11
The Dung Fields in Cheongdo, 1950
There was an evident look of bewilderment on Toung Doung's face when he returned after he had taken a look at a village beyond the valley mountain. He saw that the whole village had been evacuated. "We must leave!" he declared solemnly.
There was a melee. The whole family had to do a rush job of packing. The old cow had to carry the heaviest load in which there were packed some bedding, husked rice and barley, some utensils and salt. Toung Doung had to carry his grandma in her eighties on the wooden A-frame. Dano and his mother and grandma had their own share of the load. Dusk was around the corner when all the packings were done, them getting ready for a refuge trip.
Darkness was soon to fall. Toung Doung decided on an overnight stay at a safer place somewhere in the valley. How sad that one had to realize that one's house was the most dangerous place in the whole world. Toung Doung took the family to the place which he had set his eyes on.
It was an old cave, of which the road leading to it was covered with overgrown thorny bushes and reeds. Toung Doung found the opening of the cave with ease. After him the refuge family stepped into the cave of which the inside was dark and deep and a little slanted downward. Rocks were so damp and air was so cool, Snails were crawling busily as if to greet the sudden visitors.
The family did not sleep well even though Toung Doung made a very cozy bedding for them with grass and bushes and even though the gunshots were not heard that night. Fitful drops of water and busy snails were an impediment to a good night's rest, of course.
Toung Doung looked up at the sky through the opening. The late spring sky was blue as ever. At dawn Toung Doung's grand mother had very low coughs. Knowing that the rest of the family was awake, Mrs. Euiseong Kim handed out jumeogbap, or rice rolls for early breakfast. Before starting the road trip, they each had their own "business" to do. But the trip was not so smooth. They advanced in fits and starts. The cow with the heavy load was one factor for the slow progression and the great-grandma was another.
Hasty feet could not catch up with hasty minds. There were personal matters which, in short intervals, grandma and great-grandma had to handle. Dano needed to cool his heels often. As the mileage grew, they were mingled with more people fleeing southward. They didn't know where they were headed. Ignorance was usual responses expected of them.
But they were moving anyhow. When they got to the county capital of Euiseong, they found a train on a standby. "The train must be waiting for us," Dano exclaimed with joy. The crowds were in a stampede, coming from all corners of the town, to get aboard the train. It was getting dark. All the compartments were full, so they were desperate to step onto any train stairs. Just in case, they were desperate to climb on the roofs of the train. The Dano family happened to climb on top, with Toung Doung on the freight car with his cow.
All were on hold. The refugee train was stifling the urge to blow a horn, waiting maybe for the order from higher up to permit the southward journey into the night. How pathetic. A lot of children were on the verge of giving cries or blurting out screams. When the train got off to a late start into the night everybody heaved a sigh of relief, still apprehensive. Nightly winds of early summer were cool enough, but coal ashes, big and small, in the fresh air, got torturous. Whenever the rail road train screeched to a stop at every possible station, there was a confusion, with people calling each other. Cries and screams were everywhere.
It was a blind escape. There was no destination, and no convoy, either. The refugee train was so slow that it dawned when it passed no more than three stations or so. It made an abrupt stop at a nondescript station which could be recollected later as Bongnim station or Huabon. As it disgorged thousands of refugees at once, the countryside surroundings turned into a hellish confusion. Names were called; Cries and screams tore the air to shreds.
Cows mewed, too. Mrs, Euiseong Kim held her grandson's hand tightly. Physiological releases such as urination and defecation posed a major problem to the fleeing adults as well as the kids. Everytime the kids sought a permission in a pleading and hurried tone of voice, saying, "I want to pee," the adults pointed to a certain edge of the road, saying, "over there." There were no latrines, nor cops blowing whistles, nor roadside signboards which warned of the indecencies.
Dano saw the soldiers as he brought a pitcherful of water from the village well, a trainful of soldiers wounded and bandaged. He was pleased at first to see the ally soldiers so soon, but he was sad that they were wounded. It was supposed to be an army train which was committed to transporting the wounded soldiers. Dano wondered what place they were coming from and where they were headed. They were miserable in appearance: Many were bandaged in arms; Even many others were blindfolded. Dano had no idea in what state their legs were because they were not visible from the outside platform.
The troublesome people, who had just gotten off the south-bound train, also found a stopped train full of wounded soldiers which appeared to be heading north, probably to Daegu or some other place which had an army hospital. "Where were they coming?" they were wondering aloud.
War was being fought in deep south? The crowds in a country railroad station were in a disarray just like the cattle without a shepherd used to be. They walked onto the road but they didn't know where to go. They were heading everywhere and still nowhere. A major portion of the crowd were heading south, with their heads lowered.
No government officials were in sight. Where was the government, the refugee people thought aloud. What was the government supposed to do anyway, they whispered themselves. But they didn't dare ask anybody else in loud voice because such challenging questions could be interpreted as disobedient or Red-oriented.
Contrary to the government's inhumane treatment of the governed, the weather was not so cruel. The sun was aptly hot. And it showered from time to time. A large crowd of people needed to give their sore feet a rest, so much so that they chose to take a break in the shades of the riverside trees. They gave plausible excuses themselves to extend their hourly stay to the next day, saying "What was the rush?"
Toung Doung's grandmother had bouts of diarrhea, with Dano and others having stomach troubles or something. But there were neither pharmacies nor clinics on the way, so Mrs. Euiseong Kim had a busy time searching for ikmocho, Leonurus sibiricus in a summer grass field to treat her mother-in-law's illness. Boolim had to prepare pots of boiling water for her grandmother-in-law and the rest of the family. A major meal had to be barley with a rare mixture of rice, and the one and only condiment had to be salt, just salt. The tent name, or the assemblage of cotton cloth, had leaks.
Hunch was that "the cattle with no shepherd" were running not from the ferocious animals but stampeding into the lair of the predators. Thing was that the bone-chilling sound of the battlefield was getting noisier and the melee of bloodshed was getting messier. "The human cattle" were influenced mostly by elements. On days they moved on and on nights they stopped to rest. In rains, they sought shelter. Guess was that the fugitive crowds were getting nearer and nearer everyday to the fierce war zone, which would later be found to be the famous Yeongcheon Battle Field.
The shells of bombs were observed, in the distance of 20 miles or so, dropping from B-29 bombers of the United States Air Forces which had been sent to rescue the beleaguered nation from its crisis. The tanks were seen toppled battered on the roadside. The shattered bodies of the North Korean Liberation Army privates were sprawled covered with straw mats. The bean trees in the rows were seen trampled shattered probably by the other night's fierce bayonet fighting. Everytime Dano stopped to take a look at the brutal scenes, he was held back by his mother or grandmother.
Toung Doung's grand mother had her diarrhea more or less healed, but the cow had a new problem, She had loose bowels, too, releasing liquid shits on the road, with impunity. Stricken with minor ills and problems, and with intermittent showers and the subsequent "tent" leaks, and suffering from the scarcity of nutritions, the Toung Doung family made it near a wide expanse of a beach along the Cheongdo River.
There was a communal camp of refugee tents scattered erected along the river. Toung Doung joined the camp, erecting the nominal tent on an elevated clearing a little distanced from the river. After a simple report procedure with "the office" having been done with, Toung Doung crossed the water and went up a nearby hill to cut off some bushes which would be used to keep the family dry by spreading them on the cold and damp ground.
Toung Doung was greatly impressed. Very greatly, indeed, by the kindness and generosity of the locals. They were out there to meet and help the poor folks in plight. They comforted the privations of refugees with kind words in soft voice. In the hillside rows of bean trees were growing, wild sesames, sweet potatoes, and peppers. Their fresh leaves, even some of them, or, a little portion of them were what the fugitive folks needed to rev up an appetite, that is, to get their taste buds alive. The natives were well aware of it and went out of their way to hand them out to those who needed them. Toung Doung was not frustrated in his attempt but returned with triumphs of some good bushes and edible leaves.
Having gotten together, the folks tended to fight among themselves. The voices were so frequently raised for no apparent reason and fists were flying on the spur of the moment. Officials from the local district office appeared from nowhere, but they didn't ask of the people what were in need. They opted to domineer, showing off armbands, waving arms and blowing whistles. They appeared mainly in nights to crack down on the draft evaders. They cracked open the tents from the outside, popped their heads into the tent, and shined flashlights on the scared faces, ferreting out the suspects.
Foods were running out. Not "night guests" but "daylight thieves" were rampant. The desperate voices that exclaimed "Catch the thief!" was heard from time to time. Still, days were better. Nights were a nightmare itself. In the riverside camp where the lighting system was not installed, night meant darkness.
When night fell, the refugee camp was trapped in darkness. Still, what was more horrorful than starvation and darkness was the fear of being drowned. When it rained cats and dogs, the stream became a river. Swollen, the water jumped any vulnerable tents, claiming the unsuspectful sleepers. The shrill cries of "Help!" tore the night air every night. The shrill cries were bone-chilling and convulsive at first and gradually weakened and drifted away. The residents of the night camp were shaking all over, with chills running on their spine.
The anonymity and absence of administration caused irresponsibility. The men and women of the camp crossed the stream and made off with leaves of bean trees and sesame. Irresponsibilities were especially evident in the acts of human waste treatment. At first, they dug holes in the fields somewhat large and deep and released “with dignity.” The holes had roofs and footholds and door shapes made of straws or something at first but days passed without them.
A lot of people who were on edge rushed to the field and excreted on any holes with no coverings and got away with it. The air got thick with stench and dung flies festered. All the grounds turned into the dung field in which the refugees in no time could not find any spacious lot for their feet to step on.
2009년 10월 7일 수요일
2009년 10월 6일 화요일
The Real Reds Come to Town
10
The Real Reds Come to the Sun Valley, 1950
Toung Doung was subpoenaed to appear and testify about the mountain commies by the local police often who beat him more often about the whereabouts of the partisans. He did never see any of them; Nor could he collaborate with any who had not appeared before him.
The police were still interested in him nonetheless. He could tell them about his huge load he was able to carry home. It was firewood mostly. Grass, weeds and bits of wood for fermented fertilizer during summer time. He could tell them about how to snare roe deers whose meat was so nice. But he didn't have any knowledge about the partisans.
There were shifts personal and social. Dano transferred to the 2nd grade of Oksan Elementary School. The local police called in Toung Doung and interrogated him about partisans more severely than ever before.
But Toung Doung had nothing to offer. Dano's mother Boolim shed more tears than ever before as his grandma "grilled" her about every gamut of trivia ranging from poor cooking skills to his daughter-in-law's mode of addressing his son. Her daughter-in-law should not have dropped honorifics. She was supposed to use them when she talked to her husband.
Whenever he saw his mother lower her head and sob with muted sounds, he hated his grandma. There was no moment allowed for his mother to sit and take a minute's break. All kinds of orders were given Boolim to do this or that. She did not receive any praise for her chores done nevertheless.
Worse thing was that the widowed Mrs. Euiseong Kim did not allow her daughter_in_law to join the dining session, either. However, both her son Toung Doung and her darling grandson Dano did not raise their heads to voice any dissenting opinion in front of her because Dano was afraid of her too much and Toung Doung was such a filial son. Fact was that Dano was endeared by her so much as "my beloved puppy" that he did not and could not have any guts to reject the opportunity to join her dining table on which stewed and fried meat or/and fish were served from time to time.
---------------
On one winter morning of 1949, a nine-member unit of army soldiers came to the valley and bivouacked on the hilly pass. They put up a large tent and spent days and nights there. Dano took a visit to the tent from time to time and watched them survey large military maps and asked about them. They were treated to white rice, or pure rice. Fact was that all the rice and side dishes had been served by the Toung Doung couple. The Toung Doungs collaborated with the army, thinking that it was the right thing to treat the Korean army soldiers.
However, they didn't stay there long. They stayed for about a week or so. Dano's mother Boolim got there one morning like the previous with the early morning's meal prepared on a large oval bamboo box to find that they were gone. Like the wind. There were no traces that they had been there. The wind filled what had been emptied by them. The sunlight was shining.
Boolim had stood there motionless for a while. A sense of security had settled in the Toung Doung family. and in Sun Valley while they had been there. Boolim and her husband had had a joyous moment discussing the next day's menu which would go to the hill tent. But out of the blue fear and anxiety gripped them. She missed the void they had left behind. She was concerned about their security and worried about the engagements they would have to confront. In an earnest prayer they wished them a good luck.
There were no regular contacts linking to greater places of the outside. There might have been newspapers in greater places like Kilan myon town a little far away from the valley. But even if there had been ones, their deliveries might have not been available. Another impediment to the outside contact might have been their comparatively higher fees.
There were no transistor radios at the Toung Doungs. But even if they had had one, its very possession could have provided a cause for suspicion from the authorities, that is, they could have been suspected of collaboration with the Reds or something. Spring was about to go. The noise of the hilly insects was heralding the advent of the early summer.
