much for the worse? But she didn’t want to be too hard on a man who had just returned from the army.
And Yongch’il for his part dealt differently with Tŏkku than he had previously. First of all, he now held Tŏkku a notch higher in his estimation. He himself, through some mysterious means, had been able to avoid every draft notice that came his way. A wastrel and gambler second to none in that area, he couldn’t quite bring himself to stand tall in Tŏkku’s presence once the soldier was back home. Instead, he wished to follow as much as possible in Tŏkku’s wake.
The two of them took to visiting the Mokp’o House, a good-sized tavern in a larger village the next valley over. It was run by an aged woman from the city of Mokp’o and always featured at least one loose barmaid from Seoul. The young crowd fervently wished they might someday have a drink poured by the hand of this particular barmaid. Yongch’il was already ensconced there, and with Tŏkku in tow, would stay up all night drinking. Naturally, it was Yongch’il who paid.
The two of them also frequented the drinking house near the market.
“None of that weak yakchu today,” Tŏkku would say. “Let’s make it chŏngjong instead.”
This clearer rice brew was brought to them nice and warm. And for a drinking snack they wouldn’t settle just for raw octopus; they liked such succulent fare as grilled meat or ribs to grace their table as well.
When the young man with the twitch for a smile joined them, Tŏkku had no qualms about shouting him down: “Wipe that sneaky smile off your face!”
Thereafter the young man was ever cautious about smiling in front of Tŏkku.
Not a day passed that Tŏkku’s good eye wasn’t bloodshot from drinking and gummy with discharge. Three rounds of drinking took precedence over three meals a day. To all appearances he had fallen in with a dissolute lot.
And then a shocking rumor made its way back to the village: Tŏkku had gotten into a fight near the market and had knocked a man’s teeth clean out of his mouth. And he had gotten away with it.
On the day in question, Yongch’il and the victim had been gambling in the back room of the usual drinking house. Tŏkku, mellow with drink, was observing. Most of the money had passed to Yongch’il’s side of the gaming blanket when suddenly the other man snatched the cards from Yongch’il’s hand, spread them out, and shot to his feet. Grabbing Yongch’il by the collar, he accused him of cheating from the outset. Punches and kicks followed, and soon the two of them were rolling about. Yongch’il’s opponent was a tough man to subdue, and Yongch’il on his own might have had to submit. So finally Tŏkku had aimed a quick kick at the man’s face as he sat on top of Yongch’il. The man flew backward and spluttered, spitting out a couple of teeth mixed with bloody froth.
The men were taken to the local police station. But because Tŏkku was a disabled veteran and had acted under the influence of alcohol, he was released without much of a fuss.
Tŏkku and Yongch’il reclaimed their drinking table.
“That other time you played me for a sucker too, didn’t you?” said Tŏkku.
Yongch’il produced a sheepish smile. “Let’s not talk about the past—men don’t do that,” he said, sticking a handful of money in Tŏkku’s pocket. “If it wasn’t for you, he would have beaten the shit out of me.”
“And that’s why it’s good to have friends,” Tŏkku said, trying to sound manly. “Besides, we’re drinking pals and neighbors too.”
This was the life Tŏkku had lived since his discharge during the summer, and he kept it up until the spring thaw of the following year.
Tŏkku would have been the first to admit that most of the time he was palling around with Yongch’il he had been living off of his friend. Not that he himself had spent nothing. Of the modest sum of traveling expenses he had received upon his discharge, not one copper had gone to the support of his household; instead, it had all been cast to the wind. If he and his wife hadn’t dipped into the grain that she had harvested by herself from their measly plot of land and sold a half peck or so as necessary, they wouldn’t have survived.
His wife had continued to be a frugal household manager. But she was not one to bawl out her husband or find fault with his every misdeed. That he had survived the perils of the battlefield and been delivered back to her was more than she could have asked for. How thankful she was that he had lost only an eye rather than an arm or a leg, and so was still able to do farm work. Besides, she wanted to believe in her husband: he wouldn’t always be the way he was now. So when he returned after a night of dissipation, she prayed he would eventually mend his rough ways, just like she had patched his tattered army uniform.
It had seemed Tŏkku would ride his high horse forever, but he was not quite the same after his fight near the market. In the army, the loss of a tooth or two was nothing to men who could dispatch bullets at will and kill with little effort. It was kill or be killed.
Tŏkku realized he hadn’t knocked out that man’s teeth because of a threat to his life. But as long as he was under the influence he could actually feel proud of what he had done. Yongch’il, you no-good, I’m different from you, he would tell himself. You swindled me out of that money I got for my grain. That’s not something I’d do; you wouldn’t catch me emptying someone else’s pocket. I respect my friends among the neighbors.
