The Rainy Season

On the morning of July 23, Kijo stepped out into the yard and looked up at a clear sky. It was the third time he had seen the sun since July began. The rainy season had set in on the second, and for more than twenty days Seoul had scarcely been granted a proper look at it. After July 1, the day before the rains began, he had glimpsed the sun only once, and briefly, on the twenty-first. It was a monsoon so relentless that he found himself thinking he had never, in all his years, known it to be so hard simply to see the sun.

Sunrye and Yeongsu came out into the yard and brightened at the welcome sight, but Kijo, who knew the rains were not finished, could not set his mind at ease. An unusually long monsoon was already warning of disaster, and the government had all but washed its hands of it, sending out nothing but a caution to beware the mold that damp weather would bring.

A few days earlier Typhoon No. 6 had come north and slipped away, just barely, into the Yellow Sea, and neither the government nor the people had taken the least alarm. A typhoon riding in on the rainy season was several times more dangerous than an ordinary one, and still the whole country passed through the peril without ever grasping how grave it was. After Typhoon No. 6, no one knew that Typhoon No. 7 was coming — Typhoon Agnes. Agnes would be the ninth-strongest typhoon ever to strike Korea.

Kijo gazed at the cleared sky a while longer, then sat down on the wooden veranda. He knew how much suffering a rainy season laid on ordinary people in the 1950s, and old memories came seeping up. From his eleventh life there rose the memory of a murder in Jwacheon-dong, in Busan's Dong-gu, born of the miserable rains of 1957. A day laborer who lived there had lost his work to the unending rain, and with nothing left to eat, after starving for days, he resolved to die together with his family. At dawn he drove a knife into the chests of his wife and his two sons and killed them outright. He himself failed to die, and the police took him.

It was a thing beyond imagining, a thing that had no business being real. Kijo could not sympathize in the least with what the man had done, but he could roughly guess how desperate he must have been. For people who earned in a day what they ate that day, a rainy season lasting more than twenty days was a dreadful calamity that stopped the very breath in their throats.

In his previous life, Kijo had fallen into sore trouble himself during the rains of 1957. Work on the docks had thinned, and the food had run out. Tomorrow I'll get down to the docks and work, surely... He held out two weeks on that, until it came over him that at this rate all three of them would truly starve, and then he set out for Oh Yang-soo's house.

Taking Yeongsu and Sunrye there, the tears kept coming. He gave their only umbrella to Sunrye and walked ahead himself. He was too hurt, too choked, and he wanted the rain to hide the tears running down his face.

In all the times Oh Yang-soo had helped him, the man had never once made him feel the weight of it, and his wife had never once treated them coldly. But taking one's food from another person's hand was a wretched thing, and no one could understand it who had not done it. Recalling that past life, Kijo thought once more about the kind of man Oh Yang-soo was.

He really was a good man... He still is...

The weather having cleared for once, he decided he ought to go and see Lieutenant Kim Seong-jin again.

Arriving at Eighth Army headquarters, Kijo went first to call on Hausman. Hausman, too, seemed pleased to be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠looking at clear weather for once; a smile covered his whole face.

"That weather was completely insane, wasn't it?"

He was speaking of the rains that had gone on for more than twenty days.

"I nearly went out of my mind."

Kijo laughed and fell in with him.

"I hear the clothes dryer in the headquarters overheated and burned out. They've been fixing it for two days. I've worn the same undershorts for two days running, and the clamminess is killing me."

Hausman was laying the misery on thick, and he lived in air-conditioned quarters. Even among the Americans, plenty of men had no air conditioning at all. On the way to see him, Kijo had noticed soldiers all over the compound, hanging their bedding outside to dry. Of everyone living in Korea, not even 0.0000001 percent ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠could live as Hausman did.

"If I were your orderly, I'd have ironed the damp ones and brought them to you..."

"That's it! That's what they ought to do! Young men in America these days don't think. There aren't many who know how to use their heads the way you do, Kijo."

Hausman said it as if he regretted the fact, and then he asked, "Here to see Lieutenant Kim again today?"

"Yes. He must be lonely on his own. The least I can do is give him someone to talk to."

"Good. Seeing you cheers me up, Kijo. A man ought to have a little life in him, the way you do. All through the rains I've had nothing but people like dead fish in front of me. I couldn't get my spirits up at all."

"Then you ought to watch DBC. These days we're showing nothing but Westerns. In the world of those films, the sun is always blazing."

"I already watch it every day, as it happens. I like it very much."

Kijo left him smiling and went out of the office, making for the bachelor officers' quarters on post, the BOQ, where Lieutenant Kim Seong-jin was staying. He proposed a walk, and the two of them strolled the grounds of Eighth Army headquarters.

Hausman had cleared the lieutenant of suspicion of espionage and, in the same stroke, offered him study in America. He was too valuable a man, Hausman had said, to go on suffering in Korea; let him go to the United States and study. It was a kindness. But the sudden crisis in his life and the sudden good fortune had left Lieutenant Kim dazed, and he could not yet steady his mind.

"Does the prospect of studying in America not please you?"

"No. I am glad of it. Only, the reason the U.S. Army means to send me abroad to study..."

When Lieutenant Kim had been transferred to Eighth Army headquarters, Kijo had gone to him and told him to claim that he himself was the man who had improved the penetrating power of the fragmentation mine. He had also told him that a raindrop-shaped projectile met less air resistance than a perfect sphere, and less than the ordinary shape of a bullet besides. Kim Seong-jin had done only as he was told, and when the Americans began to treat him with distinction, it seemed to sit very badly with him.