The casual word of mouth was the only communicative vehicle by which they could be familiar with what was going on. The vocal words designed to mean something played a major role in relaying the news of the outside world. The Toung Doungs had been geographically isolated so much that it was not until the strange accents were heard and the bizarre uniforms were seen before their very eyes that they didn't realize there exist the real Reds in the world.
But oops the real Reds came to the valley. Like the wind, too. They were a contingent of a dozen or so army privates from North Korea. They were so young and so short that their rifle bodies almost touched the ground. They looked to be in their mid-teens. Their salient feature as the Reds was the red shoulder bands depicting stars.
They looked famished and fatigued. As soon as they got into the hut ground they asked for "something to eat." Dano's grandma Mrs. Euiseong Kim sought understanding, scared and stunned, saying, "We have barley only, husked and twice boiled." "That will do," they said, with desperation in their voices. They put water into barley bowl and ate them up with smacks of lips. After a short break of eating jobs, they left, with strange accents of "thanks for the meal" trailing behind.
A heavy engagement erupted that very night, without warning, somewhere on the hilly mountains. Probably between the South Korean soldiers and the invading North Koreans. Dano wondered who had shot initial rounds. It was such a tragic territorial division caused by the Great Powers of the West to the same ethnic descendants of the Great Dangun! What a shame.
There was no moon that night. Darkness shrouded, like fogs, the valley and the surrounding hilly mountains. All through the night there were clings and clangs in the air. In between the barrages of bullets, there might have been be shells flying and pounding and exploding on the places far and near the hut.
Toung Doung and his family members were terrified, in heavy bedding, hugging each other and shaking all over. There were great flashes in the windows, followed by momentary hiatus of silent darkness and a boom which shook the house and which they guessed it had exploded somewhere near the house. When the next day broke and the battle was over, peace settled again in the valley as if nothing had happened. Had they been all dead?
There was a scream somewhere outside. It was Mrs. Euiseong Kim's. "What's that?" great-grand mother asked in a low voice, sitting up. Toung Doung bolted out of the room. "What's up, Mother?" he shouted in astonishment. "Come and see here," she said. She was standing at an entrance of a bean row contiguous to the rear garden. She pointed to a big hole dug deep and round.
It was a crater which had been made by a mortar shell explosion last night. All the family ran to the scene and blurted exclaims, pointing to a mortar shell shrapnel just resembling a large pumpkin. Mrs. Euiseong Kim cited a secret assistance of samshin, or the three gods. "Samshin halmae duggida," (Three godly grandmothers saved our lives!), she chanted, bowing deeply with clapped hands.
The Real Reds Come to the Sun Valley, 1950
Toung Doung was subpoenaed to appear and testify about the mountain commies by the local police often who beat him more often about the whereabouts of the partisans. He did never see any of them; Nor could he collaborate with any who had not appeared before him.
The police were still interested in him nonetheless. He could tell them about his huge load he was able to carry home. It was firewood mostly. Grass, weeds and bits of wood for fermented fertilizer during summer time. He could tell them about how to snare roe deers whose meat was so nice. But he didn't have any knowledge about the partisans.
There were shifts personal and social. Dano transferred to the 2nd grade of Oksan Elementary School. The local police called in Toung Doung and interrogated him about partisans more severely than ever before.
But Toung Doung had nothing to offer. Dano's mother Boolim shed more tears than ever before as his grandma "grilled" her about every gamut of trivia ranging from poor cooking skills to his daughter-in-law's mode of addressing his son. Her daughter-in-law should not have dropped honorifics. She was supposed to use them when she talked to her husband.
Whenever he saw his mother lower her head and sob with muted sounds, he hated his grandma. There was no moment allowed for his mother to sit and take a minute's break. All kinds of orders were given Boolim to do this or that. She did not receive any praise for her chores done nevertheless.
Worse thing was that the widowed Mrs. Euiseong Kim did not allow her daughter_in_law to join the dining session, either. However, both her son Toung Doung and her darling grandson Dano did not raise their heads to voice any dissenting opinion in front of her because Dano was afraid of her too much and Toung Doung was such a filial son. Fact was that Dano was endeared by her so much as "my beloved puppy" that he did not and could not have any guts to reject the opportunity to join her dining table on which stewed and fried meat or/and fish were served from time to time.
---------------
On one winter morning of 1949, a nine-member unit of army soldiers came to the valley and bivouacked on the hilly pass. They put up a large tent and spent days and nights there. Dano took a visit to the tent from time to time and watched them survey large military maps and asked about them. They were treated to white rice, or pure rice. Fact was that all the rice and side dishes had been served by the Toung Doung couple. The Toung Doungs collaborated with the army, thinking that it was the right thing to treat the Korean army soldiers.
However, they didn't stay there long. They stayed for about a week or so. Dano's mother Boolim got there one morning like the previous with the early morning's meal prepared on a large oval bamboo box to find that they were gone. Like the wind. There were no traces that they had been there. The wind filled what had been emptied by them. The sunlight was shining.
Boolim had stood there motionless for a while. A sense of security had settled in the Toung Doung family. and in Sun Valley while they had been there. Boolim and her husband had had a joyous moment discussing the next day's menu which would go to the hill tent. But out of the blue fear and anxiety gripped them. She missed the void they had left behind. She was concerned about their security and worried about the engagements they would have to confront. In an earnest prayer they wished them a good luck.
There were no regular contacts linking to greater places of the outside. There might have been newspapers in greater places like Kilan myon town a little far away from the valley. But even if there had been ones, their deliveries might have not been available. Another impediment to the outside contact might have been their comparatively higher fees.
There were no transistor radios at the Toung Doungs. But even if they had had one, its very possession could have provided a cause for suspicion from the authorities, that is, they could have been suspected of collaboration with the Reds or something. Spring was about to go. The noise of the hilly insects was heralding the advent of the early summer.
The casual word of mouth was the only communicative vehicle by which they could be familiar with what was going on. The vocal words designed to mean something played a major role in relaying the news of the outside world. The Toung Doungs had been geographically isolated so much that it was not until the strange accents were heard and the bizarre uniforms were seen before their very eyes that they didn't realize there exist the real Reds in the world.
But oops the real Reds came to the valley. Like the wind, too. They were a contingent of a dozen or so army privates from North Korea. They were so young and so short that their rifle bodies almost touched the ground. They looked to be in their mid-teens. Their salient feature as the Reds was the red shoulder bands depicting stars.
They looked famished and fatigued. As soon as they got into the hut ground they asked for "something to eat." Dano's grandma Mrs. Euiseong Kim sought understanding, scared and stunned, saying, "We have barley only, husked and twice boiled." "That will do," they said, with desperation in their voices. They put water into barley bowl and ate them up with smacks of lips. After a short break of eating jobs, they left, with strange accents of "thanks for the meal" trailing behind.
A heavy engagement erupted that very night, without warning, somewhere on the hilly mountains. Probably between the South Korean soldiers and the invading North Koreans. Dano wondered who had shot initial rounds. It was such a tragic territorial division caused by the Great Powers of the West to the same ethnic descendants of the Great Dangun! What a shame.
There was no moon that night. Darkness shrouded, like fogs, the valley and the surrounding hilly mountains. All through the night there were clings and clangs in the air. In between the barrages of bullets, there might have been be shells flying and pounding and exploding on the places far and near the hut.
Toung Doung and his family members were terrified, in heavy bedding, hugging each other and shaking all over. There were great flashes in the windows, followed by momentary hiatus of silent darkness and a boom which shook the house and which they guessed it had exploded somewhere near the house. When the next day broke and the battle was over, peace settled again in the valley as if nothing had happened. Had they been all dead?
There was a scream somewhere outside. It was Mrs. Euiseong Kim's. "What's that?" great-grand mother asked in a low voice, sitting up. Toung Doung bolted out of the room. "What's up, Mother?" he shouted in astonishment. "Come and see here," she said. She was standing at an entrance of a bean row contiguous to the rear garden. She pointed to a big hole dug deep and round.
It was a crater which had been made by a mortar shell explosion last night. All the family ran to the scene and blurted exclaims, pointing to a mortar shell shrapnel just resembling a large pumpkin. Mrs. Euiseong Kim cited a secret assistance of samshin, or the three gods. "Samshin halmae duggida," (Three godly grandmothers saved our lives!), she chanted, bowing deeply with clapped hands.
2009년 10월 5일 월요일
The Ancestral Worship at a Mountain Hill
9
The Memorial Ritual at the Mountain Hill, 1949
The lonely traveller did not just meet road snakes but strange people who wanted to pick an argument or pick a fight. Almost everytime he hit a small country road, Dano met bullies of his peers or adults who wanted to stop him and ask useless questions or give useless pieces of advice, giggling and sneering. He met this time a group of Oksan Elementary School boys on their way home. They were running down the slope toward the road juncture where Dano was about to cross the stepping stone bridge.
"Hey, there!" one boy shouted up from a hill. Dano kept on walking.
"Hey, you white hat!" another boy joined the shout. Dano didn't stop. In a minute they rushed down the bottom of the road, struggling for breath. The boys mobbed Dano in a boy's hat.
"Why ignore us?" an oldest-looking boy who looked to be a fourth-year student of the school, holding a school bag glared, touching Dano's shoulder with his right hand.
"I dunno," Dano said. "What do you not know?" he demanded to know, with the other boys surrounding Dano. "I dunno what you mean,"Dano said, unflinching.
"You didn't reply to our calling. That means you ignored us," another boy with freckles intervened. "I didn't hear your calling," Dano said, looking the boy straight in the eye.
"We shouted 'hey, you hat'. Didn't you hear that?" the boy said, looking away.
"You called the hat, not me," Dano said.
“The hat didn't reply also," the third giggled.
"It replied, but you couldn't hear," Dano insisted.
"What is your name, then? the fourth boy asked, looking to be with interest.
"I am Dano," Dano declared.
"Don't you go to school?" the fifth wanted to know.
"I have been to school for a half year, but I have my schooling suspended," Dano said.
"Why?" the boys asked in unison.
"Because of a thief guy," Dano answered.
"How long have you been sick with malaria?" the boys were curious.
"For 105 days," Dano said matter-of-factly.
"You have suffered much," one of the boys was sympathetic.
"Not much," Dano said.
"Why?"
"Because my Grandma was instrumental in gathering herbs and in ejecting evil spirits."
"Ejecting evil spirits? How does she do it?"
"I lie on the ground and Grandma throws a knife in the mid-air and curses the evil spirits and the evil spirits run away and I am cured."
"That's been great," they agreed.
"Where are you going?" some boys wanted to know.
"To Sun Valley," Dano said.
"You must be very afraid. The Sun Valley is a fearful place."
"Not much."
They were very inquisitive. But their curiosities were hilarious to Dano. Though in a rugged valley, he did not live totally alone. There lived an "uncle" of no relation suffering from leprosy. He lived quite alone near the Dano's. Dano called on him from time to time but the uncle often waved him off with sorrowful face. Tigers did not haunt the valley but boar hogs sometimes did. He was afraid of them, of course. He hid himself behind the big trees at the time.
The geographical remoteness and isolation paid its price. Just like pine winds with the sounds of sea waves passed along the valley in unknown time, people trailed behind them. Local police people came without notice and took Toung Doung rudely and badgered him with tormenting questions and torturous beatings. The usual excuse was that Toung Dound must have collaborated with partisans, or commies. He refused to confess and naturally got a good beating. No suspicious people, however, came along, partisans, commies, or suspects of whatever name. People were few and far between. They were "as rare as beans in the drought."
Toung Doung went to the woods, Boolim went milling the grains, her mother-in-law was running nagging mills, and Dano, among the iris of every sort, was happy in the valley. Dano had mixed feelings about people. He missed grandpas, uncles and aunts, brothers and "new aunts" of the clan from Danuishill. He used to run down the hill slope whenever he spied on human shapes far down the valley in dopo or durumaggi. He was afraid of the Reds, or partisans. In actuality, he was not so much afraid of the commies as wild boars.
What originally caused the Toung Doungs to move to this remote valley hut was the autumnal harvest they could live on, although it was not so abundant. A heavy responsibility had been attached to the rental contract of the land. Toung Doung had to pay a portion of the harvest as rent which consisted of a rice harvest garnered from the tiered paddy fields and the autumnal fruits of the yards, chestnuts and pine mushrooms in the hills. Toung Doung also had to take custody of the ancestral graves in the clan-owned hills and prepare the yearly ritual of ancestor worship.
At this time of year the lonely hut of the remote valley was filled with loud talks and big laughs. Dano had a good time enjoying every minute of each mountain ritual because it was "abundant." Abundant with welcome relatives from the clan town. Abundant with autumn harvests. A persimmon tree in the backyard and a pear tree in the front yard had plump and juicy fruits on them. Sunlight was warm in the valley and wind was crisp.
The advance team of the mountain ritual arrived at the hut two days before the ritual. The first contingent consisted of the young elder-brothers in their thirties whose mission was purchase, according to the shopping lists, the fish, meat and other things at the bazaar which would be used for the ritual.
