The Value of a Person
"Good. From now on, we're one family."
Kim Doo-han declared it with Ki-jo and Ma-ryang standing before him. Ki-jo felt a sour reluctance at becoming kin to gangsters. However much Kim Doo-han might style himself a man of chivalry, Ki-jo thought, a thug was still a thug at the root. Ma-ryang was dazed in his own right—he had never before hired himself out as a gangster's mercenary—but if an American truck was coming their way, what did it matter?
"Henceforth, Mr. Lee and young Mr. Jang may treat all of Jongno as their own house."
"You have my thanks."
"Is there anything more I can do for you?"
"I was hoping to turn this cash into pure gold..."
At Ki-jo's words, Ma-ryang set a cloth bundle fat with banknotes on the table.
"Consider it done. The moment I say I'm buying gold, the merchants hand over bullion of ninety-nine percent purity. They couldn't cheat me if they tried. Ha ha ha!"
Ki-jo and Ma-ryang laughed along with him. The mercenary contract thus sealed, Kim Doo-han spoke again.
"I've had the brothers gather at Umigwan. Let us exchange greetings and learn one another's faces."
"Very well."
A call came through to the tailor's shop that Umigwan was ready, and Ki-jo and Ma-ryang rode with Kim Doo-han into Jongno. When the car stopped before the theater, the men of the Jongno Faction stood drawn up in a line and bowed low to Kim Doo-han, to Ki-jo, and to Ma-ryang. Every eye turned on Ma-ryang with something like awe. Word had already run ahead of them that he had single-handedly thrown down, on the pavement of Myeongdong, the elite crew led by the faction's second-in-command.
"Please, step inside the theater."
Ki-jo and Ma-ryang took the plush chairs set out upon the stage. A podium stood before them, a microphone resting on it. Kim Doo-han took his place there, the national anthem swelled, and every man laid a hand over his heart toward the great Taegeukgi—the national flag—hanging at the rear.
When the singing ended, Kim Doo-han switched on the microphone.
"Today, in this place, I present two men who have joined the Jongno family. Mr. Lee Ki-jo, and Mr. Jang Ma-ryang."
Lee Ki-jo and Jang Ma-ryang rose, and applause broke over them like thunder. When it subsided, Kim Doo-han went on.
"Mr. Lee Ki-jo and Mr. Jang Ma-ryang crossed early to China, where they carried on the independence struggle in secret beside the leaders of the Korean Provisional Government. After liberation they fought the communists at President Chiang Kai-shek's side, and only yesterday they returned to the Republic of Korea from Taiwan."
Lee Ki-jo and Jang Ma-ryang were dumbfounded. The stock bluster of gangsters was a thing wholly strange to them.
"Once more—a fierce cheer, and your applause, for Mr. Lee Ki-jo and Mr. Jang Ma-ryang, patriots to the bone and fighters against communism!"
The theater filled with the roar and clapping of the Jongno men.
"Mr. Lee, come forward and favor us with a word."
Kim Doo-han beckoned Lee Ki-jo to the front of the podium.
Oh, for God's sake. This is insane...
He had only gone down to the market fair for a look at a single cow, and affairs had come to this. It was preposterous. It beggared belief. In one stroke he had been made an independence fighter and an anti-communist crusader, and now he was expected to orate before the largest gang in the country. A turn of events to make the ghosts weep.
Walking toward the podium, he fretted over what on earth to say, decided that plagiarism was the only way through, and set his thoughts in order. As luck would have it, Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech rose in his mind, and with it the lyrics of two songs.
Lee Ki-jo stood at the podium and looked out over the men of the Jongno Faction with a bright, steady gaze.
"I had a dream. That our thirty million people, delivered from Japan's oppression, would join hands from Mount Baekdu in the north to Mount Halla in the south, cross every wall between us, and make the world we live in a kinder place to dwell."
His full voice filled the theater, and the men were drawn into the words.
"That dream has changed. Japan is gone, and communists have risen in the north. We live in an age when Seoul must be held against the Reds."
Ki-jo drew a breath, then spoke again.
"Today, I have a dream. Wisps of cloud adrift in the sky, pleasure boats adrift on the river, a place where the happiness each of us is meant to enjoy is free for all time. Mountains and fields that grow only dearer the longer one looks, because the four seasons there stand so clear—a place where the ideal within our hearts unfolds without end. A dream of laying down my life to make this gracious land a place where a man may obtain whatever he desires, and become whatever he resolves to be. Come with me. Thank you."
When the speech ended, the men only stared at him, blank.
Kim Doo-han himself was stirred by the poetic turns and the refinement of the words, and a sound of wonder escaped him.
"Well, now..."
He leaned toward the second-in-command seated at his side—the man's face still swollen fat where Ma-ryang had struck him—and whispered.
"A learned man, no question. He'll be a help come election time, sure as day. Ask him nicely to write us a speech for the campaign."
"Yes, Boss."
