The Small Kilns
The invitation from the Big Five was less an invitation than a summons.
The day before the opening ceremony at the Juan Coal Stockyard, a man had come to Ki-jo's office in Seoul.
"How do you do? My name is Jo Sang-hun. I'm with Yangju Yeoeop."
No sooner had he given his name than he was urging Ki-jo to attend a meeting of the Gyeongin Brick Construction Association.
"The Gyeongin Brick Construction Association?" Ki-jo asked. "What sort of organization is that?"
"A gathering of the brickmakers in the Gyeongin region, I'm told."
"I've never joined any such association."
"I didn't know it existed either. I only built my factory this year."
"Then how did you know of me, and come looking?"
"I had a call from the president of Uijeongbu Yeonwa. It seems Yongsan Yeonwa sent the order down to them—round up the hakobang. Uijeongbu Yeonwa looks after the hakobang in northern Gyeonggi."
"Hakobang?"
"Yes. That's what they call the small and middling brick works. Uijeongbu Yeonwa, our Yangju Yeoeop—places like ours."
Ki-jo found it absurd that the "association" would class Cheongsan Brick, with a capacity of five million bricks a year, among the hakobang. Still, he understood. He was new, and they meant to treat a newcomer as the lowest man in the room and take the spirit out of him.
"In two days they're holding a gathering, so we can pay our respects to the big presidents. I'm new to all this myself, so I don't know the details, but from what the president of Uijeongbu Yeonwa told me..."
What he had been told, Jo Sang-hun went on to explain, was that the brick men of the Gyeongin region met at one of Seoul's exclusive kisaeng houses and there settled both price and output. It was a producers' cartel for brick—an OPEC built of clay and kilns.
"Very well. I'll attend."
"Then I'll see you there. Oh—and when you come, you'll need to bring twenty thousand hwan in association dues."
"Twenty thousand hwan?"
"Yes. Steep, isn't it? It's a heavy burden for me too, but they say if you don't pay, you'll have a hard time selling bricks at all."
The more Ki-jo heard, the more absurd it became. The Big Five were running a protection racket on the smaller brick works.
"President Jo?"
"Yes, President Lee?"
"Tell them the dues will be paid later."
"Later? What do you mean? Are you going to pay later yourself?"
"No. I won't be paying."
Worry creased Jo Sang-hun's face.
"President Lee, do you think twenty thousand hwan simply dropped out of the sky for me? I borrowed to scrape it together. They say if you don't pay, the big presidents will ruin you overnight. The factory's already built in Yangju. If I go under like this, I won't even get my stake back..."
The president of Yangju Yeoeop let out a long sigh, and a bitter taste rose in Ki-jo's mouth. If the brick market was ever to run as a market should, the Big Five's grip would have to be broken, and soon.
Turning that day's memory over, he made his way to the meeting place: Myeongwolgwan.
When he arrived, he was shown into the room reserved for the Gyeongin Brick Construction Association. Some twenty men looked up as he stepped inside.
"Ah! President Lee! Sit here!"
Jo Sang-hun of Yangju Yeoeop brightened at the sight of him. The place he indicated was the seat beside his own—the lowest in the room. Before sitting, Ki-jo went among the men and offered each his card. Once the cards had gone around and he had taken his place, Jo Sang-hun leaned in and asked, low, "You really didn't bring the dues?"
"No. I didn't."
Ki-jo did not lower his voice. A man two seats over spoke up at once.
"See here. You, the president of Cheongsan Brick—what are you saying?"
The one who had bristled was the president of Uijeongbu Yeonwa.
"The association is demanding a pointless sum, so I'm refusing it."
"Then why come at all? Sit quietly and the association will ruin you without any help from you."
The president of Uijeongbu Yeonwa said it coldly.
"I came because I wanted to see the big presidents' faces. I was curious just how greedy they are."
"Well, now... there's a man bent on making trouble!"
It was not only Uijeongbu. The other presidents stared at Ki-jo as if he were something strange.
"I won't bring any harm down on you gentlemen. And Cheongsan will not fail. Not ever."