The second contingent came one day before the performance which consisted of the uncles and older elder-brothers in their forties and early fifties whose mission was make raw materials into offerings. Sea fishes had to be steamed and cut into suitable lengths; Meat had to be steamed, cut or sliced; and chestnuts had to be peeled and carved. Then they made tiered arrangements of the offerings on wooden convex vessels.
The man, who greatly contributed to the animated atmosphere of the ritual preparation workforce, was the gentleman of the West Side, Dalsur. The West Side dominated every scene. He was a born story teller who could unravel the threads of a yarn. He was knowledgeable in many aspects of human interest. He was versed in citing old quotations and age-old legends. He was also good at citing famous episodes. He was an expert at picking at slips of people's tongues not to ridicule them but to make them laugh.
The West was the very man who could electrify his audience with his wisecracks, so much so that the job of the ritual organization might not get them bored and fatigued. When they felt they needed recharging, Dano's grandma Phillnam popped from the women's chamber and put out a nice table for tasty snacks.
She was a good cook who came from the Euiseong Kim clan, She was as tall as a plum tree at the front garden and as thin as a young willow tree at the town creek. She literally had a natural tongue for taste. She knew recipes of gourmet foods; She memorized ingredients of every gamut of soups ranging from chicken soup to beef rib soup. She had even taken dassokpan, which was made of the jujube tree and had convex cookie patterns on them.
When the preparation works were all done, the workers packed them according to the category. The grandpas, except for two or three oldest, and the youngest clan people comprised the last contingent who arrived at the valley on the very morning the ancestor worship ritual was held. The transportation of the loads, which were huge, was quite a problem. But there were no vehicles nor roads on which to carry the loads at the time. So they had to be carried on strong human backs or shoulders, specifically on jigae, wood A-frames. The shallow rough roads leading to the ancestral graves were lush with bushes which were wet with autumnal dew.
The weather on almost all the occasion was fine. The air of November was real cool enough, neither hot nor cold. The November mountain winds among the pines made sea sounds, good to hear to Dano's ears. The participants in the autumnal ritual on the mountain hills usually reached 40, exceeding 50 at times. The grass on the grave mounds was yellow. The tiered clan hills had many tiered graves according to clannish order, with great-great-great-grand father topped the tiers. The ancestral worship event was observed on four separate mountain hills which took nearly six hours.
The mountain ritual for the clan ancestors was observed in an orderly manner. First, the offerings were arranged on each stone table before the grave. When the arrangement was done, the participants took their position in four or five standing lines according to the order of age and rank. A holggi, or a male person who was obligated to remind everyone of each requested action, took his position on the right frontal edge. When the holggi pronounced "chamshin" every participant was supposed to kneel and offer two deep bows.
Then, the jeju, or the host of the ritual, knelt and gave two bows. He knelt again and took a bronze vessel on which the steward on the left frontal edge poured jeongjong, the rice wine, who handed it to the steward who placed it on the table beside the rice bowl.
The time came in which every participant was reminded of the solemn occasion in which a participant, who was predetermined to do it, read a memorial eulogy. When he used to read it, Dano thought in prostrate position, that the doves stopped croaking and that mountain winds got serious. When it was done there followed two more performances--a tribute of long silence and a standing bow. The ritual was all done with the two deep bows.
Shortly thereafter, bokju and eumbok procedures, or the post-ritual shares with the grace and blessings, were in wait for everyone. After all the offerings were placed down, all the members, who took part in the event, soaked their tongue with the wine and partook of the offerings. They cut a slice of them and gave each and everyone the share. It always happened that the kids at a village town over the valley called Dumsan remembered the day of the Wang clan ritual and paid a visit to the mountain hill. They used to hide among and behind the trees around the graves and waited for the event to end. The senior members of the Wang clan saw the heads and knew what to do after the event. They were called in and all kinds of edibles were handed out to them.
The Memorial Ritual at the Mountain Hill, 1949
The lonely traveller did not just meet road snakes but strange people who wanted to pick an argument or pick a fight. Almost everytime he hit a small country road, Dano met bullies of his peers or adults who wanted to stop him and ask useless questions or give useless pieces of advice, giggling and sneering. He met this time a group of Oksan Elementary School boys on their way home. They were running down the slope toward the road juncture where Dano was about to cross the stepping stone bridge.
"Hey, there!" one boy shouted up from a hill. Dano kept on walking.
"Hey, you white hat!" another boy joined the shout. Dano didn't stop. In a minute they rushed down the bottom of the road, struggling for breath. The boys mobbed Dano in a boy's hat.
"Why ignore us?" an oldest-looking boy who looked to be a fourth-year student of the school, holding a school bag glared, touching Dano's shoulder with his right hand.
"I dunno," Dano said. "What do you not know?" he demanded to know, with the other boys surrounding Dano. "I dunno what you mean,"Dano said, unflinching.
"You didn't reply to our calling. That means you ignored us," another boy with freckles intervened. "I didn't hear your calling," Dano said, looking the boy straight in the eye.
"We shouted 'hey, you hat'. Didn't you hear that?" the boy said, looking away.
"You called the hat, not me," Dano said.
“The hat didn't reply also," the third giggled.
"It replied, but you couldn't hear," Dano insisted.
"What is your name, then? the fourth boy asked, looking to be with interest.
"I am Dano," Dano declared.
"Don't you go to school?" the fifth wanted to know.
"I have been to school for a half year, but I have my schooling suspended," Dano said.
"Why?" the boys asked in unison.
"Because of a thief guy," Dano answered.
"How long have you been sick with malaria?" the boys were curious.
"For 105 days," Dano said matter-of-factly.
"You have suffered much," one of the boys was sympathetic.
"Not much," Dano said.
"Why?"
"Because my Grandma was instrumental in gathering herbs and in ejecting evil spirits."
"Ejecting evil spirits? How does she do it?"
"I lie on the ground and Grandma throws a knife in the mid-air and curses the evil spirits and the evil spirits run away and I am cured."
"That's been great," they agreed.
"Where are you going?" some boys wanted to know.
"To Sun Valley," Dano said.
"You must be very afraid. The Sun Valley is a fearful place."
"Not much."
They were very inquisitive. But their curiosities were hilarious to Dano. Though in a rugged valley, he did not live totally alone. There lived an "uncle" of no relation suffering from leprosy. He lived quite alone near the Dano's. Dano called on him from time to time but the uncle often waved him off with sorrowful face. Tigers did not haunt the valley but boar hogs sometimes did. He was afraid of them, of course. He hid himself behind the big trees at the time.
The geographical remoteness and isolation paid its price. Just like pine winds with the sounds of sea waves passed along the valley in unknown time, people trailed behind them. Local police people came without notice and took Toung Doung rudely and badgered him with tormenting questions and torturous beatings. The usual excuse was that Toung Dound must have collaborated with partisans, or commies. He refused to confess and naturally got a good beating. No suspicious people, however, came along, partisans, commies, or suspects of whatever name. People were few and far between. They were "as rare as beans in the drought."
Toung Doung went to the woods, Boolim went milling the grains, her mother-in-law was running nagging mills, and Dano, among the iris of every sort, was happy in the valley. Dano had mixed feelings about people. He missed grandpas, uncles and aunts, brothers and "new aunts" of the clan from Danuishill. He used to run down the hill slope whenever he spied on human shapes far down the valley in dopo or durumaggi. He was afraid of the Reds, or partisans. In actuality, he was not so much afraid of the commies as wild boars.
What originally caused the Toung Doungs to move to this remote valley hut was the autumnal harvest they could live on, although it was not so abundant. A heavy responsibility had been attached to the rental contract of the land. Toung Doung had to pay a portion of the harvest as rent which consisted of a rice harvest garnered from the tiered paddy fields and the autumnal fruits of the yards, chestnuts and pine mushrooms in the hills. Toung Doung also had to take custody of the ancestral graves in the clan-owned hills and prepare the yearly ritual of ancestor worship.
At this time of year the lonely hut of the remote valley was filled with loud talks and big laughs. Dano had a good time enjoying every minute of each mountain ritual because it was "abundant." Abundant with welcome relatives from the clan town. Abundant with autumn harvests. A persimmon tree in the backyard and a pear tree in the front yard had plump and juicy fruits on them. Sunlight was warm in the valley and wind was crisp.
The advance team of the mountain ritual arrived at the hut two days before the ritual. The first contingent consisted of the young elder-brothers in their thirties whose mission was purchase, according to the shopping lists, the fish, meat and other things at the bazaar which would be used for the ritual.
The second contingent came one day before the performance which consisted of the uncles and older elder-brothers in their forties and early fifties whose mission was make raw materials into offerings. Sea fishes had to be steamed and cut into suitable lengths; Meat had to be steamed, cut or sliced; and chestnuts had to be peeled and carved. Then they made tiered arrangements of the offerings on wooden convex vessels.
The man, who greatly contributed to the animated atmosphere of the ritual preparation workforce, was the gentleman of the West Side, Dalsur. The West Side dominated every scene. He was a born story teller who could unravel the threads of a yarn. He was knowledgeable in many aspects of human interest. He was versed in citing old quotations and age-old legends. He was also good at citing famous episodes. He was an expert at picking at slips of people's tongues not to ridicule them but to make them laugh.
The West was the very man who could electrify his audience with his wisecracks, so much so that the job of the ritual organization might not get them bored and fatigued. When they felt they needed recharging, Dano's grandma Phillnam popped from the women's chamber and put out a nice table for tasty snacks.
She was a good cook who came from the Euiseong Kim clan, She was as tall as a plum tree at the front garden and as thin as a young willow tree at the town creek. She literally had a natural tongue for taste. She knew recipes of gourmet foods; She memorized ingredients of every gamut of soups ranging from chicken soup to beef rib soup. She had even taken dassokpan, which was made of the jujube tree and had convex cookie patterns on them.
When the preparation works were all done, the workers packed them according to the category. The grandpas, except for two or three oldest, and the youngest clan people comprised the last contingent who arrived at the valley on the very morning the ancestor worship ritual was held. The transportation of the loads, which were huge, was quite a problem. But there were no vehicles nor roads on which to carry the loads at the time. So they had to be carried on strong human backs or shoulders, specifically on jigae, wood A-frames. The shallow rough roads leading to the ancestral graves were lush with bushes which were wet with autumnal dew.
The weather on almost all the occasion was fine. The air of November was real cool enough, neither hot nor cold. The November mountain winds among the pines made sea sounds, good to hear to Dano's ears. The participants in the autumnal ritual on the mountain hills usually reached 40, exceeding 50 at times. The grass on the grave mounds was yellow. The tiered clan hills had many tiered graves according to clannish order, with great-great-great-grand father topped the tiers. The ancestral worship event was observed on four separate mountain hills which took nearly six hours.
The mountain ritual for the clan ancestors was observed in an orderly manner. First, the offerings were arranged on each stone table before the grave. When the arrangement was done, the participants took their position in four or five standing lines according to the order of age and rank. A holggi, or a male person who was obligated to remind everyone of each requested action, took his position on the right frontal edge. When the holggi pronounced "chamshin" every participant was supposed to kneel and offer two deep bows.
Then, the jeju, or the host of the ritual, knelt and gave two bows. He knelt again and took a bronze vessel on which the steward on the left frontal edge poured jeongjong, the rice wine, who handed it to the steward who placed it on the table beside the rice bowl.
The time came in which every participant was reminded of the solemn occasion in which a participant, who was predetermined to do it, read a memorial eulogy. When he used to read it, Dano thought in prostrate position, that the doves stopped croaking and that mountain winds got serious. When it was done there followed two more performances--a tribute of long silence and a standing bow. The ritual was all done with the two deep bows.
Shortly thereafter, bokju and eumbok procedures, or the post-ritual shares with the grace and blessings, were in wait for everyone. After all the offerings were placed down, all the members, who took part in the event, soaked their tongue with the wine and partook of the offerings. They cut a slice of them and gave each and everyone the share. It always happened that the kids at a village town over the valley called Dumsan remembered the day of the Wang clan ritual and paid a visit to the mountain hill. They used to hide among and behind the trees around the graves and waited for the event to end. The senior members of the Wang clan saw the heads and knew what to do after the event. They were called in and all kinds of edibles were handed out to them.
Boolim's Days in Nagasaki
7
The Boolims' Days at Sakitoma-chi, 1940~1942
There was no empire and no colony, either. There were only people there, greeting with handshakes and friendly talks. There were smiling human faces, melodious human voices and brisk human steps. The transmarine couple, who could have turned scandalous if their true relationship had been bared to the cruise passengers, arrived at seven on a spring morning of 1940 on the site of a Mitsubishi Mining Company at Sakitoma-chi, Nishisonoki-kun, Nagasaki-ken, Japan.