But when he was sober and thought back on it, that fight weighed on his mind. If he were in that other man’s shoes, he’d be mad as hell. Unknown to others, he was afraid of encountering the man again. And so his visits to the marketplace grew less frequent. He began to revert to his former meekness and his cowardly tendencies.
Closer to home, he could no longer frequent Auntie Wart’s drinking house. His tab had reached the point where she refused to serve him. And by now there was no more grain, or anything else at home, to sell. He and his wife were reduced to two meals a day of barley gruel, and even that was more radish leaves than barley.
Already the villagers were fertilizing their fields for the new crop. But Tŏkku was reluctant to set himself to work. The callus on his trigger finger had disappeared, but it was not the lack of toughened hands that discouraged him from working but rather the life he had led since his discharge. He had somehow come to think that his neighbors might feel awkward witnessing a disabled veteran having to farm for subsistence.
About this time, Yongch’il returned after a considerable absence. Immediately the two men began hanging around again at Auntie Wart’s. If you don’t drink for a while and then take it up again, you become intoxicated more quickly. Before Tŏkku knew it, the corners of his eyes had reddened.
“No matter what people say, this is the best,” he said. “Down the hatch, and all your worries wash away.”
“What about your wife?” Auntie Wart broke in.
“I’ve got my booze, and she’s got this,” he said, pointing toward his crotch. “What else does she need?”
“That’s right,” Yongch’il chimed in. “And a tit for a baby, and shit for a dog.”
“No problem there. I got no kid and no dog.”
Auntie Wart was reluctant to interrupt the blithering of these two customers even though they were acting like bums, but she felt compelled to remind Tŏkku, “Mr. Cho, you’re going to be a father soon.”
“Right—I’m going to snap my fingers and the little bastard’ll pop right out,” he said. “Heads it lives, tails it dies.”
In spite of his bluster, Tŏkku had always felt ill at ease about his lack of children. A neighbor had once mentioned that Tŏkku’s ancestors had never been blessed with plentiful offspring. When Tŏkku was drafted into the army, he wished he had at least one son to return to. And now his wife was in her eighth month. These days she was taking in sewing. He could picture her sitting in their room, the upper part of her heaving with every breath she took. Although Tŏkku couldn’t get her out of his mind, his chaotic life made it easier to set these worries aside.
As he returned home from Auntie Wart’s that night, Tŏkku told himself he had better do some serious thinking once and for all. Various thoughts had been accumulating since his discharge, but there was no specific question he could make sense of and act on.
He felt the urge to urinate and did so in the yard. Suddenly he was hit with a realization: if he was going to urinate, the decent thing to do was use the urine crock. At that moment, this thought stood out more clearly than any other.
From then on, Tŏkku began to apply himself, little by little, to household matters. He wove straw sandals; he went up in the hills for firewood; he even began to think about borrowing an ox, since it was time to plow the fields.
And then three weeks ago something very unseemly happened in the village. The elderly woman who lived in the Chinese Date House at the foot of the hill behind the village lost a brood hen. She was sure she had seen it in the morning, but toward sunset when it should have come home to roost, it had failed to appear. Neither weasels nor wildcats had ever been seen about the village, which meant the hen must have been stolen. Secretly fingers were pointed at Tŏkku. The neighbors began to keep a closer watch on their chickens.
Around this time Yongch’il had returned to the village after another of his absences, and he and Tŏkku were drinking at Auntie Wart’s.
“Tŏkku, my friend, I had you figured wrong,” said Yongch’il. “You’re quite the sly fellow.”
Tŏkku asked what he meant.
“You’ve been sneaking over to the Mokp’o House,” Yongch’il continued. He kept batting his eyelids in a knowing way. “What’s it like now? Do they have a new girl from Seoul? That last one, her mug was kind of cute but her body was no good—she could have used more meat in the butt. What about this one—decent body?” And then Yongch’il lowered his voice. “A boiled chicken goes good with a few drinks, eh?”
Tŏkku finally caught the drift of this last remark.
“Listen to this crap.” I’m not going to defend myself every time you say something—I’m not like you! he told himself.
But a short time later when Tŏkku stepped outside, his right eye bloodshot from drinking for the first time in a while, he shouted in the direction of the village, “Hey everybody—keep an eye on your cows too, not just your chickens!”