Then it was Jang Ma-ryang's turn. He walked up to the microphone with a heavy tread and offered a single remark.
"Every last son of a bitch who stands in our way—I'll snap their necks and send them to the Yellow Springs. Much obliged."
Laughter rolled through the men, mingled with applause like thunder, and broke over Jang Ma-ryang.
The introductions done, they went to a hall nearby and ate. Pleading fatigue, Ki-jo and Ma-ryang returned early to their hotel in Myeongdong and slept.
The next day, two boxes were delivered to the room.
The first was Ma-ryang's. Inside lay his new suit and overcoat, a necktie, a tie pin, and the rest—clothes made through the night on Kim Doo-han's express order, every tailor in Myeongdong called in to the work. In that same box, sealed in an envelope and returned untouched, was the money Ki-jo had paid the tailor. There was a card as well.
This is Kim Doo-han. A gift for young Jang. Do not refuse it—accept.
Beside it sat a large wooden crate. That one was Ki-jo's. He opened it to find fifty American Zippo lighters, fifty cartons of American cigarettes, and three American Parker fountain pens, and among them another card.
A small gift, offered to the respected Mr. Lee. Please accept this token of my regard.
— Kim Doo-han
Kim Doo-han's signature swept across the card in a magnificent hand.
"And how am I meant to get all this home..."
Lee Ki-jo was at a loss. He need not have been. A car was already waiting in front of the hotel, and men of the Jongno Faction loaded the wooden crate aboard.
"We'll see you to your door."
The driver had stepped out and waited. He bowed from the waist as he spoke.
"Only as far as Yangju. We have an errand there..."
They climbed into the sedan. On the back seat rested a box of ten gold bars, a kilogram apiece, bought with the money Ki-jo and Ma-ryang had left in Kim Doo-han's keeping. Ki-jo turned every bar over to Ma-ryang.
"From now on, Mr. Jang, the gold is in your care."
The car set off. Once they reached Yangju, Ki-jo and Ma-ryang made their way back to the cattle market, and there Ki-jo looked first for the spindly calf.
"Now why would you go buying that useless little calf?"
Ma-ryang asked it with a face full of disbelief.
"Because if we don't, I think it will die. Don't you find it too pitiful..."
The woman who kept the unlicensed drinking stall by the market knew what had become of the motherless calf.
"That calf belongs to Mr. Gu out in Baekseok-ri."
"I'm grateful you told me. Tell me—do the owners whose cattle didn't sell ever leave a note behind?"
"A note? What's a note?"
"I mean, has anyone asked you to send word if a buyer came looking for a cow of a certain kind?"
"Well, there is something of that sort."
The proprietress went into the inner room and brought out her ledger. It was chiefly a book for recording debts on credit, though she had also set down each owner's name, his address, and the cattle he kept. She had learned her letters to some degree. Crooked handwriting and clumsy spelling crowded every page.
"Might there be a cow that calved not long ago, and the calf died?"
At the question she stared at him as if to ask what sort of fool the world had turned up now.
"And why would you be looking for a cow like that?"
"Just have a look, and see."
She ran her eye down the credit book, then pressed a finger hard against a name.
"There's one in Eunhyeon-ri. I wrote it down myself—the cow dropped a dead calf."
She was a woman of thorough records.
"Do you know anyone famous for keeping a good bull?"
"Well, that isn't in the book, but it's in my head. Mr. Myeong in Gwangjeok-ri is very well known. Calves from that house fetch the highest price in the whole cattle yard, and he spends his money freely."
"Thank you. I'll be sure to tell them I came by the introduction of the tavern mistress."
"See that you do. Otherwise..."
"I know. You'll be wanting your broker's fee."
"Ho ho, you do know the way of things. Any other cattle you need?"
"If I need more, I'll come again."
Jang Ma-ryang, watching from behind, thought he understood why Ki-jo was seeking animals of that sort. He meant to pair the motherless calf with the cow that had lost her young and still gave milk, and to bring home a bull fit for hard work. At conduct that laid Ki-jo's warm heart bare, Ma-ryang smiled faintly.
In truth, the moment he had seen that motherless bull calf, the son he had left in the North had risen in his mind. Was the wife left on her own raising the child well? Were the two of them even alive? The worry would not let his heart settle. Animal though it was, he watched Ki-jo move to take in a life fallen into pity, and he could feel the worth of the man named Ki-jo.
There was the way Ki-jo had trusted him with the money and the gold. There was the way he had hesitated, even when handing Ma-ryang over to the gangsters would have won him a handsome profit. Both had struck deep. Ma-ryang resolved that he would trust Ki-jo as far as Ki-jo trusted him.
The two of them made a circuit of the Yangju countryside and bought every animal Ki-jo wanted. At last they could set out for Eundae-ri, driving the cattle before them.
While they herded the three head along the road, a question about Ki-jo came to Ma-ryang, and a worry with it. He turned it over, wondering when to ask. They had passed Dongducheon and come to Choseong-ri before he opened his mouth.