The Power of Fate
"Um... Chief."
Ma-ryang, trudging along with the ox's reins in his fist, called out to Ki-jo. Ki-jo had been lost in the question of how to develop Cheongsan, and only then came back to himself.
"Did you call me?"
"Yes, Chief. It's been a good many days since I met you, and all you've told me is your name."
"Has it? I apologize. What would you like me to tell you?"
"Where you're from. What your parents did. Whether you've a child hidden away somewhere. You haven't said a word about any of it."
"Do I strike you as a man with a hidden child?"
"Wouldn't say you look like it. Only you keep your own story so tight, I got to wondering if maybe you'd killed a man once and run. Just a thought I had, to myself..."
Ki-jo had wanted to ask Ma-ryang those very things, and hearing them turned back on himself made him laugh.
"I was raised an orphan. There wasn't much I could tell you."
"That so? Good. Very good."
Ma-ryang laughed, open and easy, and Ki-jo looked at him in puzzlement.
"And what, exactly, is so good about that?"
"To my eye you're long past the age for the army, and it still doesn't seem you've ever gone and come back. I've worried over it. They might drag you off tomorrow. That's what I mean."
If Ki-jo left the village, Ma-ryang could see no one fit to lead it. In the few days he had stayed in Eundae-ri, weakness after weakness had shown itself to him, and he had come to think Lee Ki-jo was the only man who could set them right.
"Heh. People do surprise you. I never imagined Jang Ma-ryang would fret over something so slight."
"My old man always had a word for me."
Ma-ryang cleared his throat, pulled his face into the fiercest scowl he could manage, as if he were his father himself, and spoke.
The words left Ki-jo thoroughly pleased. That man worth trusting seemed to mean him.
"Was your father a frightening man?"
"He didn't get angry, as a rule. But on a day I'd been throwing fists outside, I didn't want to go home. When my old man rolled his eyes up like a wild beast, I didn't want to live."
Ma-ryang was usually a heavy, spare-spoken man. Seeing him chatter on now with a clear, bright face, Ki-jo understood that he had opened his heart.
"But, Chief. Why did you ask Kim Doo-han for a truck? You mean to go into the hauling business?"
"Ah. That."
The thought had not left Ki-jo's head the whole way home. He decided to lay it out for Ma-ryang.
"You know the village south of Eundae-ri is called Jeongok-ri."
"I know it."
"They say Jeongok-ri used to be Jil-gok-ri. Whenever it rained the ground turned to sludge, so that's what people called it. Later they wrote the name with characters that sounded nearly the same, and it became Jeongok—Whole Valley."
"Clay in the soil, I expect."
"Yes. That's right. And the soil in the next village, Cheongsan-ri, is stickier still."
"That so? Soil too sticky is hard to farm. Water's got to drain down, or a vegetable's roots can't breathe."
"Poor ground for farming. Excellent ground for brick."
"Brick?"
"Yes. When we were in Seoul, you saw a great many houses built of red brick."
"I did."
"Mold the clay of Cheongsan-ri even and true, set it in a kiln, and fire it, and it will make fine red brick."
"You mean to make brick?"
"It's still only a plan, and the obstacles aren't few. All the same, walking around Seoul these past two days, I saw how many buildings are ruined and fallen in. More than I had thought."
"They'll be raising plenty of buildings from here on. And buildings take a lot of brick."
"Precisely. I needed a truck to carry brick made in Cheongsan up to Seoul."
"Ah..."
Ma-ryang let the sound out like praise, and nodded.
"And where is this Cheongsan?"
"From the Hantan River bridge we're crossing, look to the northeast. You'll see a place thick with hills. That is Cheongsan."
As he said it, men from Eundae-ri came running from a distance.
"Aigoo. Chief, you aren't hurt anywhere?"
"Chief, wherever have you been so long..."
They crowded around Lee Ki-jo, fussing over him, and Ma-ryang's eyes met Kim Seogwang's. Seogwang was looking at him coldly, as if the very sight soured his mouth. Ma-ryang held out the reins.
"Lead him off. I'm going to have a smoke."
Kim Seogwang took them, and Ma-ryang walked to the bridge rail, wanting a proper look at the Cheongsan-ri Ki-jo had named. There he drew out a cigarette, lit it, and let his gaze travel the whole stretch of Cheongsan.
Firing brick will take a lot of men.... Eundae-ri hasn't the numbers. Not even close. Once farming season starts, there won't be hands left at all. Hauling heavy clay, you need fellows who know how to use their strength....
He wanted Ki-jo's plan made real, and soon, and he thought that meant he himself would have to move. The Sampar-ttaraji he had known were fierce in their will to live, yet they were suffering for want of work. Gather them and bring them to the brickworks Ki-jo meant to raise—that would be just the thing.
The day after they returned to the village, Ma-ryang dressed and went to the front of Ki-jo's house at first light. He was on the point of clearing his throat when Ki-jo came shuffling out, hair mussed, opening the door in an awkward half-crouch—and his eyes went wide at the sight of him.
"Where are you off to, so early?"