"Anatawa ri san deska?" (Are you Mrs. Lee?) a woman in his thirties in kimono dress asked Boolim, looking up and down at her as if to size her up. "Hai," Toung Jang came forward and responded on behalf of her. He had already familiarized himself in the community because he had been made a clerk at a Mitsubishi mining town of Sakitoma-chi. Michiko-san led Boolim to her "house" in the miners' quarters.
"Mr. Wang has gone to the coal pit," the woman said to Boolim at the threshold of her room, handing her a room key, with a female dependent of a miner's family acting as an interpreter. The room was small, with a low ceiling and two glass windows, one to the corridor and the other to the outside, or land side. Though unfurnished, it had room enough for two.
Left alone, with the door closed, she put the hand-held pack, which she had carried all the way from Danuishill to Nagasaki using both hands and shoulders, down on the room floor and unpacked it. She picked out first of all the wrappings of tuck (rice cakes) and smelled them to see whether they were all right. To her expected disappointment, they were going bad but she minded dumping them right now. She then sorted out her husband's sweatshirts and underwears which she had cleaned and starched, folded them, and put them in the closet.
The room was neither hot nor cold. It was adequately warm, floored with tatami mats and warmed with air-tight windows. She took a slow glance around the room, with her eyes focused on a pants on a clothes hanger on the wall. She got to it, touched it and got her nose to it. Although cleaned, it sort of smelled of coal. She got it off the hanger and sat down with it, putting it on her knee. She closed her eyes and pictured her husband far down the pit, crawling on his bended legs.
Toung Jang's wife Mrs. Guido Kwon called on Boolim and invited her to a lunch treat. But there were no familiar flavors scented of kimchi and toenjang (fermented soybean paste). There were no bowls of rice, either. Guido instead got bowls of hato mugi, or pressed barley steamed with a small amount of beans to be set out on a small dining table along with lukewarm vegetable soup. There also were plates of steamed sweet potatoes. Guido roasted the bad rice cakes which Boolim had handed her into the edible ones, which turned out a real treat.
The flamboyant words such as the allegiance to the High Emperor or the subjects' obligation did not pass their lips. The situation was that almost all the available resources human and material had been sent into the barracks at war. So, rice for the civilian use was in short supply. Other staples had been being rationed, of which pressed barley was one of them.
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Nocturnal lives posed a problem. They had not been "smart" from the start. But after a lot of trials and errors, they had adjusted themselves to "a smart mode." An old Oriental wisdom had it that the wife of a man should deserve the designation of a "smart" wife in so far as she did not "extract", or drain energy from her spouse. The very woman, who was destined or trained to deplete male stamina from amorous relationships with her counterpart, for the sake of satiating her own sexual impulses, should deserve the designation of "a bad woman."
Which had been nagged into Boolim's ears by her mother when she had been a beloved daughter, and after marriage by her mother-in-law, as "a dictum of a good housewife." She was naturally prepared to stem her husband's urge and subsequently to contain her own libido. Hugs and touches were O.K. Insertion was O.K. only if the stuff was immobile in there and pulled out in no time. Ejaculation was self-prescribed a prohibition, to which the couple progressively adapted and tempered themselves.
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Communal was the exact term which could categorize the life patterns of Sakitoma-chi coal miners. Three major modes of life at the coal mining town had been done communally: the distribution of food grains, laundry and bathing. Pressed barley and something were rationed; The washing of miners' work wear was done at communal laundry houses; And the miners and their dependents took baths at the town bath houses. The miners changed into their work clothes which had been cleaned and starched at communal laundry houses at men's locker rooms before going down the pits.
The scarcity of the farmland foods could be supplemented and made whole by foods from the waters. Boolim and her sister-in-law Guido frequented the shallow beaches off Sakitoma Island to collect various sea foods including brown seaweeds, seaweed laver, abalones and all assortments of shellfish.
The sea was really generous in offering and asked for nothing in return. She did not discriminate against the women from a ruined country, nor deride them. The sea winds were aptly fresh and the sea water was crystal blue. Boolim had a guilt feeling from time to time about having the luxury of peace and tranquility as a subject of a ruined kingdom while her husband was crawling on his hands and knees in the dark pits in the imperial country proper.
Boolim's guilty feeling about the bizarre or reverse euphoria, which she had had while gathering shellfish and strolling on the insular beaches of the Japanese mining town, was juxtaposed with her husband Toung Doung's elation and the subsequent guilt feeling he had experienced during routine commutes to and from the office, commanding the fine view. He took one and half miles' walk everyday to the office from which he descended to the pits by cable car.
Whereas they had been privately ashamed of the unexpected joy of life, which Boolim had found out from the tranquil seascapes and which Toung Doung had done from idyllic commutes, a quiet inner protest had erupted, which had dared to justify the jubilation by a supposition that they would have otherwise been working the harsh fields at an outback and sawing far into the night.
The excuses for the irony might have also stemmed from the history that the most recent ruined monarch and most of the monarchs before him had been incompetent and unsympathetic toward their subjects; That the elites of the ruling class had fought among themselves; That the lower officials had domineered over the common people, extorting them; And that the land owners had squeezed rents from the peasants.
It's not certain that the Mitsubishi Mining Company had aptly reimbursed for the labors of the miners. In fact, Boolim had not ever received envelopes of her husband Toung Doung's salaries because Toung Doung had gotten his paychecks mailed to his mother at home. The Toung Doung couple lived off rations and the hospitality of the neighborhood people.
The kindnesses of the Sakitoma-chi neighborhood seemed and sounded real; There had not occurred even once that the Boolim couple had suspected the towners might have been indoctrinated on the behavior modification toward the miners and their dependents from the colonial country. Their behaviors had been so sincere: Their attitudes and words had been so genuine.
The communal congeniality, or companionship had not come from wealth. A specific neighbor had not been rich enough to offer philanthropy, let alone throw a gorgeous town party. The folks of the small town had been prepared to share, or to divide among themselves, which had been the root of the communal camaraderie. There had been mutual concerns, considerations and worries about every gamut of human incidents ranging from kid ailments to births to scarcity of foods. Michiko-san, Saori-san, Hatori-san, Akiko-san, and so and so had stopped by from time to time, popping their heads into the room to know whether everything was all right.
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Point was that virtually every other hour did not get passed without getting noticed by his or her concerned neighbors. It was not into two years until Boolim ran into a shower of Japanese hospitalities. In the second year of Boolim's entry into the mining town, she had come to bear an offspring. Hardly had she entered labor when Saori-san stopped by to see what was going on in there. Seeing that Boolim started labor just alone, she jump startled from the pitiful scene. She intoned the impossibility of the condition. She turned into a town crier, rallied the neighborhood to help Boolim, called for a mid-wife, turning the town into a stampede.
The rescue party began to set in. Individual contributions were briskly "commandeered" to help ease off her labor; Blankets were collected to help warm the room floor; A portable fireplace was installed to heat the room; A middle-aged mid-wife got prepared for the emergency; The women of the neighborhood took every possible measure for after-birth treatment and nutritions. Whispers of surprise erupted when someone brought rice, though meager in quantity. Meat was rare like rice at the time: The sea fish would do.
Although her husband had gone to the pits and her sister-in-law Guido had not been available because the Toung Jangs had been away from the island, the repeated assurances from the kind-hearted neighborhood sisters and mothers gave Boolim a sort of peace and consolation. Surges of pain were swept away in the melodious soothing words. As noon passed and neared two in the afternoon, Boolim got her first child and son born. There was a momentary hustle and bustle. "Musuko desne!" (It's a son!), the women in the room shouted in unison.
The rescue people went back to their places at dusk. Guido returned to the town in the early evening and rushed to the scene in trouble, keeping vigilant all through the night. Toung Doung joined the scene late at night, excusing himself for the tardiness. He saw a cute little thing lying beside his wife and beamed a broad smile. “Meet your son," his wife said, still lying and smiling weakly. She did not say "our son." He did not get the reason that she said in such a mode of speaking.
"I am so sorry and thank you for the trouble," Toung Doung held her by the hand weak and wet with sweat, caressing her shoulders. "How do you like your son?" she asked, still lying and looking up with meek smiles. He threw a glance at his son but the little thing did not look him back, his eyes still closed. He did not know whether his son was sleeping or got his eyelids still shut.
Guido got all prepared for the Boolim fare and told him to serve it every other hour as she went back to her house. "See to it that you keep the exact hour," she asked of him as she exited the door. She also wanted to know whether Toung Doung would be able to get a few days off from the company. He answered in the positive.
With their two and a newly-born son left alone, Boolim rattled off Aunts' extraordinary efforts. "Let's keep in mind we‘ve owed them a great debt!" they vowed to each other. Even to her own surprise, Boolim ate out every soup and grainy meal offered with a great gusto. "I eat too much, don't I?" she said ashamedly. "Yes, you became a big eater, of course, but don't be sorry for that. Rather, I thank you for that," Toung Doung said, grinning ear to ear at his wife's enormous consumption.
Toung Doung dozed in fits and starts. Tried to keep himself awake. And sat up with starts and rushed to prepare bowls of soup for her. She was sorry for his lack of sleep. The newly born had fits and starts, too. Then and there she started reaching for it to feed. It did not cry, in a true sense of the word. The little thing cried, of course, but gave little noise so much so that his parents did not get on nerves.
Her breast was really good. Her breast milk was always superfluous at a feeding. Her breast milk could feed her son to his full content and made a leftover. She pumped all that had been left and collected it on a big bowl and made his husband "eat" it. "Eat," she said. He hesitated at first, saying "How can I?" But she insisted, saying "It's very good for you, darling."
Months passed. Toung Doung didn't know what made him think so suddenly. He didn't know why anyway. If asked, he wouldn't know, either. He was tempted to have a conversation with his newly born nevertheless. A confession session, that is. So, using a comparatively long interval in which his wife had gone out to release, he briskly started having "heart-to-heart talks" with his fresh new son, baring his bosom.
The young confessoree, who would accept the session, appeared to be at ease. On the confessor's part, too, the initial shyness was replaced by chutzpah. He dared to raise his face, yet with lower voice. Look him straight in the eye. Sure. He was sorry for the gloomy condition which he would be put in anyway but they had to carry on a karma in which they had been destined to become his mom and dad. The people of a ruined country could not and didn't have to commit mass suicide. Or go single rather than go double.
There was a profound and calm stare which struck him as a sort of infantile insouciance. The confessoree appeared to be smiling albeit faintly. There was an inquisitive gaze, too. The little son seemed to be asking unfathomable questions. Seemed to say that the precious encounter of theirs couldn't have been a mere accident but an inevitable predestination.
He didn't have to be sorry. He didn't have any idea why his dad let himself down. He had had a long journey from a far-away land through whirlpool by whirlpool of what you don't know, cliffs and valleys. He appreciated the light his dad had enabled him to see. He didn't get distressed by what had happened. He would have to face the music. Thanks, Dad.
8
Toung Doung Brings Stick Matches, 1949.
Dano started walking down a slopy hill of Sun Valley (short for Sun Bang Valley), Baikja-dong, Andong, South Korea. An afternoon vernal wind was crisp enough with a faint fragrance of pines blowing from the bottom of the far-down valleys. The pines were rustling with a sound of sea waves. The solitary boy of dokka-chon, that is, a mountain village consisting of the only cottage, stopped from time to time to inhale and savor the fragrance of the pines in the valley. He was on his way from Oksan Elementary School, seven kilometers from his home. The hut was seen from the top of hill, nestled far below.
He was a loner of eight with the height of four feet and three inches in simple starched cotton wears. He saw well, heard well and smelled well. He was a country boy, that is, a mountain boy. He did not give a laugh often and did not make a face, either. His facial feature was kind of solemn with an aura of coldness.
Boy Dano was the very person who had been born at Sakitoma-chi (or Sakitama-chi), Nagasaki, Japan. He did not know it. He did not remember it. He did not have any memory related to his childhood years from his birth to age six. Many a man and woman of the world takes a great pride on their early memory of his or her childhood years dating even to age two or three. But Dano's memory used to be shrouded in murky fogs. In the whirlpool of the black hole of amnesia.
The discontinuities were irritating, The vacuums were intolerable. There grew inquisitiveness for the quest of his identity and self-doubts about his own origin. Seemingly unrelated images were tantalizing. Murmurs...Unidentified noises...Muted footsteps....Unidentifiable cracks...Mystic crashes...What happened and how did it happen anyway?
Boolim began to unravel the threads of memory on a spring afternoon when left alone with her seven-year-old son Dano who started tormenting her again about his blacked-out memory of the earliest years. Her husband Toung Doung had gone to a local bazaar four kilometers away to buy some things including farmland tools.
"Where am I from, Mom?" Dano asked his mother casually in front of the barnyard, where she was fixing a wooden feed vessel. "Was I brought away from a bridge? Grandma told me."
"You've not been brought from anywhere. You were born from me just like calves are born from mother cows," Boolim answered. He was not convinced.
"Where was I born, Mom?" Dano asked. "Here or At Danuishill?"
