From Wonso Pond (35 page)

No, no! I've got so many comrades behind me! he thought. It was
simply the unique situation he found himself in that made him feel so lonely and isolated. Sinch'ol watched as a ‘modern girl' and ‘modern boy' came toward him. They were walking side by side with synchronized strides, almost as though they were dancing. He jumped to his feet and leaned against the wall.

The man and woman gave off the scent of a designer perfume as they passed by, and he was instantly reminded of Okchom. Then he remembered the time he and Okchom were on the beach looking at the setting sun, and especially the way her face and her clothes had looked just then, as though they were glowing in front of the dancing flames of a fire. In the confusion of the moment Sinch'ol heaved a deep sigh. He missed Okchom so much. Could she possibly be here in Wolmido on vacation? Was she still pining after him, the poor thing? Why had he done that to her!

Then a different thought struck him like a slap in the face: How did my mind get back in the gutter? He looked up and realized that he was still leaning against the wall all by himself. The pain that he'd managed to forget for a moment raced through his body unbearably. He sat back down. If it weren't for the others, he would have lain right down on the ground. He leaned against the wall with a moan, and thought: I wonder if there's anything interesting in the papers today?

As recently as when he'd been at school, his heart would race with anticipation each time he read the newspapers. He was convinced that the world was being shaken up before his eyes, that something big was sure to happen any day. But now a year had passed, and nothing at all seemed to have changed. It could be decades, maybe centuries, before the current state of affairs changed. These doubts took root in a corner of his mind.

Then Nickel-rims came outside.

88

The crowd of red-bands gathered around Nickel-rims and sat in a circle. They each exchanged the band tied around their wrists for ninety-five chon
,
their daily wage minus five chon for the cost of lunch.

Sinch'ol took his ninety-five chon and stood to go. The remaining red-bands glanced at him and started snickering again. Sinch'ol had
worked all day alongside these men, and wanted at least to offer a pleasant good-bye. But when he saw them laughing at him like this, his lips automatically tightened. He took several unsteady steps through the crowd. He couldn't be sure of when exactly it had happened, or why, but he knew that an invisible wall had formed between him and the workers, one that had completely severed them from each other. He felt trapped in a position where he couldn't approach the people on either side of him.

He watched a worker lift onto his A-frame a load of pine wood and what seemed to be a five pound sack of rice, to which he added a few more groceries before setting off at a clip into the distance. The man was on his way back from the wharf as well, it seemed. Judging from what he had learned that day, Sinch'ol figured that after fighting to carry around packages for an entire day in that dust bowl, the man would have been lucky to take home even fifty or sixty chon. Working as a red-band, Sinch'ol seemed to get one of the highest wages offered on the wharf.

Sinch'ol bought a bowl of rice soup at a place on the side of the road and then headed home.

From that day forward, Sinch'ol gave up any ideas of going back to the labor market. He managed to survive one day at a time by relying on what Ch'olsu gave him out of his earnings.

One day very late at night he heard a deep voice calling to him.

“You in here?”

Double-lid strode into his room. Sinch'ol quickly pushed behind him the letter he was writing to Pamsongi and stretched out his hand.

“Well, look who's here! Good to see you. I waited so long for you to stop by, I figured you'd forgotten all about me . . . Please, have a seat.”

Sinch'ol, delighted to see Double-lid, shook his hand heartily. Double-lid smiled and took a seat where Sinch'ol had motioned for him to sit. He took a quick look around the room.

“Have you been sick?” asked Sinch'ol, staring into Double-lid's face and detecting a lack of color in his complexion.

“No.”

Double-lid patted down his hair and hung his head slightly. His fine head of hair, which hadn't been cut in quite some time now, was coated with a white layer of dust. From beneath his jaw projected the hairs of his thick beard. Sinch'ol could tell that this was the body of a man simply
exhausted from a day's work in the labor market, and he remembered struggling to lift those iron plates. Just the thought of it now made his legs tremble. Sinch'ol neatly stacked several of the books he used as a pillow and pushed them toward Double-lid.