"To fetch men."
"Men? What sort of men?"
"You need hands for a brickworks, don't you? I'll scrape together every last Sampar-ttaraji back in Goseong, where I was, and bring them."
Ki-jo started in surprise and ran barefoot out into the frost-whitened yard. He caught hold of Ma-ryang.
"That's a thing to take one step at a time. Don't rush it. How can a man be so impatient... I hardly know what to say to you."
"The works ought to go up while the farms are idle. Come spring, won't Seoul be in a frenzy putting houses up?"
"True enough. Even so, don't go today. Leave in a few days."
"Does it have to be a few days...?"
"Yes. It must be a few days. Go when I tell you to go."
Bewildered, Ma-ryang went home. Ki-jo watched his back and let out a sigh, and at the mouth of the village the magpies set up a racketing cry.
"Yes... about this time, I should think..."
Hearing them, Ki-jo smiled with a quiet, knowing pleasure.
He had stepped outside to relieve himself, and when he came back in, his wife Sunrye asked,
"Why are the magpies making such a fuss, first thing in the morning..."
"Good news on the way, I'd say."
Ki-jo dropped down onto the floor, rubbing the warmth back into his frozen feet, and laughed. Sunrye wanted to tell him what she had heard the day before.
"Yesterday Mr. Water Pak was passing through the village and slipped into the feast."
"Mr. Water Pak?"
Water Pak made his small living by drawing mineral water from the Hantan River and carrying it on a shoulder yoke to houses that had no well and sat far from any stream. Like Ma-ryang, he was a Sampar-ttaraji; his home was Pyongan Province.
"Yes. He was helping himself to a few bites when he caught sight of Mr. Ma-ryang, and he turned straight to Auntie Suman beside him and asked whether that man had a wife and children."
"Why would he ask that?"
"Mr. Water Pak has a youngest daughter, Hee-ja. Word is she's very pretty—lovely, and quick as anything."
"And?"
"He let it slip that if the man had no wife or child, he'd like to match him with Hee-ja."
"What? Absolutely not! Ma-ryang has a wife and child in the North. He's a man who means to go find them the moment the country is one again. That won't do!"
"Why are you angry all of a sudden... You'll wake Yeongsu..."
Sunrye was startled to see him lose his temper. Hurt followed close behind. Her husband hardly ever raised his voice, not over ordinary things, and that he should flare up now left her raw inside. Sorry to have shown his short temper so abruptly, Ki-jo soothed her.
"I'm sorry. After these days with Mr. Jang, hearing what he carries, I thought it would be a discourtesy if we did a thing like that."
Under the hand he laid gently along her back, the knot in Sunrye loosened, little by little.
"Father, Mother. Did you sleep well..."
Their son Yeongsu, just waking, offered his greeting, and Ki-jo quickly drew his hand away and looked at the boy.
"Did you sleep well, then?"
He went to Yeongsu and gently cleared the sleep from the corner of his eye.
And so the morning began. The three of them were just about to take up their spoons when a familiar voice came from outside.
"Sister! Brother-in-law! I'm here!"
It was Sunrye's younger sister, Soon-young.
"How on earth did she find her way here?"
Sunrye shot to her feet, flung the door open, and went out.
"Soon-young, what's happened? A girl only just married—how long has it even been, and already..."
The bundle in her sister's hands stopped the words in her throat.
"Been well, Sister? Is Brother-in-law inside?"
Soon-young pretended not to see her sister standing there stunned, and craned for a look into the room.
"Aigoo—our Soon-young is here?"
Ki-jo came out beaming.
"Brother-in-law! You missed me terribly, didn't you?"
"That I did. Come in, come in. We'll have breakfast together."
Soon-young left her upset sister standing where she was and hopped lightly up onto the wooden veranda. Once he had seen her into the room, Ki-jo turned to Sunrye.
"What are you doing out here? Your sister's come..."
A sister cast out of her marriage after a single year, come looking for her—Sunrye was so aghast that even the tears would not come. Ki-jo stepped barefoot into the yard again, frost under his feet, and stroked her back.
"It will be all right. She'll meet a good match. Don't worry. I give you my word."
He remembered. In the first days of 1954, Soon-young had been turned out of her marriage, had come looking for them in Busan, met a good man, and gone to him as a second wife. A marriage already behind her had not mattered. By her own brightness and her looks she had caught a wealthy shipowner, and lived a life in which she never once had to worry about money. If that fierce luck was still alive in her, she would surely meet a man whose road ahead ran smooth and wide.
Ki-jo wanted to borrow his sister-in-law's powerful fate, and with it test Jang Ma-ryang's luck as well. Reunification was never going to come. He could not leave Jang Ma-ryang to live out his years a widower. If Yang Soon-young and Jang Ma-ryang took fast to each other, it would mean Ma-ryang's days ahead shone bright—and a bright life for Ma-ryang would be a sign that Ki-jo's own road would run smooth.
He eased his wife toward the room and whispered,
"For the time being, don't let Mr. Water Pak's youngest, Hee-ja, so much as show her face in the village."