"You're not born here nor at Danuishill," she said. "You were born in Nagasaki, Japan."
There used to be not so many things he could handle. He couldn't decide on the place of birth and the parents he would like to be born from, which was destiny. His father was a great man of a stout build, strong will and hard work. Dano had to look up to him.
Dano had been born Japanese by the Japanese name of Masao. But now he was Korean by the proud name of Wang Dano. The United States of America was a liberator, emancipator and savior that enabled him to live as a citizen of an independent nation.
Boolim felt it necessary to stop then and there. She would not have to mention the Big Bomb which had been dropped by the U.S. Bomber on Nagasaki City on the 6th of August, 1945. And a nano- second snap on the face she had had on the horrible morning just like you have had a big bee sting. And an instant flash which had whacked the entire town of Sakitama-chi (Sakitoma-chi) which was about 100 miles or so distanced from the tragic city. And the melee from the crash which had almost sunk the homecoming ship when she had hit a live torpedo off the shore of Busan Port.
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It was a terrific day, the 9th of May, 1949, on which stick matches took the place of flints which had been used to start fire. Toung Doung bought seongnyang, or stick matches from the bazaar which used to be open at Kilan, Andong-kun. "This is it," Toung Doung produced a small match case from which he picked out one match and started fire with it. It smelled of sulfur, which was very good. A fragrance of civilization. Then boys and girls had been chasing the exhaust fumes which had spewed from the tails of the ancient trucks, shouting with joy.
They might have thought it their obligation to exert their utmost to "educate" Dano who had been cast into a rugged valley. A prime conspirator used to be Boolim's mother-in-law and Dano's Grandma, that is, Grandma Nagging who had been so named after her constant nagging. And his son Toung Doung who had been her loyal follower. So Grandma Nagging and her son had made it a rule to send Dano to Danuishill, their clan village, on every available opportunity with a view to training and enlightening Dano, letting him have a wide range of experiences about manners and customs of the clan.
He was a lone pedestrian traveler just like his father had been. The entire route from Sun Valley to Danuishill was seven more kilometers. He had no road companion for the entire journey. The mountain trail of the initial two kilometers was a creek road which had been resultingly serpentine, rocky and thorny. The road, on which the creek used to run most of the season, was pocked with rocks. Thorny bushes stood just human height long. Dangers rarely lurked that snakes attacked the traveler from the bushes. But he could hear the reptiles hiss among the bushes. He did not have a close encounter with mountain boar hogs. He could, however, see them rush up from down the creek more than once, hiding himself behind a huge pine, which was really frightful.
Words of invitations from a clan family were most of the time a lip service just like most facades used to be deceptive. The young Dano, ages 7, of course hadn't known that at that time. Hardly had he arrived at the village of the Wang clan the remote "relatives" five or more times removed came to him and "invited" him to lodge at night at their home or to dine with them the next morning. There used to be many a time that he was ashamed to be there and rebuking himself for appearing there at all.
Formal coughs had been given by him, of course but the intervals between warning and opening the door must have been too short. He had more often than not run into the relatives in trouble, who had been hiding some things hastily behind them and wearing awkward expressions on their faces. He had not known at that time but he knew later what that had been at all. They had been eating some delicacies.
Dano had a good supper meal at Sol Halbae's, the previous evening. He had a good night's sleep there, specifically at the halbae's (grandfather's) sarangbang, or guest room. The room was spacious enough to board tens of male guests at one time. Dano was honored to have the night‘s rest beside the halbae who had been the patriarch of the clan. Since Dano got the next morning's breakfast appointment "booked", he went to Daechu Ajimae, or Aunt Jujube. He was guided to the sarangbang of the house on which he found the room floored with clay and of which he also found the ceiling so low that Dano's height almost reached it.
The room reeked of clay and dust. While a modest breakfast meal, which was served on a small portable wooden table separated from the ajae's (the uncle's), was in progress, a very perplexing scene unfolded before them. A toddler son of theirs began to defecate and the ajime called in a mutt who was playing on the front garden. Then he rushed into the room to relish the shit droppings. After he was done with the feast with smacking lips, he attacked at the butt of the child who burst out crying.
Dano thanked them for the nice treat and headed for the West, which had been named after the location of the residence, in which a distant brother five times removed, who had been reputed to hold lofty moral standards, had been living. Dano ruminated the live scene which had been disclosed before his eyes a few minutes ago. The mongrel, who had been attacking at the asshole of the child, did not look disgusting at all, which had been a usual canine-feeding practice at the time.
Guest Dano naturally did not throw up. What actually irked him then was the white rice on the ajae's spoon he had spotted in a flash of a nano second and the confused and awkward expressions on his face. The crux of the matter was that the granary meal on Dano's bowl mostly contained husked and steamed barley with a meager mix of steamed rice among them whereas the ajae's meal bowl contained complete rice beneath a thin layer of the crude grain meal.
Kids, who were older than Dano, were gathered in front of the wooden portal of the West. What a view! They did not completely understand what it meant by the scene. But Dano of 7, who had been sent by his parents, grandma and great-grandma to be trained to learn from the great places of the clan, did know the meaning of the scene of the moment. Just like he had known the meaning of the whiteness on the uncle's spoon. He could not explain in concrete words to the people around about the ramifications of the scene, of course, but he intuited the context of it. Which was that the woman proprietor of the mansion was sending a woman serf away with comforting words, who was parting with her generous master. A poignant vestige in a landed gentry of a ruined country.
The Boolims' Days at Sakitoma-chi, 1940~1942
There was no empire and no colony, either. There were only people there, greeting with handshakes and friendly talks. There were smiling human faces, melodious human voices and brisk human steps. The transmarine couple, who could have turned scandalous if their true relationship had been bared to the cruise passengers, arrived at seven on a spring morning of 1940 on the site of a Mitsubishi Mining Company at Sakitoma-chi, Nishisonoki-kun, Nagasaki-ken, Japan.
"Anatawa ri san deska?" (Are you Mrs. Lee?) a woman in his thirties in kimono dress asked Boolim, looking up and down at her as if to size her up. "Hai," Toung Jang came forward and responded on behalf of her. He had already familiarized himself in the community because he had been made a clerk at a Mitsubishi mining town of Sakitoma-chi. Michiko-san led Boolim to her "house" in the miners' quarters.
"Mr. Wang has gone to the coal pit," the woman said to Boolim at the threshold of her room, handing her a room key, with a female dependent of a miner's family acting as an interpreter. The room was small, with a low ceiling and two glass windows, one to the corridor and the other to the outside, or land side. Though unfurnished, it had room enough for two.
Left alone, with the door closed, she put the hand-held pack, which she had carried all the way from Danuishill to Nagasaki using both hands and shoulders, down on the room floor and unpacked it. She picked out first of all the wrappings of tuck (rice cakes) and smelled them to see whether they were all right. To her expected disappointment, they were going bad but she minded dumping them right now. She then sorted out her husband's sweatshirts and underwears which she had cleaned and starched, folded them, and put them in the closet.
The room was neither hot nor cold. It was adequately warm, floored with tatami mats and warmed with air-tight windows. She took a slow glance around the room, with her eyes focused on a pants on a clothes hanger on the wall. She got to it, touched it and got her nose to it. Although cleaned, it sort of smelled of coal. She got it off the hanger and sat down with it, putting it on her knee. She closed her eyes and pictured her husband far down the pit, crawling on his bended legs.
Toung Jang's wife Mrs. Guido Kwon called on Boolim and invited her to a lunch treat. But there were no familiar flavors scented of kimchi and toenjang (fermented soybean paste). There were no bowls of rice, either. Guido instead got bowls of hato mugi, or pressed barley steamed with a small amount of beans to be set out on a small dining table along with lukewarm vegetable soup. There also were plates of steamed sweet potatoes. Guido roasted the bad rice cakes which Boolim had handed her into the edible ones, which turned out a real treat.
The flamboyant words such as the allegiance to the High Emperor or the subjects' obligation did not pass their lips. The situation was that almost all the available resources human and material had been sent into the barracks at war. So, rice for the civilian use was in short supply. Other staples had been being rationed, of which pressed barley was one of them.
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Nocturnal lives posed a problem. They had not been "smart" from the start. But after a lot of trials and errors, they had adjusted themselves to "a smart mode." An old Oriental wisdom had it that the wife of a man should deserve the designation of a "smart" wife in so far as she did not "extract", or drain energy from her spouse. The very woman, who was destined or trained to deplete male stamina from amorous relationships with her counterpart, for the sake of satiating her own sexual impulses, should deserve the designation of "a bad woman."
Which had been nagged into Boolim's ears by her mother when she had been a beloved daughter, and after marriage by her mother-in-law, as "a dictum of a good housewife." She was naturally prepared to stem her husband's urge and subsequently to contain her own libido. Hugs and touches were O.K. Insertion was O.K. only if the stuff was immobile in there and pulled out in no time. Ejaculation was self-prescribed a prohibition, to which the couple progressively adapted and tempered themselves.
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Communal was the exact term which could categorize the life patterns of Sakitoma-chi coal miners. Three major modes of life at the coal mining town had been done communally: the distribution of food grains, laundry and bathing. Pressed barley and something were rationed; The washing of miners' work wear was done at communal laundry houses; And the miners and their dependents took baths at the town bath houses. The miners changed into their work clothes which had been cleaned and starched at communal laundry houses at men's locker rooms before going down the pits.
The scarcity of the farmland foods could be supplemented and made whole by foods from the waters. Boolim and her sister-in-law Guido frequented the shallow beaches off Sakitoma Island to collect various sea foods including brown seaweeds, seaweed laver, abalones and all assortments of shellfish.
The sea was really generous in offering and asked for nothing in return. She did not discriminate against the women from a ruined country, nor deride them. The sea winds were aptly fresh and the sea water was crystal blue. Boolim had a guilt feeling from time to time about having the luxury of peace and tranquility as a subject of a ruined kingdom while her husband was crawling on his hands and knees in the dark pits in the imperial country proper.
Boolim's guilty feeling about the bizarre or reverse euphoria, which she had had while gathering shellfish and strolling on the insular beaches of the Japanese mining town, was juxtaposed with her husband Toung Doung's elation and the subsequent guilt feeling he had experienced during routine commutes to and from the office, commanding the fine view. He took one and half miles' walk everyday to the office from which he descended to the pits by cable car.
Whereas they had been privately ashamed of the unexpected joy of life, which Boolim had found out from the tranquil seascapes and which Toung Doung had done from idyllic commutes, a quiet inner protest had erupted, which had dared to justify the jubilation by a supposition that they would have otherwise been working the harsh fields at an outback and sawing far into the night.
The excuses for the irony might have also stemmed from the history that the most recent ruined monarch and most of the monarchs before him had been incompetent and unsympathetic toward their subjects; That the elites of the ruling class had fought among themselves; That the lower officials had domineered over the common people, extorting them; And that the land owners had squeezed rents from the peasants.
It's not certain that the Mitsubishi Mining Company had aptly reimbursed for the labors of the miners. In fact, Boolim had not ever received envelopes of her husband Toung Doung's salaries because Toung Doung had gotten his paychecks mailed to his mother at home. The Toung Doung couple lived off rations and the hospitality of the neighborhood people.
The kindnesses of the Sakitoma-chi neighborhood seemed and sounded real; There had not occurred even once that the Boolim couple had suspected the towners might have been indoctrinated on the behavior modification toward the miners and their dependents from the colonial country. Their behaviors had been so sincere: Their attitudes and words had been so genuine.
The communal congeniality, or companionship had not come from wealth. A specific neighbor had not been rich enough to offer philanthropy, let alone throw a gorgeous town party. The folks of the small town had been prepared to share, or to divide among themselves, which had been the root of the communal camaraderie. There had been mutual concerns, considerations and worries about every gamut of human incidents ranging from kid ailments to births to scarcity of foods. Michiko-san, Saori-san, Hatori-san, Akiko-san, and so and so had stopped by from time to time, popping their heads into the room to know whether everything was all right.
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Point was that virtually every other hour did not get passed without getting noticed by his or her concerned neighbors. It was not into two years until Boolim ran into a shower of Japanese hospitalities. In the second year of Boolim's entry into the mining town, she had come to bear an offspring. Hardly had she entered labor when Saori-san stopped by to see what was going on in there. Seeing that Boolim started labor just alone, she jump startled from the pitiful scene. She intoned the impossibility of the condition. She turned into a town crier, rallied the neighborhood to help Boolim, called for a mid-wife, turning the town into a stampede.
The rescue party began to set in. Individual contributions were briskly "commandeered" to help ease off her labor; Blankets were collected to help warm the room floor; A portable fireplace was installed to heat the room; A middle-aged mid-wife got prepared for the emergency; The women of the neighborhood took every possible measure for after-birth treatment and nutritions. Whispers of surprise erupted when someone brought rice, though meager in quantity. Meat was rare like rice at the time: The sea fish would do.