And then the previous day, Yongch’il had returned from yet another foray. He and Tŏkku were reunited at Auntie Wart’s. Ever since the theft of the brood hen, Tŏkku had lapsed back into idleness.
The night was getting far along when the two of them left, drunk.
“I am damn angry,” said Yongch’il, who went on to explain that a disreputable character had shown up at the market with a wad of money, and Yongch’il had been unable to fleece him. Before he would gamble, the fellow said, he needed to see if Yongch’il had any money.
“Here’s this big fish, and I can’t reel him in—it’s ridiculous. A wad of money looking me right in the face. So I come over here to borrow some money from Samdol’s father. But the old fart just looks at me like he’s bitten into a lemon—doesn’t say a word.”
Drunk as he was, Tŏkku wondered if his friend had lost his mind. No way Samdol’s father would lend a copper to a gambler like Yongch’il. And Yongch’il should have known that. Had he actually lost some money to this guy, and was he now so frantic he was trying to cover his losses? It somehow seemed that the distressed look Yongch’il wore tonight was different from his usual expression—something was bothering him for sure.
But Tŏkku felt no need to reveal these suspicions to Yongch’il. Instead he replied, “You know that old fart—he’s as tight as they come. I tried to borrow some barley from him and he told me to get lost.”
Three days earlier, Tŏkku had asked Samdol’s father—one of the more affluent farmers in the village—to lend him a mal of barley.
“Come back after you’ve thought about that soy sauce you wasted,” the other had shot back. The implication was that he wouldn’t consider lending the barley until Tŏkku resumed the ways of a frugal farmer.
Idiotic bastard! thought Tŏkku. Just you wait and see, you old fart! I’ll never again ask to borrow your ox, and if that means I don’t plow my fields, then so be it!
“Shit!” said Yongch’il, who had hoped Tŏkku would stand in for him and ask Samdol’s father for the loan. “The pigheaded old fart—he’d be the last one to help someone out in a pinch.”
“You’re right,” Tŏkku chimed in. “The cussed old bastard—he’s such a skinflint, he won’t even go peacefully when he drops dead.”
That night a fire broke out at Samdol’s family’s house.
Tŏkku had just returned home and sprawled on the floor when a clamor erupted outside. Tŏkku’s wife hurried out, then frantically rushed back in.
“Honey! There’s a fire at Samdol’s!”
“Hmm? Fire?” Tŏkku replied in a sleepy voice.
“Yes, a fire! Aren’t you going to help?”
“Why shouldn’t the damned house catch fire?” Tŏkku snorted. “It’s not made of tin, is it?” And with that he turned away.
The next morning Tŏkku’s wife observed her husband carefully. As luck would have it, only the ox shed at Samdol’s family’s house had caught fire. And because the fire had been spotted by a family member emerging from the outhouse, the ox had been led away unharmed. But to Tŏkku’s wife, the extent of the damage was not the issue. Rather, she wondered how the fire could have started in the first place. Samdol’s family seemed to think it was because the ashes from the evening fire had been disposed of carelessly, but this was difficult for her to believe. There was no doubt in her mind that the fire had been set, and no matter how she looked at it, she had to suspect her husband. There was something fishy about his attitude the previous night. All the neighbors had rushed out to help fight the fire, but her husband, living practically next door to Samdol’s family, hadn’t even stuck his head outside. And that wasn’t all. “Why shouldn’t the damned house catch fire?” he had said. How could he talk such nonsense! The more she thought about it, the more her heart was troubled. It was too much for her. She would rather have had him swilling liquor and loafing around. It had been all she could do to put up with the whispers among the neighbors about the disappearance of the brood hen belonging to the elderly woman in the Chinese Date House. And now this.
“Honey, we can’t live here anymore.”
“Why not?”
Tŏkku, hung over from the previous night, looked up from his watery gruel of dried radish leaves, his bloodshot eye glaring at her.
“I’m too ashamed to go out in public. And scared.”
“Eat up, woman, and quit your fussing.”
Tŏkku’s wife hadn’t touched her spoon to her gruel.
“Whatever made you . . .?”
“What are you talking about? Samdol’s family’s house? So what if that damned shack of theirs burned down?”
“How can you say such a thing?”
“They ought to be thankful their ox wasn’t roasted.”
“Really, I never thought you’d turn out this way. First the hen at the Chinese Date House. . . .”
“Damn bitch—how long are you going to keep this up?”
Tŏkku jumped up, intending to go to Auntie Wart’s for a drink. In the process he accidentally tipped over his bowl of gruel. In a fit of anger he kicked over his wife’s bowl as well.
