A Knack for Making Money
Jang Ma-ryang came back in a fortnight, just as he had promised. Three hundred displaced people had followed Ma-ryang on the strength of a single promise—that there would be work at a factory.
They arrived at Jeongok Station, filled themselves at the gukbap house the village kept in front of the station—steaming bowls of rice in hot broth—and walked the rest of the way to Eundae-ri.
Ki-jo had come out as far as the village entrance to meet them, and he greeted Ma-ryang with a wide, beaming smile.
"You've had a hard journey, Ma-ryang."
"Hard? Nothing of it, Brother. I ought to have brought more. Couldn't cover the train fares. Had to cut it clean at three hundred."
"Three hundred will do."
Ki-jo ran his eyes over the people Ma-ryang had brought. Men and women neither very young nor very old looked back at him, their faces a little drawn from the road. He turned to them and introduced himself.
"I'm Lee Ki-jo. Welcome to Yeoncheon. We'll take you straight to the factory lodgings."
Ma-ryang started at that.
"You've already built the factory?"
"Hardly. We've only graded the site. But the temporary quarters are ready, so let's let them rest there."
Ma-ryang could not see how the ground had been cut and leveled without a single one of the workers he had brought.
"Did you hire people for it?"
"No. You'll see when we get there."
Ki-jo led Ma-ryang and the workers on toward Cheongsan. The walk from Eundae-ri ran a little under four kilometers, and the two of them talked the whole way.
"I thought you'd come back with nothing but sun-blackened men, but you've mixed the sexes at a sensible rate."
"Pack a place with nothing but men and you're in for trouble later. Women have to be there too. Then the work has some flavor to it, and the fights thin out."
"About two men to every woman, then."
"Every woman I brought has done laboring work before."
"Where?"
"Under the Japanese, on the Supung Dam works up in Pyongan Province. Hauled stone, they say. So the women are near all from Pyongan."
"Is that so? There was a time the whole country ran on power from Supung Dam. I wonder if people who built a thing that enormous will be satisfied with the look of our brickworks..."
Whatever Ki-jo feared, Ma-ryang and the displaced were struck dumb when they reached the site. The grounds were so vast their mouths fell open.
"Brother, how did you clear this much land in two weeks..."
"Ah, well. I didn't. Someone helped."
Out on the site, olive-drab bulldozers and men in army uniforms were moving busily about.
"Look over there."
Ma-ryang followed the line of Ki-jo's finger. Two men stood on a low rise.
"The short, stocky gentleman is Professor Kim Moon-hwan of the College of Engineering at Seoul National University. The one beside him, in uniform, is the Engineer-in-Chief of the Army Corps of Engineers."
"The Engineer-in-Chief?"
"Yes. He's the professor's old student. One phone call, and the professor had him out here."
"Ah..."
Ma-ryang nodded, watching the Army engineers grade the factory site with their heavy machines.
Up on the hill, Professor Kim Moon-hwan had been surveying the progress of the work. He caught sight of the crowd Ki-jo and Ma-ryang were leading and spoke.
"So the factory hands have arrived, have they. You finish out today and be off tomorrow."
"I'll put in a few more days before I go, Teacher."
"Teacher, nonsense. What did you ever learn from me? You're a Japanese Military Academy man, aren't you?"
"During the war, Teacher, your calculations were exact. A great many lives were saved because of them."
"I did it because I was bored stiff in the middle of a war and had nothing else to do. Don't flatter yourself. I did it because it amused me."
"Teacher, honestly..."
Engineer-in-Chief Lee Man-ik smiled and looked at the eccentric old professor with open respect.
"Anyway, thank you for the army tents and the stoves. If it weren't for you, those people down there would have had nowhere to sleep in the dead of winter..."
"If you need more, I will bring them, Professor."
"I'll only use what I borrowed from you for a little while. Once the brickworks is running, buildings will go up fast over in the residential quarter. The first runs are bound to come out as culls, and President Lee means to use those for the workers' quarters."
"A sharp man. And he looked quite young."
"It isn't that he's sharp. It's that he has a conscience. A conscience... Look at a brick from the outside and nobody can tell whether it was made right. You only learn that long after the walls are up. If he had a mind to, he could haul the bad ones out and sell them as they stand. He says he absolutely will not."
