Sampar-ttaraji
The year 1954 came in.
On the front page of the January 1 evening paper, a photograph of President Syngman Rhee ran beside his New Year address.
Though three years have passed since the great war against the communists, we have yet to accomplish unification, and among our seven million compatriots in the North—amid cold and hunger, pestilence, bombs and fire, and soldiers passing to and fro...
Ki-jo stared at the paper, a thing out of another age, and could only marvel.
Well... I thought I'd learned my Chinese characters. I did. And I still can't read a third of the ones printed here. Is this a Korean newspaper or a Chinese one? Honestly...
He flicked through all four pages, then called his son.
"Yeongsu. Come here."
"Yes, Father."
From one corner of the room, where he had been practicing the twist of a straw rope with his small hands, Yeongsu came straight to him.
"Yeongsu. What you see written in this paper is called hanja. See this character here, the one made of three strokes?"
"Yes."
"This is seok-sam. The character for three. Say it after me. Seok-sam."
"Seok-sam."
Yeongsu, five this year, repeated it exactly as his father had said it.
"I'll teach you ten characters a day, and at home you'll write each of them a hundred times. If you don't write a thousand characters in a day, you don't go outside to play."
"Yes, Father."
The boy followed every word without a murmur, and Ki-jo was proud of him for it. At the same time he found it uncanny. Told, at that age, to write a thousand characters a day, and not a flicker crossed his face.
He brought out a pencil and a sheaf of cheap writing paper, bought specially for his son, and set them down in front of the boy.
"Thank you, Father!"
At the sight of the pencil the child's face lit all at once.
The look of a boy handed a toy. What about it could please him so...
A little later Sunrye came into the room with the breakfast table. Three bowls of tteokguk sat on it, sliced rice cake in a clear broth. It was not the lunar New Year, but the village's income had grown, and so they had made garaetteok—long batons of pounded rice cake—and divided them out, one length to each house.
Ki-jo looked at the pale soup, only a few pieces of rice cake afloat in it, and wondered.
What did she make the stock from...?
He lifted a spoonful of broth to his mouth.
"Pheasant?"
"Yes. Mr. Shim caught it for you to eat."
"Did he. That was kind of him."
He took a few more spoonfuls. The taste was clean, and yet somehow flat. Ki-jo had lived all the way to 2019, and his tongue had grown used to the flavor of artificial seasoning.
If I could get hold of MSG and sell it, I'd do well. For that I'd need the Japanese stuff, Ajinomoto... And our own Miwon hasn't even come out yet.
He smacked his lips once or twice, then transferred the few cakes floating in his own bowl into his son's. When breakfast was finished he gave the boy his lesson across the table, and rose.
"The year barely begun, and you're going out already...? It's cold."
Sunrye said it gently.
"I'm just stepping over to Cheongsan with Brother Kim."
He said it as he pulled on his padded cotton coat.
The moment he was outside, his breath bloomed white. Cold, yes. But the rabbit-fur earmuffs kept his face warm. Those, too, were the work of Shim Hansu, the same man who had brought the pheasant to the house. Shim Hansu could hunt, and more than that: if it had to do with an animal, there was little he could not do.
Ki-jo cleared his throat a few times outside Brother Kim's house, and Kim Seogwang opened the door and came out as if he had been waiting.
"Village Head. You're here."
"Brother Kim. Let's go look at our land."
"Gladly."
By now Ki-jo addressed him easily as Brother Kim, and dealt with him as an equal.
They walked five ri—a little under two kilometers—and stopped on a rise where the Hantan River lay wide below them. A single bridge crossed the water, linking Eundae-ri to Cheongsan-ri.
"Look there, Brother Kim. An odd shape for a bridge, isn't it?"
"It is, Village Head. Looks like two bridges shoved together by force."
"Ha—exactly. The Cheongsan half is a concrete bridge the People's Army built. The Eundae-ri half is the one our own army put up."
"Ah. So that's why the shape doesn't match. Or the color."
"From what I hear, the concrete span the People's Army built is the stronger of the two. Ours is a temporary steel bridge, and they decked it with railroad ties, so it's weak."
"Those People's Army bastards had to get their tanks across when they came south, so they built it to last. And our side built theirs to fall down easy, in case the North came again."
"Ha. Something like that."
A cold wind came up off the river. From the hill Ki-jo looked across the bridge at the land of Cheongsan. His second plan lay sleeping in that ground.
That's Yeoncheon's Gangnam. The ground south of the river.
