Hold Fast to the Helm
The new year of 1963 broke under a savage cold. The snap was so fierce that Incheon Port, eighty years after it had opened to the world, froze solid for the first time—so solid that no ship could come or go.
On the morning of New Year's Day, Gijo unfolded the newspaper that had been delivered to the house.
Cleanse politics, and draw the people together... He could feel the chairman's resolve in the brushwork.
After breakfast he sat with the family and listened to the radio. Chairman Park's New Year address came over the air.
When the address ended, the news followed. The president and his wife had exchanged New Year greetings at the Blue House with dignitaries from home and abroad. Children dressed prettily in rainbow-striped holiday clothes had come to pay their New Year bows, and Chairman Park had handed out sweets.
Taken all together, the first day of 1963 was no different from the New Years of the First Republic and the Second. Under President Syngman Rhee, too, a New Year calligraphy had filled the papers, and the morning news had carried the comings and goings of the presidential couple. It had been the same in the days of Prime Minister Chang Myon and President Yun Bo-seon.
Gijo switched the radio off, and Sunrye suggested they consult the Tojeong almanac.
"The Tojeong almanac?"
"Yes. It came as a supplement with the New Year issue of a women's magazine. Help me with it, won't you?"
He helped her. She had never learned enough Chinese characters to pick her way through it alone.
"Let's see... Our Yeongsu was born in '49, so..."
"The Gichuk year. The Year of the Ox."
Gijo set his finger on the matching characters, found the fortune for Yeongsu's birth date, and read it out.
Our Yeongsu will reap as much as he strives. There will be a chance of advancement, a turn of official favor, and a meeting with someone who may become a love.
It was only a supplement, meant to be read for fun, and it showed: vague, brief, and apparently unwilling to say anything that was not cheerful. Even so, when Sunrye heard that her eldest would do well, she clapped her hands in delight.
"It sounds as if our Yeongsu is going to pass the middle-school exam. And a love fortune—don't tell me he's going to start courting just because he's a middle-school boy?"
Yeongsu's face went scarlet.
Gijo went on and read Yeongeun's fortune as well.
Happy things will fill the home. Fortune lies to the northeast, and there a benefactor will be met.
Sunrye puzzled over the riddle of it, then brightened as if she had found the answer.
"Our Yeongeun starts school this year, doesn't she? Gyodong Elementary is northeast of the house, and meeting a benefactor must mean her homeroom teacher is going to be a wonderful person."
It was a kinder reading than the dream itself, and everyone laughed. Yeongeun was simply glad to hear that she would be going to school.
"Do Yeongjun's too, dear."
"All right. Yeongjun was born in '58, so the Musul year, the Year of the Dog..."
He found the line and read it.
Born under a star of wealth, you have a fortune for business this year. Begin an enterprise. Your face will become known, and the business will flourish.
It was a grand destiny to hang on a six-year-old, and Sunrye had trouble making sense of it. Gijo was no better. She narrowed her eyes and worried at it until, at last, she found a way through.
"Dear, didn't you say you were going to make scrubbers this year?"
"That's right."
He had already told the plastics division—the shop that molded the casings for Cheongsan Electronics radios—to try its hand at acrylic scrub pads.
"Then what if we put Yeongjun's face on the trademark? Mothers will love a cute little boy's face on the label."
It fit the fortune well enough, more or less, and Gijo laughed.
"Shall we?"
When the children's fortunes were done, he turned to Sunrye's.
"You were born in the tenth month of the Sinmi year, so..."
He found her line and read it.
Look after your own health and your family's. Keep on good terms with your neighbors, and the year will pass smoothly.
"Health, and the neighbors. I'll remember."
Sunrye answered with a smile.
It was Gijo's turn, but he knew only the year of his birth, not the month or the day. A date stood in the family register, yet he was an orphan, and whoever had taken him in had almost certainly filled it in at a guess. Even so, he looked up the registered date.
Hold your center. You are as a captain who has set his ship upon a sea where the waves are rising. Do not draw back. Grip the helm. Then you may reach the place you desire.
Everyone else had received something no stronger than a New Year blessing. Only Gijo's fortune warned of hardship. Sunrye's face clouded as she tried to think what it could mean, and Yeongsu turned the words over, testing them.
Into the sudden quiet Gijo spoke, as if to himself.
"Well... it does say I can still reach where I want to go. So perhaps it ends well."
Even that did not seem to settle her.
"Dear, are you going overseas again this year?"
"I'll have to. Japan, and South Vietnam, at least."
"You won't be going by ship, will you?"
"I'll fly. There's no reason to take a ship."
She still could not let it go.
"Even so, stay away from the water. A sea with the waves rising... Oh, I never should have suggested that almanac. It's a nonsense booklet they throw in for free..."
He smiled at her distress, hoping to ease it.
"Fortunes aren't the same for everyone. Some years are good and some aren't. I don't think a lot that says the bitter ends and the sweet comes after is such a bad one."
To change the air in the room, he proposed a game of yut. They spread an old army blanket in the middle of the floor. Gijo took Yeongeun and Yeongjun on his side, and Sunrye paired with Yeongsu. They were in the middle of a lively round when the telephone out on the wooden veranda rang.
