The Most Precious Thing
A few days after Mi-hyang's visit, Kijo arranged to sit down with Kwak Young-joo. He had no wish to meddle in the affairs of men and women, but a promise was a promise. When Mi-hyang had done him the kindness of smoothing his relations with Kwak, he had promised to send her abroad to study.
He reserved a room at a traditional restaurant and waited. While he waited, his thoughts turned to Kwak Young-joo, and a memory from 1961 rose up in him.
It had been a bitter winter, the wind keen as a knife. He and Sunrye had gone to the market, bought sweet potatoes, and carried them home. In the room, while they waited for the potatoes to roast in the brazier, Kijo read the newspaper they had come wrapped in.
Sunrye spoke as he read.
"Dear, why are the women in the paper crying? They look so terribly sad..."
Kijo turned the paper over. On the side she was looking at, three photographs had been printed.
Sunrye could read the Korean script, but the Chinese characters were beyond her, so Kijo read the article beneath the photographs aloud.
"It says former Minister of Home Affairs Choi In-gyu and a man named Kwak Young-joo were executed on the twenty-first. A man named Cho Yong-su died as well, and so did someone called Lim Hwa-soo."
"Executed? Why..."
"There was a revolution in Seoul in the spring of '60. It says those men ordered the soldiers to fire on the people."
"Oh..."
Sunrye nodded.
The article carried a photograph of the wives of Choi In-gyu and Kwak Young-joo, collapsed and weeping outside Seodaemun Prison after they heard that their husbands' sentences had been carried out. The third photograph was of Lim Hwa-soo's house, shut up tight.
When he had finished reading, Kijo prodded the potatoes with the fire poker and spoke to her.
"I think they're done. Let's eat."
They drew the sweet potatoes from the brazier, let them cool, and talked quietly of the day. He remembered Yeongsu sleeping soundly beside them as they spoke.
He was still lost in the memory when Kwak Young-joo stepped into the room. At the sight of Kijo, Kwak broke into a grin.
"Kijo. Been waiting long?"
Kijo smiled back.
"Not at all, Brother."
Today the word left his mouth with relative ease.
Still in uniform, Kwak dropped squarely into the seat of honor and pulled off his cap.
"Let's keep it short tonight. His Excellency has a function tomorrow. I can't afford to drink too much."
He smacked his lips over the generous spread Kijo had ordered.
"Is it a large affair?"
"Two hundred and sixty-two people are coming to Gyeongmudae. I'll have to stay sharp on His Excellency's security."
The two hundred and sixty-two were propaganda officers of the Liberal Party. With the presidential election drawing near, Syngman Rhee meant to gather at Gyeongmudae the men who had attended the National Conference of Liberal Party Propaganda Chiefs, and to impress upon them once again how much propaganda mattered.
There he would insist that the nation must choose a worthy man rather than whoever merely wanted to be president, and he would appraise himself as "a man who, from the day he was born until now, has lived with the single resolve to restore the country." He would add a prophecy as well — that heaven would aid whoever truly served the nation, and would let that man take hold of it.
Kijo hesitated. Was this the moment to speak of Mi-hyang to a man holding back his drink for the next day's security detail? He filled Kwak's cup first and began somewhere else.
"Brother, I've taken over a bicycle company in Busan."
"Have you? Good. Make plenty of decent bicycles, earn some money, and supply Gyeongmudae while you're at it."
Kwak let show how much he wanted Kijo to succeed, and Kijo could feel that he meant it.
Kwak, who had only touched his lips to the cup while he picked at the food, asked,
"They say you're building a port in Ulsan too."
"Yes, Brother."
"The cultivator plant as well? You're putting that in Ulsan?"
"That's what I'm thinking."
"Good. It's a sound thought. You've done well, Kijo. I'm proud of you."
Ever since Kijo had brought home the commercial loan, Kwak's manner toward him had shifted, if only slightly. There was more respect in his face, and in his voice, than there had been before.
"His Excellency the President has spoken of you too. Said he was proud of you."
"What did he say?"
"He was sorry you have no parents. Said even now it would be good if you sought out a mother and father to adopt you, served them, and recovered your roots."
Kijo only nodded at the peculiar turn of Rhee's mind.
"It may have been a passing remark, but he said if you were a Jeonju Yi — of his own clan — he would have taken you as his adopted son on the spot. He is not a man who says such things often."