No one answered him. They turned their faces away and began to mutter among themselves, and even Jo Sang-hun, unsettled by the mood, shifted in his seat and angled himself slightly aside. Ki-jo sat at the very foot of the hakobang gathering, ignored by every man in the room. He was neither cowed nor lonely. He was only curious what would be said once the association's meeting began.
A little later, food was brought in for the hakobang presidents. For a house of that rank, it was humble fare: a plain set meal of rice and side dishes. Not one of them touched it. They went on talking among themselves in low voices, and when Ki-jo listened, he found that nearly every conversation turned on the same things—the volume that would be allotted to a man's factory this year, and the price.
"I just hope they'll let me make ten thousand more than last year."
"Ten thousand? I'd be grateful for five."
"Quotas are one thing, but the price is the real trouble, isn't it? If they'd raise it by even a single jeon..."
Listening, Ki-jo kept his eyes on the room across the way, shut behind its sliding door. The presidents of the Big Five would be sitting in there.
Then came the sound of that door opening, and a theatrical clearing of the throat. At once the hakobang presidents broke off their talk and got to their feet. Ki-jo did not rise.
"Is everyone present?"
The voice came through the paper of the sliding door.
"Yes, Elder."
The man in the highest seat among the hakobang answered.
"Let us begin."
When the voice came from beyond the door paper, the hakobang presidents began to clap in unison, matching one another beat for beat.
Clap, clap, clap. Clap, clap. Clap-clap-clap-clap. Clap.
Ki-jo watched, and could hardly believe it.
This is the sort of thing yakuza do...
It was the same gesture Japanese gangsters made at the opening of a gathering, clapping themselves into time before anything else. They seemed to be repeating, without a shred of shame, what Japanese presidents had done under colonial rule.
Madmen...
The curse rose in him unbidden.
"Be seated."
At the voice from the room opposite, every hakobang sat.
"You may eat."
Only when leave was given did the hakobang presidents begin their meal, spooning up soup that had already gone cold. Ki-jo had no appetite and did not touch his. Presently, from across the way, came the sound of women's laughter. The presidents of the majors would have kisaeng seated beside them by now, and wine, and food rich with oil. The hakobang ate in silence, the way men eat rice that is not theirs.
They even rank a man by the way he's allowed to eat. How petty.
He felt as if he had slipped back into a world of caste.
As the hakobang presidents were finishing, the door opened and a man came in. Without a word he went among them, collecting envelopes. When Ki-jo's turn came, he spoke to the hand held out for his.
"I've nothing to pay. Move along."
The man stared as if he had not understood Korean, gave a short scoff of a laugh, and left the room. Jo Sang-hun, beside him, seemed to grasp only then that the refusal was real. Worried, he whispered in a voice no bigger than a mosquito.
"What on earth are you meaning to do..."
Ki-jo only smiled.
The envelopes taken from the hakobang must have been carried across, for the women's voices fell away. Checking the dues seemed to have soured the big presidents' mood. Then laughter rose from the far room.
"Ha ha ha. So a fellow has come in with his liver hanging out of him."
"Been a while, hasn't it? First time since Yeongdeungpo Yeonwa, no?"
"We've even got one who came to stuff his face and skip the dues. Heart of a pure thief, that one. Let's have a look at his ugly mug. Keh keh."
They were speaking of him. Jo Sang-hun sat on pins and needles, afraid the sparks might land on him as well. The president of Uijeongbu Yeonwa flicked Ki-jo a glance that said he was finished.
With a dry rattle, the sliding door between the rooms opened, and at last the presidents of the Big Five were revealed. Among them was Han Man-yong of Yongsan Yeonwa, the man who had come looking for Ki-jo. Ki-jo knew him for the son of President Han Ki-soo, sitting in for a father too unwell to attend. He had already looked into the rumors around the Big Five.
"Is that the one?"
The man in the highest seat among the Big Five asked it of Han Man-yong. The president of Seoul Yeoeop, Ki-jo thought—the firm that had once been Gyeongseong Yeonwa.
"That's him."
Han Man-yong answered, turned his eyes on Ki-jo, and shouted.
"Hey. Lee Ki-jo. Get up."
Ki-jo pretended not to have heard.
"Milk not dry on your head, and already running your mouth, you little bastard... Can't you hear your elders talking?"
Han Man-yong was himself only in his late twenties, not so far from Ki-jo in age, and yet he carried on as if he were some elder of the trade.