Wondering what could be the matter on a New Year morning, Gijo went quickly and picked it up. It was Lee Man-ik, president of Cheongsan Construction.
"I am sorry to disturb you on New Year's morning, Chairman. I judged that this was something I ought to report."
"It's all right. Go ahead."
"Incheon Port has frozen, and it appears there may be trouble with the lock gate at the pier. I will go down and look into it."
"Has it?"
Gijo thought a moment.
"Let's go together. I should see it myself."
"Then I fear I should not have called. I only telephoned because I thought it best to report at once..."
"You did the right thing. I'll meet you in front of headquarters."
"Understood, Chairman."
He hung up and went back to the family. He could not tell Sunrye, who had just begged him to stay away from the water, that he was going to Incheon Port, so he offered something close enough to pass.
"President Lee wants a word with me outside. I don't think I'll be home for lunch."
"Is something serious?"
"No. I think it's a job connected with the U.S. Army. The Americans don't take New Year's Day off."
With that he put on his coat and went out.
He met Lee Man-ik in front of headquarters, and the two of them took a jeep toward Incheon. In that cold the heater needed a while before it could warm the cabin. He had to drive in gloves, and the gears were stiff. They crept along the frozen, unpaved road and at last came to the port, where they went to look at the lock.
Around the pier the ice lay some seventy centimeters thick. The seawater inside the lock was frozen solid as well, and a ship sat trapped in it.
"When water freezes it expands. That'll put pressure on the gate."
"I believe it already has."
Lee Man-ik nodded as he said it. Even so, they could find no clear damage on the gate itself.
"Do you think there'll be a problem?"
"Hard to say. Once the weather breaks and the ice melts, we'll only know if we work the gate carefully and see."
Gijo understood the situation well enough. The port people, guessing that ice that thick had probably ruined the gate, had moved first. If the gate did fail, they meant to lay the blame on Cheongsan Construction, and so they had said in advance that it seemed already broken. Government offices had no money. Often enough they raised a fuss of just this kind, shifted the fault onto a contractor, and ordered the repair.
"Even if the ice has damaged the gate, it isn't our fault. But if it has failed, fix it quickly."
He could pay for the repair without a second thought. Nothing good ever came of wrangling with a government office. Better, knowing the whole story, to mend the thing without protest and win a little goodwill from the officials. They were only pinning the cost on a company because they had no money of their own; they knew perfectly well that Cheongsan was not at fault. Take a government job in the fifties or sixties, and you were expected to show at least that much sincerity. Trust built on such errands helped when the next contract was let. And when you dealt with the government, the most dangerous offense of all was the crime of having displeased them.
Lee Man-ik took his meaning and said he would see to it, though he let out a single sigh.
Gijo went over the rest of the pier with care, turning up the collar of his coat. He had a scarf on, and a hat, but the sea wind still found its way in, and his body shook of its own accord. The winter blast slapping Lee Man-ik's face was more than he could bear.
"Chairman, let us return to the car. At this rate we will freeze where we stand."
"Let's. Come on."
They were hurrying back together when Gijo stepped on the ice along the pier, slipped, and sat down hard.
"Aigoo."
"Are you all right?"
Lee Man-ik moved to catch him and, in the same instant, sat down hard himself.
"Aiku!"
"President Lee, are you all right?"
"I am fine. And you, Chairman?"
Gijo shifted carefully, testing himself, then laughed.
"I'm fine too."
The two of them sat there on the ice and laughed out loud, and only then picked their way, cautiously, off the pier.
When the inspection was done and he was back in Seoul, Gijo went straight to the warmest part of the heated floor and worked the cold out of his bones. He spent a quiet evening with the family and went to bed, and then the hip that had struck the ground at Incheon began to throb. He shifted, and a groan escaped him before he knew it. Sunrye, who had only been dozing, woke and asked.
"Are you hurting somewhere?"
"No. I need to relieve myself. I'll just step out to the outhouse."
"It's cold. Don't go out. Use the chamber pot."
"It's all right. I'll go outside and take care of it properly."
He pulled on his clothes, went out, and slipped into the darkroom. Easing his trousers down, he looked at his hip. The bruise was a deep, ugly blue.
I only slipped a little. How is it bruised like this?
The absurdity of it struck him, and then he smiled.
"So the birthday in the family register was right after all? The fortune told me to keep my balance..."
He put out the light and went back into the room.
"Did you take care of it all right?"
He told her he had, and drew the quilt up. The hip still ached, but it warmed him to think that whoever had left him at the orphanage had given his birth date truly. He had been abandoned as a child, yet not abandoned carelessly, and the knowledge settled softly in him.
"If anything hurts, you must tell me. Don't hide it."
Under the quilt, Sunrye closed her hand around his.
He held it tight.
"The same goes for you. If something's wrong, you have to tell me."
"I will."
In the dark, under the one quilt, husband and wife talked on in low voices. Now and then a knife of wind passed down the alley and made a thin, sharp sound at the window, but Gijo's heart was only warm.