From Wonso Pond (33 page)

The streets of Inch'on were still enveloped in the morning mists. Only a few electric lights flickered here and there. Sinch'ol went over again in his mind what his friend had explained to him in detail the night before, and then made his way out to the main road. Inch'on at dawn—this
was the only Inch'on that belonged to the workers! Dressed in their leg gaiters, and with towels draped around their necks, the workers milled around him in search for a place to work for the day. In the faint glow of an electric light he saw women with lunchboxes in their hands and towels draped completely over their heads—there was a whole line of them that went on and on. Later he would learn that these women worked in the rice mill.

Sinch'ol first went to get breakfast in one of the places lined up along the road where they sold rice soup. The place looked just like the taverns they had in Seoul. It was already filled with workers, pouring steaming soup on top of their rice and slurping away at it. There were even people gulping down their bowls of soup while they were still standing. The bowls of boiling soup were being filled up in the corner and then carried over to the customers. Workers dashed in and out of the place.

Sinch'ol sat down on a makeshift wooden bench. One of the workers who couldn't wait to be served picked up a self-serve bowl and brought it to the soup pot, where he filled it up for himself. As Sinch'ol began to gulp down his own soup, he noticed through the corner of his eye that one of the workers sitting beside him, with whom he had walked in, had almost finished eating his entire meal. Sinch'ol looked at the man's full spoon with horror. How on earth can he digest his food when he eats like that? Sinch'ol took another look at the man and saw him put down his spoon and gulp a long draft of his
makkolli
. Wiping his mouth with his fist a couple of times, the man glanced over at Sinch'ol, jumped up out of his seat, and went outside. Sinch'ol couldn't eat all his food, so he stood up and left. The
makkolli
had left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth. He headed toward Ch'onsok-chong. This was where they were building the new Taedong Spinning Mill, a construction project that he'd heard employed four to five hundred workers a day.

Sinch'ol walked the streets of Inch'on as the day gradually dawned. He looked out onto the horizon beyond Yongjong Island at a sky that seemed close enough to touch—and he could almost feel the courage welling up inside him. Then, he thought of Sonbi, sitting so uncomfortably inside that rickshaw he'd chanced to see from the streetcar the other day. How foolish, how irresponsible he had been! And how weak-willed he'd been, jumping out of the streetcar like that—like some mad-man—and then wandering around in search of her rickshaw. The color
rose into his face at the very thought of it. But then he thought, I'm a worker now, damn it! Not one of those blasted intellectuals, all words and no action. And he certainly wasn't the kind of vulgar person who'd go chasing after women. It took all the courage Sinch'ol could muster to deny what he had indeed been quite capable of doing.

When he arrived in Ch'onsok-chong, he found several hundred workers milling around a Japanese supervisor, dressed in a jacket with his company's logo on it. The workers were making quite a racket as they vied for their work tags. Sinch'ol worked his way into the crowd, and finally got a tag for himself. When he looked at this small piece of wood they called a work tag, he noticed the number sixty written on it.

“All right,” shouted the supervisor. “Let's get this done, chop-chop!”

The workers with tags enthusiastically set themselves to work as the supervisor directed, while those without tags looked out at them enviously, then turned around to go, their heads hanging.

“Now get over here and move these things.”

Sinch'ol joined the crowd of men who were being called over to the supervisor. They were to carry the sacks of cement to where the cement was being mixed with water. Each of the workers placed a yellow bag of cement onto his shoulder and dashed off. When Sinch'ol's turn came, he managed to balance the bag of cement that was lifted up onto his shoulder. But he heard something crack inside him. So heavy was the pressure on his chest that he could hardly breathe. Watching the other workers lift these bags onto their shoulders, he hadn't had the faintest idea that they would be this heavy. He'd assumed that each bag would be no heavier than a sack of flour. But now that he was carrying one on his own shoulders, it felt more like a sack of stones. Sinch'ol managed to keep the bag on his shoulder all right, but his legs were about to give out from under him.

“Hey, you! Pick up the speed!”