"You're hardly advanced in years yourself. And your language is remarkably crude."
Ki-jo said it gently, as if correcting a child, and Han Man-yong shot to his feet.
"Now, now. Vice President Han, don't excite yourself. Sit down."
The president of Seoul Yeoeop checked him. Still snorting with anger, Han Man-yong flushed at a word from the chairman and sat. The president of Seoul Yeoeop smoothed a Kaiser mustache that did not suit him and regarded Ki-jo with interest.
"Come a little closer, will you?"
He offered it with a show of magnanimity. Ki-jo was in no mood to oblige.
"If you'd like a closer look at me, wouldn't it be simpler for you to come over here?"
The moment Ki-jo answered the association's oyaji—its boss—without bending, the hakobang presidents went ashen. Kim Gap-soo of Seoul Yeoeop bristled inwardly at such bare defiance, but he did not show his temper. What backing did the brat have, to carry himself like that? Lee Si-hyeong of Daehan Yeoeop, formerly Joseon Yeoeop, seated at Kim Gap-soo's side, cupped a hand over the older man's ear and whispered. He had the look of a man who already knew something about Ki-jo. Kim Gap-soo, having heard him, cleared his throat several times before he spoke.
"Spirit in a young president—I like that. Vice President Han failed in courtesy toward you, and I shall apologize in his place. Will you come sit beside me?"
His voice had softened considerably. Han Man-yong, close by, looked baffled. What was this?
"I would come to you myself, but my legs are not what they were. Well? Will you come?"
Bad legs. Hardly.
Ki-jo was not taken in by the cunning old man's play on words. It was a technique for steering a man on whom open anger had already failed. Whoever changed the other's conduct would win, and whoever granted the other's request would lose. Accept even a small plea without thinking, and you had conceded the other man's authority.
"If your legs trouble you, then sit where you are and listen."
He refused Kim Gap-soo outright and spoke in a carrying voice from his seat.
"I came today to see just how far this association goes in binding the hakobang—in price, and in volume."
As one, the hakobang presidents put on faces that declared they had nothing to do with him, and looked away.
"But having seen how the thing is run, I find I hardly need to look. It's plain enough, isn't it?"
"What kind of talk is that? My good man! This association exists for the good of the trade as a whole!"
Kim Gap-soo threw it back like a scolding, a lie so bare it needed no disguise.
At the declaration, every man in the room started. When all their eyes had gathered on him, Ki-jo rose as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Whether you sell cheaper than Cheongsan Brick, or dearer—that choice I leave to the presidents gathered here."
He had denied, to its face, the frame the Gyeongin Brick Construction Association meant to force upon them.
An awkward silence fell. Lee Si-hyeong of Daehan Yeoeop broke it.
"President of Cheongsan Brick. I am told you are on familiar terms with the American ambassador."
At his words the hakobang presidents turned startled eyes on Ki-jo. So there had been backing after all—it was written on every face.
"But we are not negligible ourselves. Would you care to test which is the stronger—the Korean government, or the American embassy?"
What? How had it suddenly been framed that way?
Ki-jo could not make sense of it. He could see, though, that of the Big Five, Daehan Yeoeop had the keenest intelligence. Word of what had passed when he won relicensing for the Cheongsan factory seemed to have reached the man's ear. He already knew Daehan Yeoeop was the strongest of them. Kim Gap-soo of Seoul Yeoeop held the chairman's seat only because he was old. Among the majors, the company with the real skill and the real power was Daehan Yeoeop.
Ki-jo looked at Lee Si-hyeong.
"And what use is backing? Let us compete by who can move more bricks, and cheaper. I know your connections fall short of the rumors."
That last line was pure guesswork. He had figured they did no more than grease a few mid-ranking and junior officials and gather what information they could—but to his surprise, Lee Si-hyeong flinched, and color flooded his face.
Oh. So it really is true.
Ki-jo decided he had better stop. Say any more, and he would only show how thin his hand really was.
In silence he set his hat on his head and walked out of the room, and a cold quiet followed him. He had nearly reached the outer door of Myeongwolgwan when someone called after him.
"Excuse me. Sir. Just a moment."
It was a young woman's voice.