Although her husband had gone to the pits and her sister-in-law Guido had not been available because the Toung Jangs had been away from the island, the repeated assurances from the kind-hearted neighborhood sisters and mothers gave Boolim a sort of peace and consolation. Surges of pain were swept away in the melodious soothing words. As noon passed and neared two in the afternoon, Boolim got her first child and son born. There was a momentary hustle and bustle. "Musuko desne!" (It's a son!), the women in the room shouted in unison.
The rescue people went back to their places at dusk. Guido returned to the town in the early evening and rushed to the scene in trouble, keeping vigilant all through the night. Toung Doung joined the scene late at night, excusing himself for the tardiness. He saw a cute little thing lying beside his wife and beamed a broad smile. “Meet your son," his wife said, still lying and smiling weakly. She did not say "our son." He did not get the reason that she said in such a mode of speaking.
"I am so sorry and thank you for the trouble," Toung Doung held her by the hand weak and wet with sweat, caressing her shoulders. "How do you like your son?" she asked, still lying and looking up with meek smiles. He threw a glance at his son but the little thing did not look him back, his eyes still closed. He did not know whether his son was sleeping or got his eyelids still shut.
Guido got all prepared for the Boolim fare and told him to serve it every other hour as she went back to her house. "See to it that you keep the exact hour," she asked of him as she exited the door. She also wanted to know whether Toung Doung would be able to get a few days off from the company. He answered in the positive.
With their two and a newly-born son left alone, Boolim rattled off Aunts' extraordinary efforts. "Let's keep in mind we‘ve owed them a great debt!" they vowed to each other. Even to her own surprise, Boolim ate out every soup and grainy meal offered with a great gusto. "I eat too much, don't I?" she said ashamedly. "Yes, you became a big eater, of course, but don't be sorry for that. Rather, I thank you for that," Toung Doung said, grinning ear to ear at his wife's enormous consumption.
Toung Doung dozed in fits and starts. Tried to keep himself awake. And sat up with starts and rushed to prepare bowls of soup for her. She was sorry for his lack of sleep. The newly born had fits and starts, too. Then and there she started reaching for it to feed. It did not cry, in a true sense of the word. The little thing cried, of course, but gave little noise so much so that his parents did not get on nerves.
Her breast was really good. Her breast milk was always superfluous at a feeding. Her breast milk could feed her son to his full content and made a leftover. She pumped all that had been left and collected it on a big bowl and made his husband "eat" it. "Eat," she said. He hesitated at first, saying "How can I?" But she insisted, saying "It's very good for you, darling."
Months passed. Toung Doung didn't know what made him think so suddenly. He didn't know why anyway. If asked, he wouldn't know, either. He was tempted to have a conversation with his newly born nevertheless. A confession session, that is. So, using a comparatively long interval in which his wife had gone out to release, he briskly started having "heart-to-heart talks" with his fresh new son, baring his bosom.
The young confessoree, who would accept the session, appeared to be at ease. On the confessor's part, too, the initial shyness was replaced by chutzpah. He dared to raise his face, yet with lower voice. Look him straight in the eye. Sure. He was sorry for the gloomy condition which he would be put in anyway but they had to carry on a karma in which they had been destined to become his mom and dad. The people of a ruined country could not and didn't have to commit mass suicide. Or go single rather than go double.
There was a profound and calm stare which struck him as a sort of infantile insouciance. The confessoree appeared to be smiling albeit faintly. There was an inquisitive gaze, too. The little son seemed to be asking unfathomable questions. Seemed to say that the precious encounter of theirs couldn't have been a mere accident but an inevitable predestination.
He didn't have to be sorry. He didn't have any idea why his dad let himself down. He had had a long journey from a far-away land through whirlpool by whirlpool of what you don't know, cliffs and valleys. He appreciated the light his dad had enabled him to see. He didn't get distressed by what had happened. He would have to face the music. Thanks, Dad.
8
Toung Doung Brings Stick Matches, 1949.
Dano started walking down a slopy hill of Sun Valley (short for Sun Bang Valley), Baikja-dong, Andong, South Korea. An afternoon vernal wind was crisp enough with a faint fragrance of pines blowing from the bottom of the far-down valleys. The pines were rustling with a sound of sea waves. The solitary boy of dokka-chon, that is, a mountain village consisting of the only cottage, stopped from time to time to inhale and savor the fragrance of the pines in the valley. He was on his way from Oksan Elementary School, seven kilometers from his home. The hut was seen from the top of hill, nestled far below.
He was a loner of eight with the height of four feet and three inches in simple starched cotton wears. He saw well, heard well and smelled well. He was a country boy, that is, a mountain boy. He did not give a laugh often and did not make a face, either. His facial feature was kind of solemn with an aura of coldness.
Boy Dano was the very person who had been born at Sakitoma-chi (or Sakitama-chi), Nagasaki, Japan. He did not know it. He did not remember it. He did not have any memory related to his childhood years from his birth to age six. Many a man and woman of the world takes a great pride on their early memory of his or her childhood years dating even to age two or three. But Dano's memory used to be shrouded in murky fogs. In the whirlpool of the black hole of amnesia.
The discontinuities were irritating, The vacuums were intolerable. There grew inquisitiveness for the quest of his identity and self-doubts about his own origin. Seemingly unrelated images were tantalizing. Murmurs...Unidentified noises...Muted footsteps....Unidentifiable cracks...Mystic crashes...What happened and how did it happen anyway?
Boolim began to unravel the threads of memory on a spring afternoon when left alone with her seven-year-old son Dano who started tormenting her again about his blacked-out memory of the earliest years. Her husband Toung Doung had gone to a local bazaar four kilometers away to buy some things including farmland tools.
"Where am I from, Mom?" Dano asked his mother casually in front of the barnyard, where she was fixing a wooden feed vessel. "Was I brought away from a bridge? Grandma told me."
"You've not been brought from anywhere. You were born from me just like calves are born from mother cows," Boolim answered. He was not convinced.
"Where was I born, Mom?" Dano asked. "Here or At Danuishill?"
"You're not born here nor at Danuishill," she said. "You were born in Nagasaki, Japan."
There used to be not so many things he could handle. He couldn't decide on the place of birth and the parents he would like to be born from, which was destiny. His father was a great man of a stout build, strong will and hard work. Dano had to look up to him.
Dano had been born Japanese by the Japanese name of Masao. But now he was Korean by the proud name of Wang Dano. The United States of America was a liberator, emancipator and savior that enabled him to live as a citizen of an independent nation.
Boolim felt it necessary to stop then and there. She would not have to mention the Big Bomb which had been dropped by the U.S. Bomber on Nagasaki City on the 6th of August, 1945. And a nano- second snap on the face she had had on the horrible morning just like you have had a big bee sting. And an instant flash which had whacked the entire town of Sakitama-chi (Sakitoma-chi) which was about 100 miles or so distanced from the tragic city. And the melee from the crash which had almost sunk the homecoming ship when she had hit a live torpedo off the shore of Busan Port.
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It was a terrific day, the 9th of May, 1949, on which stick matches took the place of flints which had been used to start fire. Toung Doung bought seongnyang, or stick matches from the bazaar which used to be open at Kilan, Andong-kun. "This is it," Toung Doung produced a small match case from which he picked out one match and started fire with it. It smelled of sulfur, which was very good. A fragrance of civilization. Then boys and girls had been chasing the exhaust fumes which had spewed from the tails of the ancient trucks, shouting with joy.
They might have thought it their obligation to exert their utmost to "educate" Dano who had been cast into a rugged valley. A prime conspirator used to be Boolim's mother-in-law and Dano's Grandma, that is, Grandma Nagging who had been so named after her constant nagging. And his son Toung Doung who had been her loyal follower. So Grandma Nagging and her son had made it a rule to send Dano to Danuishill, their clan village, on every available opportunity with a view to training and enlightening Dano, letting him have a wide range of experiences about manners and customs of the clan.
He was a lone pedestrian traveler just like his father had been. The entire route from Sun Valley to Danuishill was seven more kilometers. He had no road companion for the entire journey. The mountain trail of the initial two kilometers was a creek road which had been resultingly serpentine, rocky and thorny. The road, on which the creek used to run most of the season, was pocked with rocks. Thorny bushes stood just human height long. Dangers rarely lurked that snakes attacked the traveler from the bushes. But he could hear the reptiles hiss among the bushes. He did not have a close encounter with mountain boar hogs. He could, however, see them rush up from down the creek more than once, hiding himself behind a huge pine, which was really frightful.
Words of invitations from a clan family were most of the time a lip service just like most facades used to be deceptive. The young Dano, ages 7, of course hadn't known that at that time. Hardly had he arrived at the village of the Wang clan the remote "relatives" five or more times removed came to him and "invited" him to lodge at night at their home or to dine with them the next morning. There used to be many a time that he was ashamed to be there and rebuking himself for appearing there at all.
Formal coughs had been given by him, of course but the intervals between warning and opening the door must have been too short. He had more often than not run into the relatives in trouble, who had been hiding some things hastily behind them and wearing awkward expressions on their faces. He had not known at that time but he knew later what that had been at all. They had been eating some delicacies.
Dano had a good supper meal at Sol Halbae's, the previous evening. He had a good night's sleep there, specifically at the halbae's (grandfather's) sarangbang, or guest room. The room was spacious enough to board tens of male guests at one time. Dano was honored to have the night‘s rest beside the halbae who had been the patriarch of the clan. Since Dano got the next morning's breakfast appointment "booked", he went to Daechu Ajimae, or Aunt Jujube. He was guided to the sarangbang of the house on which he found the room floored with clay and of which he also found the ceiling so low that Dano's height almost reached it.
The room reeked of clay and dust. While a modest breakfast meal, which was served on a small portable wooden table separated from the ajae's (the uncle's), was in progress, a very perplexing scene unfolded before them. A toddler son of theirs began to defecate and the ajime called in a mutt who was playing on the front garden. Then he rushed into the room to relish the shit droppings. After he was done with the feast with smacking lips, he attacked at the butt of the child who burst out crying.
Dano thanked them for the nice treat and headed for the West, which had been named after the location of the residence, in which a distant brother five times removed, who had been reputed to hold lofty moral standards, had been living. Dano ruminated the live scene which had been disclosed before his eyes a few minutes ago. The mongrel, who had been attacking at the asshole of the child, did not look disgusting at all, which had been a usual canine-feeding practice at the time.
Guest Dano naturally did not throw up. What actually irked him then was the white rice on the ajae's spoon he had spotted in a flash of a nano second and the confused and awkward expressions on his face. The crux of the matter was that the granary meal on Dano's bowl mostly contained husked and steamed barley with a meager mix of steamed rice among them whereas the ajae's meal bowl contained complete rice beneath a thin layer of the crude grain meal.
Kids, who were older than Dano, were gathered in front of the wooden portal of the West. What a view! They did not completely understand what it meant by the scene. But Dano of 7, who had been sent by his parents, grandma and great-grandma to be trained to learn from the great places of the clan, did know the meaning of the scene of the moment. Just like he had known the meaning of the whiteness on the uncle's spoon. He could not explain in concrete words to the people around about the ramifications of the scene, of course, but he intuited the context of it. Which was that the woman proprietor of the mansion was sending a woman serf away with comforting words, who was parting with her generous master. A poignant vestige in a landed gentry of a ruined country.
2009년 10월 4일 일요일
Boolim Heads for Shimonoseki
6
Boolim Heads for Shimonoseki, 1940
Mouths of the clan's aunts and sisters at this small town got busy, who were milling gossips mostly at the village well under a huge elm tree. The roosters of the village crooned and the sky in the east dawned. The "aunts" of the village got to the village well and drew water from the never-drying spring. And the never-ending yarns, too.
The yarns were not coherent altogether. They couldn't be. Mrs. Punggsan, who was from Pungsan, Andong-gun, which was 50 kilometers away, usually talked about the wellbeing of her children (Chinchin had a fever last night!) Mrs. Munkyong whispered about her husband, giggling. Mrs Andong used to put her dreams on the mill board. She was wondering whether she had dreamt taemong, a dream indicating the pregnancy and omen about the unborn baby, or something. They then couldn't wait to offer gratuitous interpretations.
There were also moments when knowledge took precedence. A semblance of it, of course. They knew it from the grapevine, or from the wind. So some aunts had made endeavors to enlighten other ignorant hyongnims, that is, elder "sisters" tied in clan relationships, by claiming that there is a big country. far across the Pacific, called miguk, or a beautiful country, named the United States of America, which is ten times (several times multiplied) bigger and stronger than Japan, so that the miguk would intervene in the Pacific War and vanquish ilbon, or the Imperial Japan, sooner or later.
The notification at the wellside was also made of the marginal default or impoverishment when one aunt or the other's house was running out of the food grain. The aunts subsequently chipped in to fill in the empty ssaldok, that is, the urn of rice for emergency. More often than not episodes of over-the-fence camaraderie occurred in which a big bowl of steamed rice crossed over an aunt's fence.