“Why don't you lie down here for a while. You must be incredibly tired, my friend.”

Double-lid glanced over at Sinch'ol and then drew back in his seat a bit.

“No, I'm not . . .”

“Oh, come on. Please just lie down.”

Sinch'ol moved to Double-lid's side. He caught the smell of sweat and of something else rancid in the air. He grimaced unconsciously, then quickly forced a smile. He noticed that Double-lid's clothes were stained with patches of dried sweat. The closer Sinch'ol moved to his side, the more uncomfortable Double-lid seemed. He gradually drew back further from where he'd been sitting, scratching his head nervously.

“What's the matter? Why don't you lie down for a bit . . . You went to work today, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, where did you go? To the wharf again?”

“No. You know how they're reclaiming the land in front of Wolmido? Well, I was over there today.”

“How are the wages there?”

Double-lid looked up, but hesitated to say anything. Maybe he didn't understand the word ‘wages,' thought Sinch'ol, convinced he'd have to learn the language of the workers as soon as possible.

“Uh . . . I mean, how much did you get paid?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah . . . If you work hard enough, you can make seventy to eighty chon. Otherwise, maybe forty or fifty.”

“I see . . . Well, just sit back and relax, so we can have a nice chat. Please, make yourself a little more comfortable. You know, we've known each other for a long time and yet we don't even know each other's names . . . I'm Yu Sinch'ol. How about you?”

Sinch'ol looked Double-lid square in the face.

89

“Me? I'm Ch'otchae.”

“Ch'otchae! Now, that's a fine name. And what about your hometown?”

Ch'otchae wasn't sure if he should tell Sinch'ol the name of his hometown or not. In the end, he decided there was no need to mention it.

“I don't have a hometown,” said Ch'otchae, his eyes shifting down to the floor.

“No hometown,” said Sinch'ol under his breath, oddly touched by what Ch'otchae had said. Coming from someone like Ch'otchae, the words were most likely sincere.

Talk of his hometown reminded Ch'otchae of Yi Sobang and his mother. Were they dead by now? Or were they still hanging on, waiting for him to come back with the money he'd earned? The more he thought about them, the more these dormant feelings started to stir again inside of him. Back when he'd left home, he'd planned on coming back for Yi Sobang and his mother after making some money, but he'd never been able to make as much as he'd expected, and as time passed by, with him being so busy at work and all, his thoughts of Yi Sobang and his mother gradually faded from his mind.

“Why don't you just lie back for a while. You must have worked awfully hard today.”

Sinch'ol stared for a while at Ch'otchae's hands, comparing them with his own. He felt ashamed of himself, but he was also incredibly envious of Ch'otchae, who seemed to have forearms made of cast iron. And at the same time, it seemed like everything he'd ever learned up until then had served no other purpose than to make him into a weakling—both in body and mind.

“The work isn't too hard for you, my friend?”

“Well, the morning's fine, but I do get a bit worn out come sunset.”

“I can imagine. Have you been working as a laborer ever since you were young?”

“No. I started out weeding in the fields, before doing this . . .”

Sinch'ol was completely taken by Ch'otchae's deep voice and unpretentious words. He didn't know why, but he felt more and more like he could really trust him.

“I don't know a thing about what goes on out there. Do you think
you could come over every now and then to teach me a thing or two about the work?”

“What's there to teach about work? You just do it, that's all.” He let out a chuckle.

Ch'otchae found it amusing that Sinch'ol was asking him to be the teacher. But he also remembered how hard Sinch'ol had struggled carrying bricks. Sinch'ol, meanwhile, felt even more attracted to Ch'otchae when he saw him laugh.

“ Well . . . I was just wondering, for example, how they calculate your pay when you carry those sacks of rice and stuff down on the wharf.”