Sinch'ol managed to move forward at the sound of the foreman's thundering voice. He was gasping for breath, his chest was tight, and his collarbone, it seemed, was about to snap right in half. Mustering all the strength left inside him, Sinch'ol pressed his head up against the bag of cement, staggered forward for fifty paces or so, and then finally let the bag drop to the ground with a heavy thud.

83

Sinch'ol picked himself up off the ground, where he'd collapsed along with his bag of cement. He stood there watching the workers next to him mix the cement, adding water to the powder and stirring it with their shovels. What they were doing didn't seem very difficult at all. They mixed up each bag of cement in what seemed like the wink of an eye. He stared at them enviously and then turned back around, doubting his ability to carry another bag. But he had managed to get one of those tags, and surely he could put up with it for a day. It certainly wasn't going to kill him, he thought. Just do it! He set back to work again, walking on legs that felt as heavy as lead.

Next they were told to carry bricks. The workers doubled over a long piece of wire and piled two rows of bricks between the wires, with thirteen bricks in each row. The best workers managed to stack up fifteen or sixteen. They put a piece of burlap over their backs, then cut off another strip of burlap, attached it to the ends of the wire, and strapped the bricks onto themselves before standing up. But Sinch'ol came up with a better idea. He decided simply to carry the bricks with his hands, and managed to carry over two stacks of ten bricks in his bare arms. After carrying a few loads like this, though, his hands started to sting as if they'd been pricked by a thorn bush. And when he looked down at his hands, he saw that they were scraped and bleeding. He felt a shiver run up his spine as he turned back to stack up more bricks—there wasn't an inch on his body, it now seemed, that hadn't been scratched by them. Only then did he notice, to his horror, that each brick had tiny little spines that were stabbing him.

“Hey, you can't do that with your bare hands. They'll get all scratched up and you won't be able to do a thing with them. What, is this your first day on the job or something?”

When Sinch'ol looked up, he saw the worker who'd been sitting next to him eating his breakfast that morning. A smile twinkled in his eyes, the left one of which was double-lidded. The man came over to Sinch'ol and showed him how to put the burlap over his back.

“You've got to put on one of these before you carry the bricks. It'll be a heck of a lot easier than using your hands. Now, go ahead and try it this way.”

Sinch'ol managed to stand up, but he staggered and toppled over. His
legs started shaking like the leaves of a poplar tree. And soon every muscle in his body seemed to be twitching uncontrollably. Sinch'ol wanted to stick his stinging finger into his mouth and cry like a baby. He piled up the bricks that had scattered around him and lifted them back onto his back as he was told.

“No, no, this way. It's too hard to do it like that. You've got to make sure the burlap sticks to your back, and then lean over like this.”

Double-lid showed Sinch'ol how he should stoop slightly over.

From behind them they heard someone call out: “Hey, you idiots, keep it moving!”

“Shit, they never let up,” said Double-lid under his breath, lifting his own bricks onto his back and walking alongside Sinch'ol.

“You must have been ruined by the rice market too, huh?”

People who'd suffered losses after the price of rice collapsed had nowhere to turn in the cities, and many had ended up using up all their family's assets. They'd simply run out of food to eat and had no other choice but to come down to the labor market. Since they were doing work they'd never done before in their entire lives, it goes without saying that they weren't as skilled as the longtime workers, and Double-lid had seen many of them struggling to keep up.

Dripping with sweat, Sinch'ol was far too short of breath to answer his question. Several times he almost toppled over. Double-lid helped lift his bricks from behind. Sinch'ol felt like dumping the whole load on the ground and running away.

Sinch'ol worked from six in the morning until eight that night, with a forty-minute lunch break in midday. By the end of the day he felt sapped of every drop of strength left in his body. He followed Double-lid to the place where they received their wage vouchers. In front of a make-shift office built like a barrack, a crowd of workers was pushing their way forward to get their vouchers. In the office, someone called out different numbers. After waiting close to an hour, Sinch'ol finally received his little piece of paper, then ran to the office where they exchanged their vouchers for cash.