Good tidings arrived via sea mail to Boolim's and her clan's delight that the two advance departures, Toung Doung Wang and his older brother Toung Jang Wang, had been admitted to the miners' apartments at Sakitoma-chi, Nishisonoki-kun, Nagasaki-ken. In the letter Toung Doung was honored to have been recruited, through rigorous fitness tests, as one of the Industrial Warriors of the Emperor, and elated at the prospect that the esteemed company Mitsubishi had permitted the Chosun miners to have their dependents at the residence.
"Honored? The Industrial Warriors of the Emperor your asshole!" some of the listeners thought aloud as the most knowledgeable middle-school graduate in the village read the missive aloud. As if to detect the cerebration, some of the audience chimed in to defend Toung Doung, saying, "Mail censorship must be harsh!" The rest of the audience began to argue about the toils and hardships the Wang brothers now faced.
The great uncles and the great fathers or, the elderlies of the village were sitting on the hottest part of a spacious ondol room floor, one of whom coughed discomforts over the proceedings of the conversations. Great Uncle Hui coughed a solemn remark, saying, "Don't be sarcastic. Why make a mockery of Nippon and things Nipponese?" The eyes of the audience in the room were rivetted on "the Uncle of the West", which had been named after the location of the residence of the patriarch.
The monarch and the ruling class were responsible to the colonial nation. The ordinary people were not. The subjects of the humiliated country had to survive. Whatever hard elements they were in, they had to carry on. So they were not excused to idle away, merely lamenting the sorry state of the country.
She prayed...And prayed. She just prayed before the altar in the small hours before dawn. Taking a bath and offering a bowl of the fresh well water she had drawn first of all the others in the new day, Boolim prayed that her husband Toung Doung might keep safe and sound in the deep pits of a Japanese coal mine.
“The altar" was not particularly built. Any elated place, which a doenjangdok, or a big jar containing soybean paste was placed, would do. No psalms, nor mantras, nor prayer books were in store for her. She used to just kneel in the direction of the Big Dipper and prayed to the heaven for her husband's good luck.
Prior to the nightly routine, she took a wash of her face and a bath, not a serious one, got her teeth brushed, and hair combed. Before she exited her room for the altar at the backyard, she faced the north wall and offered three deep bows, two for the fallen Chosun monarch and one for her husband.
Toung Doung Wang had said in the letter his elder brother would send for his wife Boolim (I need you here!), with Toung Doung's elder brother Toung Jang coming back home to pick her up. He said she would have to keep company all through the journey to Nippon. Boolim's mother-in-law grudgingly let go of her daughter-in-law. That left three out of a six-member family: Toung Doung's mother, his younger brother and youngest sister.
People and things were new to country woman Boolim of 23 with no issue, who had never gone out of Danuishill, her husband's local residence. Cars were rare; old classic General Motors trucks, which had been ignited by hand-held starters, were spotted one in a mile fashion. Long and huge hulks of trains were also new to her. The howling of locomotive trains was a happy surprise; Even the scent of smokes from burning coals was not a nuisance.
Boolim and Toung Jang hit the road early in the morning. The distance from Danuishill to Euiseong-up railroad station was some 14 kilo meters. Toung Jang's paces were so brisk Boolim had a hard time catching up gasping for air, so he stopped from time to time and waited for her to join him.
It was the day set for the local bazaar which had been scheduled to open in the interval of five days starting the second of the month like 2.7.12.17.22.27. The visitors to the bazaar lined the roads to Euiseong-up (the capital of Euiseong), carrying the farming produce on carts driven by cows. Or, carrying the merchandise on chigae, or the wooden A-frame. Or, taking the load up on the top of the woman's head.
Boolim's feet were sore. She tripped on the way over a rock and almost fell, not limping, however. She was not a stout build nor a frail type. She was rather strong inside. Although she got left behind a few paces almost all the time, she did not turn out a burden to his brother-in-law.
Once in the precinct of the town capital on the day of the bazaar, they found it rather subdued. Gloom was in the air. The uniformed Nipponese policemen in twos were patrolling the street, carrying the bayonet rifle on the shoulder. They were on the prowl; They threw suspicious glances toward the crowd whenever it was formed and got near to them and whistled furiously, propping them to disperse.
Excitement heightened when the train blew ear-splitting horns as it pulled into the station. Boolim was so nervous she almost tripped as she stepped on the train. Toung Jang was behind her, warning her to watch her steps. People with their loads high on their shoulders shoved their way onto the stairs.
Hardly had they gotten onto the landing to the compartment third class they found the crowd stampeding for passenger seats of the deck, which were up for grabs. The unlucky folks, finding no place to sit down, were milling about in the aisles. Toung Jang managed to take a seat for his sister-in-law, who uttered thanks and regrets for him time and time again.
How could the metamorphosis of emotional cataclysm happen? And that just in an instant. All that the train and its whistle had evoked in Boolim was so sweet she might have painted the compartments and the passengers in them in fairy tale colors. But expectations turned into disappointment as time wore on. Nostalgic anticipations, which she had harbored whenever she had heard faraway whistles of trains when skies had been overcast with clouds and when the hamlet had been shrouded with fogs, turned into irritating boredom. Overwhelming stench of urine and odor emanating from unwashed men around got her sick.
A man in his seeming thirties across Boolim's seat showed curiosity about Boolim's destination, giggling and reeking of cheap liquor. Boolim was silent for a while, not knowing how to respond. Toung Jang interrupted, saying it was none of "your goddamn business." The man, piqued by Toung Jang's blunt remarks, spitted obscenities. Then Toung Jang collared him by the neck and push pressed him to the back of the seat, staring at him sternly.
The man quieted down. Toung Jang did not slap him or something. Fist fights did not erupt. In spite of a small stir of the place, the passengers around Boolim and her company were nodding off as if nothing had happened. Some passengers across the aisles were engaged in small talks. Some others enjoyed boiled eggs or other edibles. The other passengers seemed to try to keep wits for the long and slow journey.
A staff of the station was hawking by with a cart rolling full of steamed eggs, peanuts, cookies and non-alcoholic beverages. Liquors and beers were not allowed on the train. Ilbon Gongahn, or Nipponese security officers, kept a tight rein on some lousy people on the booze.
Tunnels meant darkness. Hails of coal grain struck the faces of almost all the people in the train as the iron horse went through the subterranean passageways. The clickety clack of the mighty wheels rolling sounded "haebang! haebang!""(Emancipation! Emancipation!) to the muted riders. Horns shouted "Dohngnip! Dohngnipo!" (Independence! Independence!)
New arrivals took the seats which had been emptied by those who had disembarked the train. The conductor came and punctured the tickets. Security officers came and checked the travel passes of the Toung Jang couple. Finding that the couple were bound for a Mitsubishi Company in Nagasaki, Japan, they saluted, saying "Gokouuno inorimasu." (Good luck to your journey!)
The seas didn't sit quiet. They rocked and rolled. They roared. The amazement she had had when Boolim first saw the great waters bordered on shock, which couldn't be compared to the excitement she had had when he took a first sight of the locomotive train. "What an irony that a misfortune of the nation has given me a welcome chance of a poet!" a minstrel had lamented.
Although she was not a poetess, her heart was full of emotions at the sight of the high seas, especially at the time of the ruined nation. Tears welled up in her eyes, with her throats choked with emotion. She imagined the seas in the know how to beat the hell out of the proud swordsmen. They would only await a proper time when they would be able to quake and tilt the bizarre hunk of land to the far brink of the perdition, she thought.
Her momentary thoughts were riotous, or seditious. All the sights and sounds were lively and encouraging, nevertheless. The sea waves striking the Busan-Shimonoseki ferry boat made a primordial hue and cry. Although the dialogues, which were being conducted by the Japanese themselves and between the people who were bound for the country, were not getting across to her, they sounded melodious. What a beautiful language, she thought aloud. She hated the very thought that the foreign language enlivened her. She shot a guilty glance at her brother-in-law who shot back in a nonchalant and mischievous way.
Before they knew, a panic took place where the passengers on the deck were doing the leisurely talks. A rabbit appeared from nowhere, startled and shaking all over. He was sitting still on a patio, not knowing what to do. Murmurs of surprise arose. Some people shouted and clapped their hands, laughing loudly. Then the rabbit was running all over the place. A guy, dressed in a cook uniform, making an appearance from the cabin, appeared to look for the prey. He ran to the pitiful animal and picked it up and returned, with the onlookers on the deck looking away.
Horizons in almost every direction, especially the horizon in the west, drummed up clouds, threatening to pour in any minute. The sea winds were getting shorter and stronger. Boolim, getting seasick and advised by Toung Jang, got down to the third class cabin, of which the floor was public. The designation of "the third class" did not irk her at all. Amenities were mutual and even, which got her to think that the Japanese were fair and generous.
The cabin was full, of which the passengers were mostly laborers from the late Chosun kingdom volunteering to work in the Archipelago proper and a small number of the Chosun young men garbed in the university students' uniforms studying in the Imperial Japan. The students were partly from Tokyo Imperial and mostly from Waseda or something. They put on imperial airs, forming peer groups and talking with each other in loudly fluent Japanese. A while later, a group of students came over from the second class cabin and took the peers in the lowest class as if their presence were an insult to themselves.
Boolim thought that her sickness would calm down as she got downstairs to take a rest. Since an afflicting nuisance of nausea had not been a common occurrence in the past, she did not care a bit about it. But all of a sudden she found herself vulnerable; She had her stomach so messy she rushed to the bathroom and threw up and up what little food she had taken for the day. Toung Jang showed up with looks of apprehension behind the toilet door. In minutes, Boolim had gone to the ship infirmary, staying for the rest of her journey, tended by a doctor and two ship nurses.
"We got here at long last," Toung Jang said in a low voice. After eight more hours' cruise, including some intermediate procrastinations for technical reasons or other, Ship Bukuanmaru docked at Shimonoseki Harbor. There was a little quiver in a ship body. Boolim heard like in a dream that they had reached the terminal port.
The terminal was bright like a sunny day. Toung Jang was near at her side. She found her feet so weak and her head so dizzy that she was standing still for quite a while, stunned, not knowing what to do next. Toung Jang asked apprehensively whether she was all right. As if drugged or hit hard on the head, she felt herself in a daze. After a slow take she realized that she had been thrown into the wild, into the dark stillness of the imperial country proper, in which her husband had been "voluntarily" commandeered to dig the coal. Out of the nadir of despair, stateless and penniless. a ray of indescribable hope erupted onto her spine that her husband was waiting for her somewhere nearby.
Melodious and merry Japanese dialects were all around. There were no inactivities. Everyone was on the move. But no Mitsubishi people presented themselves. It was a welcome thing, though, that there were no people out there to try and take advantage of unwary and innocent new arrivals. The midnight train from Shimonoseki to Fukuoka was not crowded. It was cleaner, quieter, more comfortable, and less smelly. The atmosphere in the passenger compartment was tense just like both edges of swords. The passengers shared few conversations, if any, dozing off or pretending to sleep.
Even for the moment, her impression was that the native Nipponese (Japanese) didn't shake each other's hands. They didn't shake their legs, and they didn't shake their eyes, either. They didn't shake their heads. Their voices were full of confidence and optimism, casting off self-doubt or skepticism. Their footsteps were brisk and stable. Their gazes were fixed, not shivering. Their shoulders were firm. They didn't shrug their shoulders. They didn't shake their bodies; All the parts of their bodies were in place, in well-organized fashion. The reason might have been that their land had been shaking them all along the way, off and on.
Gloom was falling like drizzle in whatsisname fields. You might call it Fukuoka Plains, which was shrouded in the dark. Boolim looked out the window at the pitch-dark expanse, death-like stillness of which enveloped like a huge bed spread. Glimmers of light, which were seen in the faraway places presumed to be the people's villages, through the one- hundred deep wall of darkness, looked to beckon the nocturnal passengers to their place of peace and rest. The wayward imagination of a colonial country woman was running wild. She was wondering aloud whether the dear sons of the villagers were chasing the preys in uniform in rain forests in the Pacific, or gunned down by the warring predators, or desecrating the captive women, or beheading the prisoners' heads.
Boolim Heads for Shimonoseki, 1940
Mouths of the clan's aunts and sisters at this small town got busy, who were milling gossips mostly at the village well under a huge elm tree. The roosters of the village crooned and the sky in the east dawned. The "aunts" of the village got to the village well and drew water from the never-drying spring. And the never-ending yarns, too.
The yarns were not coherent altogether. They couldn't be. Mrs. Punggsan, who was from Pungsan, Andong-gun, which was 50 kilometers away, usually talked about the wellbeing of her children (Chinchin had a fever last night!) Mrs. Munkyong whispered about her husband, giggling. Mrs Andong used to put her dreams on the mill board. She was wondering whether she had dreamt taemong, a dream indicating the pregnancy and omen about the unborn baby, or something. They then couldn't wait to offer gratuitous interpretations.