“Look at you! Is it such a bother to get some gruel down your gullet?”
“Bitch! I ought to wring your neck!”
Tŏkku lashed out with his foot, accidentally kicking his wife in the belly. She curled up in a ball, moaning. He had not intended this.
It’s human nature not to want to own up to a mistake in front of others, especially if you’re a timid sort, and Tŏkku was no exception. Leaving his wife to wail in pain, her face ashen, he disappeared outside.
“Why don’t you all just drop dead!” he muttered.
Yongch’il was already at Auntie Wart’s having some hangover soup. His face was sooty and there were red marks on his forehead and neck. It looked as though he had turned out to help fight the fire along with everyone else.
Their eyes met, and then simultaneously they looked away from each other. Without a word, Tŏkku sat down beside Yongch’il and poured himself a drink.
Just then, Samdol’s mother rushed in.
“Here you are, just like I thought. You’d better get yourself home—your wife’s calling you.”
Whereas Samdol’s father was coarse and blunt, his mother was on the gentle and compassionate side. After the earlier episode when Tŏkku had returned empty-handed from his attempt to borrow barley from the father, she had secretly taken him some grain. Likewise, she enjoyed doing the dirty work in family crises. She was especially skillful as a midwife, and was called whenever a woman went into labor. It was said that all she had to do was cup her hands in front of an expectant mother and even breech babies would come out the right way. Doubtless she had heard Tŏkku’s wife in distress and gone to her aid, putting aside her cleaning up from the previous night’s fire.
“Is something wrong, Auntie?” called Auntie Wart from behind the counter.
“Well, this man’s wife is suddenly hurting in the belly.”
“How could that be? She’s only eight months along.”
“I know.”
Auntie Wart shot Tŏkku a knowing glance. “Don’t tell me you’re up to no good again, Mr. Cho.”
“How could you kick her like that? She’s passed a lot of blood,” said Samdol’s mother. “It’s too early to tell about the baby, but I hope the mother’s all right.”
Tŏkku drank without saying a word.
“Now get yourself up, you. Your wife needs you.”
Tŏkku exploded. “Go to hell, all of you! After all the slaughter I saw at the front, what’s the big deal here?”
“All right,” Samdol’s mother tsk-tsked, giving up for the time being. “I’m going to look in on her. You’d better come right along.”
Tŏkku drained his bowl of makkŏlli in reply. For some reason he wasn’t feeling the liquor. Turning a deaf ear to Auntie Wart, Tŏkku continued to pour himself drinks. A quart of makkŏlli later, he silently rose and left. A peculiar glaze had come over his good eye.
He too had some words for his wife, Tŏkku told himself. What more do you have to say to me, you bitch? I’m the one who has something to tell you. And I’ll say it before you drop dead!
But upon nearing his house and hearing his wife’s moans together with Samdol’s mother’s soothing voice, he turned on his heels. He couldn’t very well speak his mind with someone else there.
Tŏkku climbed the hill behind the village until he found a sunny place to sit. As the warm sun beat down on him, his eyelids grew heavy. Dog tired, he fell asleep.
* * *
Dusk had spread over the hill, and the evening breeze had risen.
Tŏkku passed a hand down his throat, his body shuddering. It wasn’t just that he was chilled. It was that horrible dream; it just wouldn’t go away. He could still picture that bloody lump tumbling along at the end of the rope. A dream that bad must have meant something had happened to his wife as a result of her hemorrhaging. He felt as if right now, in his wakeful state and not in the dream, he were sliding deep down into a pit.
He started down the hill. He had gone no more than a few steps when he heard a strange sound. Straining to listen, he recognized it as something he had heard upon waking a short time earlier. It was a clucking sound. All he could tell was that it wasn’t human.
Tŏkku searched until the sound became a vigorous cackling, and then he knew it was a chicken. There it was, a hen warming its eggs in a nest of last year’s dead grass.
Why would a hen be out here sitting on its eggs? The next instant Tŏkku understood. Damn bird, so this is where you disappeared to! He shot a fierce glance in the direction of the Chinese Date House.
Once in a while a hen would stray off to lay her eggs, ending up in an out-of-the-way spot. And there she would sit. All the owner would know was that a hen was missing. And sometimes, around the time people forgot about her, the “lost” bird would suddenly appear with a train of twenty or more chicks.
“The old bag!” Tŏkku snorted. “She had to go and blame someone!”
He continued silently to harp on the missing hen and to shoot looks at the Chinese Date House. He felt like running over then and there and giving the old woman a piece of his mind. And then he had a thought.