“Oh, that? It all depends on how heavy the load is. You get about five or six li for a sack of rice, four li for a cake of pressed soybeans, and then five li for just about anything else.”

“So, you mean to tell me you've got to carry a hundred sacks of rice just to make fifty or sixty chon?”

Sinch'ol grimaced at the thought of carrying a hundred sacks of rice. But then he also thought of the thousands of laborers he'd actually seen slaving away on the dusty wharf. He let out a long sigh. His mission was now clearer to him than ever before.

“How much did you make the other day, my friend? The day I was out there.”

“No idea. Don't remember.”

“Oh, you know. The day you got into that fight. Weren't you guys fighting over the same package? ”

“I don't remember.”

“Well, I don't think you should fight any more. You'll only end up hurting each other in a fight, you know. I mean, a good fight you've got to fight to the bitter end, but what's the sense of fighting with your friends? You'll just end up hurting each other.”

“Yeah, but what do you expect me to do when someone is trying to take away the load I'm supposed to be carrying? . . . Anyway, what are you doing manual labor for?”

“Me? Well, I've got to feed myself somehow . . .”

“Seems to me a fellow like you could easily get a job as a town clerk or policeman.”

When Ch'otchae had first come into the room, he had seen Sinch'ol writing, and judging from the clothes hanging up on the wall and the
books placed under the lamp, Sinch'ol didn't seem like someone who normally did manual labor.

Sinch'ol tried not to smile.

“Does being a town clerk or a policeman appeal to you?”

“Sure it does.”

“Well, I tell you, I wish I could become a laborer like you.”

Ch'otchae got a good laugh out of that. But then as the words ‘town clerk' and ‘policeman' sank into his mind, he thought back to the town clerks and policemen in his own hometown. For some reason he now felt a burning impulse to ask Sinch'ol a question.

“Hey . . . I was just thinking about the police, and . . .”

Ch'otchae didn't finish his sentence. Sinch'ol looked at him, “Okay, what about the police?”

“ Well . . . I mean, I just wanted to know how you avoid getting caught by the law. Can you teach me something about that?”

90

Kannan had come home late that night. She smiled as she watched Sonbi wake up from her nap.

“Bedbugs not biting?”

“They sure are! Where have you been?”

“I, ah . . . someone I know wanted to meet with me.”

Kannan slipped out of her best set of clothes and hung them on the wall. She sat at Sonbi's side.

“Listen, Sonbi, have you heard of Inchon? Well, they've just built this huge spinning mill there, and it's got way more factory girls than the place I work now . . . I hear they're going to hire something like a thousand girls . . .”

Sonbi was wide-awake now, her eyes sparkling with unusual luster.

“Do you think maybe I could work there?”

“Sure you can . . . I'm planning to go there, too! We can go together, Sonbi. How about that?”

Kannan was all smiles. She adjusted her hair and reinserted a hairpin that was about to fall out. Sonbi, meanwhile, was lost in thought, and the color rose in her cheeks. An image of the spinning machines she'd heard about from Kannan flashed before her eyes.

“But I don't know if I can do it . . . They'll kick me out if I don't work good enough, won't they?”

Gazing into Sonbi's face, Kannan remembered how clueless she herself had been, and how frightened and embarrassed she was when she first came to Seoul.

“Why shouldn't you be able to do the work? You've just got to learn how, that's all . . . I know lots of new girls who came in knowing a lot less than you, but they were just fine once they got the hang of things. Don't you worry about it.”

Sonbi sighed softly. Then she smiled.

“So listen, Sonbi! I decided to quit my job at the mill today . . .”

“Well, when do we leave then?”

“Right away, I guess . . . but I've got a few things to take care of first, which means we'll have to wait a couple of days.”

Kannan thought for a moment about the secret mission T'aesu had just given her. Yu Sinch'ol . . . No. 5 Sa-jong in Inch'on, she said to herself, setting the address to memory.

“Is this place called Inch'on somewhere in Seoul?”