There were also moments when knowledge took precedence. A semblance of it, of course. They knew it from the grapevine, or from the wind. So some aunts had made endeavors to enlighten other ignorant hyongnims, that is, elder "sisters" tied in clan relationships, by claiming that there is a big country. far across the Pacific, called miguk, or a beautiful country, named the United States of America, which is ten times (several times multiplied) bigger and stronger than Japan, so that the miguk would intervene in the Pacific War and vanquish ilbon, or the Imperial Japan, sooner or later.
The notification at the wellside was also made of the marginal default or impoverishment when one aunt or the other's house was running out of the food grain. The aunts subsequently chipped in to fill in the empty ssaldok, that is, the urn of rice for emergency. More often than not episodes of over-the-fence camaraderie occurred in which a big bowl of steamed rice crossed over an aunt's fence.
Good tidings arrived via sea mail to Boolim's and her clan's delight that the two advance departures, Toung Doung Wang and his older brother Toung Jang Wang, had been admitted to the miners' apartments at Sakitoma-chi, Nishisonoki-kun, Nagasaki-ken. In the letter Toung Doung was honored to have been recruited, through rigorous fitness tests, as one of the Industrial Warriors of the Emperor, and elated at the prospect that the esteemed company Mitsubishi had permitted the Chosun miners to have their dependents at the residence.
"Honored? The Industrial Warriors of the Emperor your asshole!" some of the listeners thought aloud as the most knowledgeable middle-school graduate in the village read the missive aloud. As if to detect the cerebration, some of the audience chimed in to defend Toung Doung, saying, "Mail censorship must be harsh!" The rest of the audience began to argue about the toils and hardships the Wang brothers now faced.
The great uncles and the great fathers or, the elderlies of the village were sitting on the hottest part of a spacious ondol room floor, one of whom coughed discomforts over the proceedings of the conversations. Great Uncle Hui coughed a solemn remark, saying, "Don't be sarcastic. Why make a mockery of Nippon and things Nipponese?" The eyes of the audience in the room were rivetted on "the Uncle of the West", which had been named after the location of the residence of the patriarch.
The monarch and the ruling class were responsible to the colonial nation. The ordinary people were not. The subjects of the humiliated country had to survive. Whatever hard elements they were in, they had to carry on. So they were not excused to idle away, merely lamenting the sorry state of the country.
She prayed...And prayed. She just prayed before the altar in the small hours before dawn. Taking a bath and offering a bowl of the fresh well water she had drawn first of all the others in the new day, Boolim prayed that her husband Toung Doung might keep safe and sound in the deep pits of a Japanese coal mine.
“The altar" was not particularly built. Any elated place, which a doenjangdok, or a big jar containing soybean paste was placed, would do. No psalms, nor mantras, nor prayer books were in store for her. She used to just kneel in the direction of the Big Dipper and prayed to the heaven for her husband's good luck.
Prior to the nightly routine, she took a wash of her face and a bath, not a serious one, got her teeth brushed, and hair combed. Before she exited her room for the altar at the backyard, she faced the north wall and offered three deep bows, two for the fallen Chosun monarch and one for her husband.
Toung Doung Wang had said in the letter his elder brother would send for his wife Boolim (I need you here!), with Toung Doung's elder brother Toung Jang coming back home to pick her up. He said she would have to keep company all through the journey to Nippon. Boolim's mother-in-law grudgingly let go of her daughter-in-law. That left three out of a six-member family: Toung Doung's mother, his younger brother and youngest sister.
People and things were new to country woman Boolim of 23 with no issue, who had never gone out of Danuishill, her husband's local residence. Cars were rare; old classic General Motors trucks, which had been ignited by hand-held starters, were spotted one in a mile fashion. Long and huge hulks of trains were also new to her. The howling of locomotive trains was a happy surprise; Even the scent of smokes from burning coals was not a nuisance.
Boolim and Toung Jang hit the road early in the morning. The distance from Danuishill to Euiseong-up railroad station was some 14 kilo meters. Toung Jang's paces were so brisk Boolim had a hard time catching up gasping for air, so he stopped from time to time and waited for her to join him.
It was the day set for the local bazaar which had been scheduled to open in the interval of five days starting the second of the month like 2.7.12.17.22.27. The visitors to the bazaar lined the roads to Euiseong-up (the capital of Euiseong), carrying the farming produce on carts driven by cows. Or, carrying the merchandise on chigae, or the wooden A-frame. Or, taking the load up on the top of the woman's head.
Boolim's feet were sore. She tripped on the way over a rock and almost fell, not limping, however. She was not a stout build nor a frail type. She was rather strong inside. Although she got left behind a few paces almost all the time, she did not turn out a burden to his brother-in-law.
Once in the precinct of the town capital on the day of the bazaar, they found it rather subdued. Gloom was in the air. The uniformed Nipponese policemen in twos were patrolling the street, carrying the bayonet rifle on the shoulder. They were on the prowl; They threw suspicious glances toward the crowd whenever it was formed and got near to them and whistled furiously, propping them to disperse.
Excitement heightened when the train blew ear-splitting horns as it pulled into the station. Boolim was so nervous she almost tripped as she stepped on the train. Toung Jang was behind her, warning her to watch her steps. People with their loads high on their shoulders shoved their way onto the stairs.
Hardly had they gotten onto the landing to the compartment third class they found the crowd stampeding for passenger seats of the deck, which were up for grabs. The unlucky folks, finding no place to sit down, were milling about in the aisles. Toung Jang managed to take a seat for his sister-in-law, who uttered thanks and regrets for him time and time again.
How could the metamorphosis of emotional cataclysm happen? And that just in an instant. All that the train and its whistle had evoked in Boolim was so sweet she might have painted the compartments and the passengers in them in fairy tale colors. But expectations turned into disappointment as time wore on. Nostalgic anticipations, which she had harbored whenever she had heard faraway whistles of trains when skies had been overcast with clouds and when the hamlet had been shrouded with fogs, turned into irritating boredom. Overwhelming stench of urine and odor emanating from unwashed men around got her sick.
A man in his seeming thirties across Boolim's seat showed curiosity about Boolim's destination, giggling and reeking of cheap liquor. Boolim was silent for a while, not knowing how to respond. Toung Jang interrupted, saying it was none of "your goddamn business." The man, piqued by Toung Jang's blunt remarks, spitted obscenities. Then Toung Jang collared him by the neck and push pressed him to the back of the seat, staring at him sternly.
The man quieted down. Toung Jang did not slap him or something. Fist fights did not erupt. In spite of a small stir of the place, the passengers around Boolim and her company were nodding off as if nothing had happened. Some passengers across the aisles were engaged in small talks. Some others enjoyed boiled eggs or other edibles. The other passengers seemed to try to keep wits for the long and slow journey.
A staff of the station was hawking by with a cart rolling full of steamed eggs, peanuts, cookies and non-alcoholic beverages. Liquors and beers were not allowed on the train. Ilbon Gongahn, or Nipponese security officers, kept a tight rein on some lousy people on the booze.
Tunnels meant darkness. Hails of coal grain struck the faces of almost all the people in the train as the iron horse went through the subterranean passageways. The clickety clack of the mighty wheels rolling sounded "haebang! haebang!""(Emancipation! Emancipation!) to the muted riders. Horns shouted "Dohngnip! Dohngnipo!" (Independence! Independence!)
New arrivals took the seats which had been emptied by those who had disembarked the train. The conductor came and punctured the tickets. Security officers came and checked the travel passes of the Toung Jang couple. Finding that the couple were bound for a Mitsubishi Company in Nagasaki, Japan, they saluted, saying "Gokouuno inorimasu." (Good luck to your journey!)
The seas didn't sit quiet. They rocked and rolled. They roared. The amazement she had had when Boolim first saw the great waters bordered on shock, which couldn't be compared to the excitement she had had when he took a first sight of the locomotive train. "What an irony that a misfortune of the nation has given me a welcome chance of a poet!" a minstrel had lamented.
Although she was not a poetess, her heart was full of emotions at the sight of the high seas, especially at the time of the ruined nation. Tears welled up in her eyes, with her throats choked with emotion. She imagined the seas in the know how to beat the hell out of the proud swordsmen. They would only await a proper time when they would be able to quake and tilt the bizarre hunk of land to the far brink of the perdition, she thought.
Her momentary thoughts were riotous, or seditious. All the sights and sounds were lively and encouraging, nevertheless. The sea waves striking the Busan-Shimonoseki ferry boat made a primordial hue and cry. Although the dialogues, which were being conducted by the Japanese themselves and between the people who were bound for the country, were not getting across to her, they sounded melodious. What a beautiful language, she thought aloud. She hated the very thought that the foreign language enlivened her. She shot a guilty glance at her brother-in-law who shot back in a nonchalant and mischievous way.
Before they knew, a panic took place where the passengers on the deck were doing the leisurely talks. A rabbit appeared from nowhere, startled and shaking all over. He was sitting still on a patio, not knowing what to do. Murmurs of surprise arose. Some people shouted and clapped their hands, laughing loudly. Then the rabbit was running all over the place. A guy, dressed in a cook uniform, making an appearance from the cabin, appeared to look for the prey. He ran to the pitiful animal and picked it up and returned, with the onlookers on the deck looking away.
Horizons in almost every direction, especially the horizon in the west, drummed up clouds, threatening to pour in any minute. The sea winds were getting shorter and stronger. Boolim, getting seasick and advised by Toung Jang, got down to the third class cabin, of which the floor was public. The designation of "the third class" did not irk her at all. Amenities were mutual and even, which got her to think that the Japanese were fair and generous.
The cabin was full, of which the passengers were mostly laborers from the late Chosun kingdom volunteering to work in the Archipelago proper and a small number of the Chosun young men garbed in the university students' uniforms studying in the Imperial Japan. The students were partly from Tokyo Imperial and mostly from Waseda or something. They put on imperial airs, forming peer groups and talking with each other in loudly fluent Japanese. A while later, a group of students came over from the second class cabin and took the peers in the lowest class as if their presence were an insult to themselves.
Boolim thought that her sickness would calm down as she got downstairs to take a rest. Since an afflicting nuisance of nausea had not been a common occurrence in the past, she did not care a bit about it. But all of a sudden she found herself vulnerable; She had her stomach so messy she rushed to the bathroom and threw up and up what little food she had taken for the day. Toung Jang showed up with looks of apprehension behind the toilet door. In minutes, Boolim had gone to the ship infirmary, staying for the rest of her journey, tended by a doctor and two ship nurses.
"We got here at long last," Toung Jang said in a low voice. After eight more hours' cruise, including some intermediate procrastinations for technical reasons or other, Ship Bukuanmaru docked at Shimonoseki Harbor. There was a little quiver in a ship body. Boolim heard like in a dream that they had reached the terminal port.
The terminal was bright like a sunny day. Toung Jang was near at her side. She found her feet so weak and her head so dizzy that she was standing still for quite a while, stunned, not knowing what to do next. Toung Jang asked apprehensively whether she was all right. As if drugged or hit hard on the head, she felt herself in a daze. After a slow take she realized that she had been thrown into the wild, into the dark stillness of the imperial country proper, in which her husband had been "voluntarily" commandeered to dig the coal. Out of the nadir of despair, stateless and penniless. a ray of indescribable hope erupted onto her spine that her husband was waiting for her somewhere nearby.
Melodious and merry Japanese dialects were all around. There were no inactivities. Everyone was on the move. But no Mitsubishi people presented themselves. It was a welcome thing, though, that there were no people out there to try and take advantage of unwary and innocent new arrivals. The midnight train from Shimonoseki to Fukuoka was not crowded. It was cleaner, quieter, more comfortable, and less smelly. The atmosphere in the passenger compartment was tense just like both edges of swords. The passengers shared few conversations, if any, dozing off or pretending to sleep.
Even for the moment, her impression was that the native Nipponese (Japanese) didn't shake each other's hands. They didn't shake their legs, and they didn't shake their eyes, either. They didn't shake their heads. Their voices were full of confidence and optimism, casting off self-doubt or skepticism. Their footsteps were brisk and stable. Their gazes were fixed, not shivering. Their shoulders were firm. They didn't shrug their shoulders. They didn't shake their bodies; All the parts of their bodies were in place, in well-organized fashion. The reason might have been that their land had been shaking them all along the way, off and on.
Gloom was falling like drizzle in whatsisname fields. You might call it Fukuoka Plains, which was shrouded in the dark. Boolim looked out the window at the pitch-dark expanse, death-like stillness of which enveloped like a huge bed spread. Glimmers of light, which were seen in the faraway places presumed to be the people's villages, through the one- hundred deep wall of darkness, looked to beckon the nocturnal passengers to their place of peace and rest. The wayward imagination of a colonial country woman was running wild. She was wondering aloud whether the dear sons of the villagers were chasing the preys in uniform in rain forests in the Pacific, or gunned down by the warring predators, or desecrating the captive women, or beheading the prisoners' heads.
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