He reached out, grabbed the hen, and wrung its neck. It soon became still, without so much as a flap of its wings. Sergeant Kim was right—a neck is such a convenient thing. And how little the hen weighed. But there was enough meat to snack on for several rounds of drinking. He gathered the eggs and put them in his pocket.
He thought of his wife: You bitch—you thought I stole this chicken. . . . One of these days, before you croak, I’m going to give you a piece of my mind.
Into the drinking house he went.
“Where have you been?” said Auntie Wart. And then she saw the hen. “Where did you get that?”
“You really want to know? I paid for it a while back and I just now took possession. . . . Where’s Yongch’il?”
“He left right after you did.”
“Too bad. Clean this bird and boil it up for me.” Tŏkku handed the chicken to Auntie Wart. “I think I deserve a drink.”
Auntie Wart noticed the bird’s belly, which was missing some feathers.
“Wait a minute—did you take this hen from her nest?”
“What if I did? It’s not going to kill me if I eat it. Don’t worry, I didn’t steal it. Come on, cook it up. I already paid for it, and then some. . . . Oh yeah—and boil these up, will you?”
He took several eggs from his pocket and handed them to Auntie Wart.
“Haven’t you been home yet?”
Tŏkku didn’t know what to say. What followed next was what he had feared.
“Mr. Cho, I don’t know what you’ve done lately to deserve this, but your wife just delivered, and even though it’s premature it cries just like a full-term baby. You don’t know how lucky you are.”
Tŏkku gulped once, his throat hot. Could this be true? But he couldn’t bring himself to express these sentiments.
“It’s no big deal having a baby—the hard part’s raising it.”
“Mr. Cho, you’d better start acting like a father.”
“Put those eggs in the pot, will you? And pour me a bowl of makkŏlli.”
There was now a different reason for him to want a drink.
“Today’s special, so I’ll let you pay later. But this is the last time.”
It was indeed a special day, Tŏkku reflected. An unintentional mistake that morning had set him trembling inside, but here his wife had delivered a premature baby without incident. Suddenly he felt relaxed. Wouldn’t it be fun now to be able to show Yongch’il this hen belonging to the old woman from the Chinese Date House?
“Where do you suppose my pal went? Down to the market?”
“You know,” said Auntie Wart, “when he left, he was mumbling to himself—‘That Tŏkku’s just plain scary.’”
“Scary? Is that what he said?” He giggled automatically. Well, so I am. I’m scary. And if you’re the one who set that fire, buddy, then you might find my mouth scary too. And that means you’re not going to want to show yourself in this village again, buddy. But you can rest easy—I won’t say a thing. He gulped his drink.
“Hurry it up with those eggs, Auntie!”
Auntie Wart began to peel one of the boiled eggs.
“Good lord, what is this!”
She dropped the egg and shrank back a step.
Where the eggshell had separated Tŏkku could see a completely formed chick, with yellow down and reddish feet all curled up. Were the eggs that old? Tŏkku then realized it had been a good three weeks since the disappearance of the hen.
Auntie Wart cracked another boiled egg, then put it back down.
“Where’d you get these eggs?” she asked, tsk-tsking in disapproval. “They’re ready to hatch.”
“I paid for them, I told you. And I better eat them—they’ll be good for me.” Tŏkku produced another giggle. “I guess you wouldn’t know this, Auntie—on the front line, there’s nothing a man won’t eat if he’s hard up.”
“Give me one of those eggs from your pocket.”
Tŏkku did so.
Auntie Wart held up the egg in front of him. “Look, you can see the chick squirming inside.”
Tŏkku wasn’t surprised, knowing they’d been laid three weeks before.
“And listen—you can hear it cheeping too.”
Nothing so unusual about that, either. Almost absentmindedly he began to produce the remaining eggs from his pocket, one by one.
“And this one’s pecking. . . . It’s ready to hatch,” said Auntie Wart.
Tŏkku wondered why the woman was chattering like this.
“Pour me another drink, will you?”
“Look at these chicks—I can’t believe it. . . . Maybe we could find a hen for them. They need a bit more brooding.”
There’s a woman for you. How tenderhearted.
Tŏkku felt another giggle coming, but it stayed inside him. There was nothing surprising in what Auntie Wart had said, but something in the way she said it had struck a chord.
The next instant something began squirming inside Tŏkku, pecking at his chest, a faint, whisperlike cry that grew in volume until it became the cry of his newborn baby, and along with it, a peculiar, insistent terror he had never felt before, emanating from the small egg in front of him—the egg he thought he had paid for.
February 1957