"I have never once proved an ability of my own, and yet they mean to qualify me to study abroad. It weighs on my conscience."

"You entered the Military Academy first in your class and graduated first. That is qualification enough. And only by going as a scholarship student of the U.S. Department of Defense can you shed the spy charge completely. Who would suspect an officer America itself has sent abroad to study?"

"That is true, I suppose..."

"A crooked road is no matter, so long as it comes out at Seoul. If there is something you wish to learn in America, learn it to your heart's content."

"Thank you, President Lee. It is thanks to the trouble you took that my life was saved."

"If you think of me as the man who saved your life, then do as I say. Lieutenant Kim, you will go to America and study. That is an order."

Kijo said it with the faintest smile, in the tone of a command, and Lieutenant Kim broke into a wide grin.

"Yes, sir. General."

The burden on his mind must have eased. He saluted, and the smile was playful. Kijo returned the salute, then charged him with one thing more.

"If, in America, they start looking into how you improved the fragmentation mine, tell them to run a wind-tunnel test."

"A wind-tunnel test? What is that?"

"You raise a wind with a large fan and watch how air passes over shapes of different kinds. Maintain that the shape of a naturally falling drop of water will meet the least resistance of all."

"Yes. I will do so."

Kijo had no doubt that a man of his intelligence would handle himself well over there.

"Still, so much rain is a serious matter. I asked the Americans, and they said the Han has risen so high that the people of Ichon-dong were moved to higher ground."

"Yes. The whole country is sick with the rain. If a typhoon bears down on us in the midst of this, it will be a disaster..."

He felt a pang for a government and a people who went on, steadfastly, with no plan at all.

"I saw in the paper that the Central Meteorological Observatory has announced the rainy season will soon be over."

Kijo laughed. The Observatory was scattering inaccurate forecasts with abandon. It could hardly be helped — there were no proper instruments, prediction technique was wanting, and they were forecasting with no weather data at all — but their forecasts were of no use whatsoever. They amounted to little more than a forecaster's private hopes. For all he knew, someone had ordered them to keep repeating cheerful predictions, the long rains having turned the public mood sour. The Observatory said nothing, over and over, except that the rainy season would end soon. Lately, with so many complaints coming in that the forecasts never held, they had gone so far as to admit that, honestly, they did not really know either.

These were not matters one could simply laugh off, and they went on through the whole of the fifties. In the end, anyone who actually cared about the weather gave up trusting the Observatory ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and listened to Japanese radio instead, trying to guess Korea's weather from abroad. It was a farce.

Whatever the Observatory chose to do, Kijo was satisfied to see that Lieutenant Kim had found some confidence about studying in America. He was glad he had come on a fine day. People were animals, moved by the weather without ever quite knowing it.

Having kept the lieutenant company, he returned to the broadcasting station. There, on his instructions, they were airing forecasts warning that the rainy season was not yet over and that preparations against rain and typhoons had to go on. The Hankook Ilbo and CBS had been holding steadily to the same line ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of reporting. Kijo watched DBC's forecaster deliver a live broadcast, then went back to the president's office.

His secretary was waiting with a report from Lee Man-ik. Down in the southern provinces, Lee Man-ik was having a hard time of it as well. The monsoon front had stalled and was dumping tremendous rain, the roads were poor, and heavy equipment could not get into the countryside. Following Kijo's orders, he was working wherever the machinery could be brought in by rail, cutting drainage channels and throwing up temporary levees.

Kijo read the worry between the lines of the report. Wages and the cost of running the equipment kept going out; was it right to go on doing the work for nothing? Any man running a company would have to ask that, and Kijo did not think ill of Lee Man-ik for the doubt or the concern.

Not even a month remained before Typhoon Agnes. In his memory, the rainy season would end on the last day of July. And then the fierce heat would come. August would swing between scorching waves and sullen overcast, ruining the crops and letting every kind of disease break out. In the three southern provinces alone — Chungcheong, Gyeongsang, and Jeolla — a million people would come down with liver fluke. Across the country there would be a hundred and forty thousand cases of polio, and eight hundred thousand of tuberculosis. On the heels of natural disaster, the Republic of Korea would become a republic of disease.

It grieved him, but he had no power to answer disease as well. He kept his mind on what he could do. The hardtack turned out at Soon-young's Cheongsan confectionery plant would be stacked in the warehouses and, once the rain stopped, shipped south beginning in August. Vinyl wrapping was in short supply, and hardtack packed in paper could not be moved during the rains.

When August came, Kijo grew busier still. He pushed into full swing the flow of goods the rains had choked off, and he ordered Lee Man-ik to finish the work by the twentieth and pull the construction crews out. In the midst of all that bustle, he took a call from the man.

"You've been working hard, President Lee. What is it?"

It was the first time any subsidiary president had pushed back against an order of his.

"President Lee. Please give it everything you have, but only until August 20."

"Everyone is full of worry for the company, I see."

Kijo understood how Lee Man-ik felt, and how the people of Cheongsan felt, and he answered generously.

"You needn't worry about the company. Come autumn, you'll feel a quiet pride, knowing we did something good."

"Of course. Please settle the men, President Lee. I'm asking this of you."

Lee Man-ik still sounded deeply unsatisfied. But what of it? No one was heaping abuse on them. They were only fretting that they were failing to make more money. Kijo trusted that they, too, would soon come to see the true worth of what they had done.