It wasn't until he actually had forty-six chon in his hand that he realized that his daily wage was supposed to be fifty. In the process of exchanging his money, he'd been duped out of the missing four chon by yet more people who were out to exploit him. With a heavy sigh, Sinch'ol looked out around him. The streets of Inch'on were decked out
in electric lights, and the city was swarming with all sorts of people, everyone from the rice soup peddlers collecting their credits to the wives of workers who'd come out in search of their husbands and the makings of a home-cooked meal.

Sinch'ol had lost track of Double-lid, and after searching for him for a while, decided to leave. As he looked out at all the electric lights twinkling in the darkness, something came to him—the extraction of surplus labor! How much more terrifying, how much more grave, he realized, was the extraction of labor he'd experienced today, than anything he'd ever read about, sitting at his desk, in Marx's
Capital
.

84

As soon as he got home, Sinch'ol collapsed into his bed. Then Ch'olsu came in from the labor market.

“Hey, my friend, did you have a rough day?”

Sinch'ol looked at him.

“Oh, is that you? I'm afraid I'm a bit too sore to get up now.”

“Don't worry about it. But, your nose is bleeding!”

“My nose?” Sinch'ol suddenly felt the blood trickling down. Ch'olsu came in with some cold water and a washcloth. Sinch'ol made an effort to get up, but his body felt so heavy that he couldn't move a muscle. Then, just as had happened to him when he'd been carrying bricks earlier that day, he lost control of his muscles and his whole body started shaking violently. Sinch'ol had no choice but to leave himself to Ch'olsu's care.

“Not cut out for labor, are you, my friend?”

Sinch'ol knew full well that his body was falling to pieces, but he still took Ch'olsu's words as an insult. He closed his eyes tightly and groaned. The tighter he squeezed his eyes, though, the more vividly he recalled the terror of having to carry all those bricks. He started growing tense, and his shoulders felt heavy—it was just as if he was carrying the bricks again.

“Did you get something to eat?” Ch'olsu asked.

“Yes. I had some rice soup.”

“Well, I think you should give up the manual labor and just . . .”

Ch'olsu stopped mid-sentence and looked down at Sinch'ol, who opened his eyes and looked back at him. Sinch'ol shifted his gaze over to the wall. At this, Ch'olsu stood up.

“I haven't eaten yet, so I'm off to get some supper.”

“Yes, and there's no need for you to come back here. You must be exhausted anyway, so please go to bed.”

Sinch'ol knew for certain that Ch'olsu had worked all day at the wharf, but he didn't show the slightest sign of being tired. Sinch'ol bid him good-bye and turned over on his side, facing the wall. Aaah! He couldn't help but moan in pain, so sore was every bone in his body.

The extraction of surplus labor! He kept repeating this to himself as he stared at the wall. It struck him again how much weight these words now carried. It was the weight of all the sweat and blood shed by the workers. It was the crystallization of their sweat and blood. And it had taken him until today to finally feel the true meaning of these words.

The self-styled polemicists and leaders of the people were oh so fond of talking about surplus labor, but without knowing the depth and gravity of the term, they could only use the words like jargon, as a means of showing off.

Now the extraction of surplus labor was for him a term encased in a ton of brick, pressing down on his chest unbearably. His eyes flew open. Am I hallucinating now? he wondered.

He tried not to think about it any longer, and made an effort to reminisce about the past in order to get everything else out of his mind. He painted a picture of Sonbi in his mind. She was riding in that rickshaw headed into the crowded streets of Seoul. Why would she have come to Seoul? Maybe she found a husband? But then surely somebody would have picked her up at the station when she arrived. Maybe some low-down scoundrel ended up seducing her? Fat chance Tokho had simply sent Sonbi off to school . . . But then maybe Okchom actually came through and found her a match somewhere in Seoul? Oh, Okchom, Okchom! For some reason it was now Okchom whom Sinch'ol was thinking of—Okchom's hands and her eyes.