Kwak laughed, loud and rough, and Kijo laughed with him. Not even in a dream, though, would he have Yeongsu, Yeongeun, and Yeongjun honor Syngman Rhee as their grandfather.
"Brother. A few days ago, Miss Mi-hyang came to see me."
"Mi-hyang did?"
Kwak's brow creased, just slightly. It was a look Kijo had never seen on him.
"What did she want?"
"She said she wants to study in France."
Kwak drained in a single swallow the cup he had been nursing, and held it out. Kijo filled it again, and Kwak emptied it clean.
"Hah..."
A deep sigh broke from him. He was silent a moment, and then he spoke.
"Let her go."
He cut Mi-hyang loose with a cleanness Kijo had not expected.
"Will that really be all right?"
When Kijo asked again, Kwak nodded. Something, it seemed, had gone wrong between the two of them.
As if the air had grown too close, Kwak undid the top button of his shirt.
"Kijo."
"Yes, Brother."
"She said it to me straight. She wants me to send my wife away, so she can take over the household..."
He let out a short, incredulous laugh.
"You think that's a thing anyone can say? Drive out the wife who bore me a child gentle as a rabbit and keeps the house with her whole heart? Heaven itself would punish a man for that..."
Kijo nodded.
"However many nights I spent with her, however fond we grew, that is not something you do. I was disappointed in her."
Kwak sat with the empty cup in his hand, sunk in thought. Kijo suspected the demand had been deliberate — that she had asked for something impossible on purpose, so he would have no choice but to send her far away.
"Even so, Kijo. When you send her off to France, see that she doesn't suffer. Look after her properly."
"I will, Brother."
"Thank you, Kijo."
With a hollow smile, Kwak gave his shoulder a thump.
"Kijo. You don't keep a second woman, do you?"
The question came from a man who had just resolved to break with Mi-hyang.
"I don't."
"Good. That's the way to live. Men who keep a concubine may look as if they're having a fine time of it, but it isn't so fine."
The food had gone bitter in his mouth. He only pushed it about. With his own lips he had called Mi-hyang shameless for wanting his lawful wife driven out, and yet, now that he had to send away the woman he had grown fond of, his face looked bare and empty.
The meal was short. Walking out of the restaurant at Kwak's side, Kijo felt the weight in his own steps. Even now he wanted to tell him to leave Gyeongmudae, look after his family, and live a quiet life.
He watched Kwak's back as the man parted from him and headed home, and once again he saw the photograph from the newspaper in his previous life — Kwak's wife, collapsed on the road before the prison, sobbing without restraint.
On the way back he came upon a sweet-potato peddler, bought a whole bundle, and carried it in. In the yard he washed the potatoes clean, set water boiling in the big iron pot, and steamed them.
Sunrye had expected him home after eating out. Seeing him steam the potatoes himself, she asked,
"Was the meal not to your liking?"
"No. I ate well."
He smiled. Yeongsu and Yeongeun, curious what their father was doing in the yard, watched him from behind. When the smell of steaming sweet potatoes began to drift, the couple from next door came out — Hansu and Hyun-gyeong.
"Chairman, you're steaming sweet potatoes?"
"Ah, yes. Here, take some."
He pressed an armful of the first batch into their hands. Hyun-gyeong was holding their daughter, so Hansu took the potatoes and went back inside.
When the steamed potatoes had piled high, Kijo filled a basket and turned to the children.
"Let's go share these with the neighbors. Come with Papa."
"Yes, Father!"
Yeongsu followed without a hint of reserve. Yeongeun, full of shyness, seemed to be deciding whether to go along or not.
"Yeongeun, you'll help Papa too, won't you?"
At his question, she nodded.
Kijo set out with Sunrye, Yeongjun in her arms, and they carried the steamed sweet potatoes to the neighbors. Whenever a knock brought someone to the door, he had Yeongsu and Yeongeun offer their greetings and hand the potatoes over. The neighbors met the family all smiles.
A few, of course, grumbled once the door had shut behind them.
"A man hauling food around with his wife and his children — it isn't a pretty sight..."
To the husband finding fault for no good reason, his wife said,
"How fine it would be if you were warm and attentive, like the man of that house... They say he doesn't trouble his wife's heart, and he earns good money besides..."
"Bah."
Pricked by the comparison, the man turned sharply and stalked off into the room.