Lee Man-ik had thought it strange that a man as raw and young as Lee Ki-jo could draw Professor Kim Moon-hwan all the way out to country like this. There seemed, after all, to be a reason. His old teacher never took a man's hand unless he felt the sincerity in him. At the outbreak of the war he had been furious that the Han River bridges were blown too soon, and he had sworn he would not help the Army engineers—not with a war on, not for anything. Only when Lee Man-ik came to him day after day, knelt, begged pardon, and bowed himself to the floor did the old man relent. And yet once Professor Kim decided to help, he was not a man who quit before a problem was solved. If he was needed, he went to the ground itself and did not leave until he had hunted down the cause.
"You know what you're to do later, when the army builds, don't you?"
"I know, Professor. We'll have to buy our bricks from the Cheongsan brickworks. Ha ha ha."
"I'm not saying it to take President Lee's side. Just wait and see. This factory will turn out the finest bricks in Korea."
"By the way, Professor—if you hadn't called me in early, we might have been in real trouble."
"Why?"
Professor Kim Moon-hwan pushed his glasses up and looked at him.
"Once the rains come, heavy materials won't be able to get in here. If the ground goes soft and turns to muck, even tracked vehicles like the bulldozers won't be able to move."
"We'll have the work finished before May. President Lee doesn't spare a cent, so it moves fast. I pour money out by the handful, and he never even asks where it goes."
"Isn't that because he can trust you, Professor?"
"He's already gone through five gold bars and hasn't so much as blinked. The man has a rare largeness of nerve."
"Five gold bars?"
"Yes. I've burned through half the bars President Lee had. And there's still a mountain of money left to spend. We'll need something like twice again what we've spent so far."
"But how does a young man come by money like that..."
"He must have a knack for knocking money together out of nothing. What he always says to me is this."
"That's what he tells me..."
"Aigoo... Professor, just from hearing you tell it, that young man frightens me a little."
Engineer-in-Chief Lee Man-ik watched Lee Ki-jo coming toward them, curiosity in his eyes.
Lee Ki-jo brought Jang Ma-ryang over and introduced him.
"This is my younger brother-in-law, the one I mentioned. He'll be supervising the site from here on, so if you need anything, you have only to tell him."
"Good to meet you. I'm Kim Moon-hwan."
"Honored, Professor."
When Ma-ryang had finished shaking the professor's hand, the Engineer-in-Chief offered his own.
"A pleasure. I'm Lee Man-ik."
"Thank you kindly for the help, sir."
"Ha ha. I think I could leave this site with an easy mind. President Lee's brother-in-law looks thoroughly dependable."
After the greetings, Ki-jo and Ma-ryang went over the army tents the factory workers would use. A military stove stood in the middle of each large tent, enough, it seemed, to hold off a fair measure of the cold. The women's quarters were inspected by Lee Bongok, whom Ma-ryang had named to lead them, and she reported whether anything was wanting.
"As head of the women, you'll need to take the lead in looking after their safety and their daily comfort."
"Understood. I'll see to keeping order in the camp myself, so don't you worry."
Lee Bongok was built on such a scale that one might have called her a Jang Ma-ryang in a woman's frame. Her skin was dark and rough, her hair cropped short, and unless a person looked closely she could have passed for a man. Ki-jo judged her someone he could trust.
When the inspection was finished, he drew Ma-ryang aside from the others for a brief word.
"We've used half the gold bars we had."
"Yes, Brother."
"The other half will be gone within a month or two."
"We'll manage somehow, won't we?"
Ma-ryang trusted Ki-jo utterly, and followed him without question.
"Don't you worry. If the professor says he needs something, tell me at once. And if you need money yourself, Ma-ryang, say so right away."
"I will."
"Then I ought to go see Soon-young. Come back to the village with me."
"I'll sleep here tonight and go tomorrow. I need to see whether these tents will do for a night."
"All right. I'll tell Soon-young."
"Go safely, Brother."
Ki-jo set off alone toward Eundae-ri at a brisk pace. Walking the frozen ground, he turned over Professor Kim Moon-hwan's words—that more money would be needed yet.
It's costing more than I expected. But the factory will be finished, and the trial runs done, right about when the trucks arrive. That's fortune enough. The capital will come back quickly...
He resolved to begin at once on raising the additional funds. Nearly everyone in Eundae-ri would have to be called out for the work.
Still, the ground is frozen hard as iron. I don't know whether it'll go...
He wished he had started sooner. But who could have known the Cheongsan project would begin this early?
Twelve times he had come back and lived this life again, and still a life was something no man could know.