When the round of the neighborhood was done, Kijo sat down with his family and they shared the steamed potatoes. Dinner was already behind them, but washing, steaming, and giving them away had emptied their stomachs again, and they ate with pleasure.
Deep in the night, lying side by side, Kijo and Sunrye talked softly.
"But why did you take sweet potatoes around?"
"Ah. Well..."
He told her what he had seen while walking the neighborhood with Yeongeun — how the child hid behind him whenever one of the grown-ups appeared.
"I wanted our shy little Yeongeun to be able to greet her elders without fear. If she makes the rounds with me and bows to them once, maybe later she'll manage it on her own."
Sunrye laughed.
"When she grows, the greetings will come of themselves. I was the same. As a child, if I saw the neighborhood elders, I hid. They frightened me, and I never quite knew why."
She was speaking for the heart in Yeongeun that resembled her own.
"Yeongsu takes after you. He likes meeting people. Yeongeun takes after me, and she's full of shyness... I can't tell yet who our third will resemble."
She wondered, as he did, whom Yeongjun took after. Greedy and quick to fuss, the boy was like neither of them.
"If I look closely, he does seem a little like Soon-young. When she was small she was greedy too, and her temper had edges. She was always getting into fights."
Sunrye said it with a serious face.
"If he takes after your sister, we've nothing to worry about. She'll look after herself."
Kijo said it with a laugh.
"I suppose so. But is Soon-young's factory doing well? I've often seen the sweets she makes for sale at the neighborhood shop, and the price is so low I can't imagine anything is left over."
"They do seem to be turning a profit. I asked Ma-ryang. He said she hasn't much desire to get rich."
"Soon-young hasn't?"
Sunrye's eyes went perfectly round.
"According to him, when she sees children eating the bread and sweets she made, she's as proud as can be."
At that, Sunrye sighed.
"What is it?"
"It's only... I feel sorry for Soon-young."
"Sorry for what?"
"She loves children so much, and yet she can't have one of her own. It pains me..."
Kijo quietly took the hand of the sister worrying over her own.
"Who can say? One of these days a pretty child may be born between those two. Your sister and Ma-ryang are lucky people. A baby might simply arrive."
Soon-young was only just twenty-four. There was still hope, he told himself.
As they talked she grew quieter, and then she slipped into sleep. Kijo looked up into the dark of the ceiling. He hoped that for everyone, just once, the chance might come to have what they wanted. If Soon-young and Ma-ryang wished for a child, then let a child be born to them. If his family was so precious to Kwak Young-joo, then let him live a long while at their side.
And still he thought it might have been better if Kwak had lost himself so deeply in Mi-hyang that he had said he would go with her to France. But Kwak Young-joo was not such a man. He held his family dearer than Mi-hyang, and Syngman Rhee dearer than his family.
A story of him came back. At dawn on June 25, 1950, the morning the war broke out, Kwak Young-joo did not go home. He sent a man instead, in the early dark, with nothing but a message.
"Pack nothing. Take only the child, and go stay at the main house."
At that hour Kwak was at Seoul Station, putting Syngman Rhee aboard a train for Busan. He was a man who, busy looking after Rhee, did not look after his own family even in the chaos of war.
Later, when his wife let him see how hurt she was, he was said to have answered with a single hard sentence.
His wife felt the wound of a husband who scolded her instead, but she bore it, telling herself he was only a man thorough in his sense of public duty.
There was another tale Kijo knew. Kwak's wife was a distant relation of Shin Ik-hee, the opposition's leading candidate for the presidency, and once she had quarreled with her husband over an article in the paper. It began with what she said to him.
"They say President Rhee doesn't even read the newspapers. The people are in an uproar, crying that they can't make a living and that it's time for a change — and I can't tell whether he knows it or not. Couldn't you speak a word to him?"
Kwak answered her this way.
Whatever the papers printed, whatever the world might say, he was a man who needed only to keep Syngman Rhee safe.
Turning it over, Kijo smiled a bitter smile. The thought had come to him that Kwak Young-joo had lived exactly as he wished. He had chosen Syngman Rhee, and by refusing to betray him to the very end, he had become a man who vanished together with him.
Kijo listened to the breathing of his family and courted sleep. He wanted to hear those four breaths for as long as he possibly could. This time was truly the last, and so he meant to remain — even a single day longer — beside the people he loved, before he went.