He gazed east, toward land where a tremendous profit waited in the years ahead. He wanted to break ground on Cheongsan at once. But again, of land, labor, and capital, labor and capital were what he lacked. And this time he would need technology as well.
"Technology. That's the real problem... technology..."
"What was that?" Kim Seogwang asked, when Ki-jo spoke it aloud.
"Ah—nothing. Let's go have a look around in front of the station."
"The inns and the eating houses? It's New Year's. Soldiers out on leave. The places will be packed. Haha."
Ki-jo had come back to a world without mobile phones, and without telephones at all. If a man wanted to know which way things were turning, he had to move his own feet and see with his own eyes.
How I ever managed to live through an age like this, the first time, I couldn't say...
They walked another two kilometers and came out in front of Jeongok Station. Ki-jo and Seogwang were heading for a gukbap house when a commotion rose inside.
"What is that? Village Head, wait here a moment."
Limping on his bad leg, Kim Seogwang went into the shop, where a scuffle was already underway.
Then the door burst apart with a splintering crash, and Seogwang, who had gone in, came flying back out.
Ki-jo started. Seogwang limped, yes, but he was a big man, his body hardened by labor. Not someone a fight ought to toss aside so easily. Ki-jo caught him by the hand where he lay sprawled and hauled him up.
"What's in there?"
"One fellow talking Hamgyong. And the size of him..."
Before Seogwang could finish, the man in question came stalking out.
"Hey. You limping son of a bitch. You know Lee Ki-jo?"
A hard-faced giant, six feet three if he was an inch, and he was looking for Ki-jo.
How does he know my name? I've never seen him...
The man had not even managed a winter coat. Ki-jo looked at the forearm laid bare where he had shoved his sleeve up. It was as thick as an ordinary man's calf.
There's real strength in him. No wonder Brother Kim went flying...
As the giant came on, Seogwang snatched up a fire poker from beside the cauldron in front of the shop, putting himself between the man and Ki-jo.
"I'm Lee Ki-jo, you son of a bitch!"
He shouted it and charged with the poker raised. The giant went blank for a moment, then caught the swinging iron clean in one hand.
"You're telling me you're the Lee Ki-jo? The Lee, the Ki, the Jo?"
He stared at Seogwang as if none of it made the least sense.
"Way I heard it, he was young and good-looking. So how come..."
He looked Seogwang up and down. Then he yanked the poker free of both hands and flung it far off. The strength of it was so absolute that Ki-jo found himself admiring every small thing the man did. Their eyes met, and Ki-jo gave him a wide smile.
"Might you be the man called Lee Ki-jo?"
He seemed to have realized. Face and manner both turned courteous.
"That so? Glad to meet you. I'm Jang Ma-ryang. Come down from North Hamgyong."
The man who had named himself Jang Ma-ryang held out a hand as big as a fan.
"A pleasure. I'm the real Lee Ki-jo."
He took Ma-ryang's hand.
"They told me the gukbap house by the station was your shop, so I came looking. Folks took one look at my face and played dumb, and I went and raised a fuss. Beg pardon for that."
"That's all right. But how did you know to come find me?"
"As you can see, I'm a sampar-ttaraji. I was staying in Goseong, Gangwon—close to home. Station master there said, you go to Yangju Station in Gyeonggi, there's a station master who'll tell a man where the work is. I went. That's how I landed here."
It seemed the Deokjeong Station Master, a relative of Sunrye's, had asked every station master he knew to send along anyone looking for work.
Ki-jo nodded.
"You've come to the right place. Have you eaten this morning?"
"Just one bowl of rice, if you'll spare it. I haven't got a coin, but any work you set me, I'll do it. I'll earn the meal, and more."
Ki-jo took him inside with Seogwang.
"Hyeok's mother—three bowls of gukbap for this man, please."
He said it as he sat down. Three bowls were nothing to Ma-ryang; he did not refuse. Ki-jo watched, well pleased, as the food vanished the way a crab tucks its eyes away. The man looked as if he had not eaten in days. And yet, seeing how he had sent Seogwang flying, he was plainly a strongman among strongmen. A man like this, Ki-jo thought, could help him carry through more than one of the things he had planned.
"Hah... now that is fine gukbap! Hahaha."
Ma-ryang had drunk down all three bowls, broth and all, and he said it while wiping the sweat from his brow.
"Mr. Ma-ryang. If I feed you, house you, and see to your drink—is there anything you can't do?"
"Until this country's one again, I'll keep my word. When unification comes, I've got to go north. Wife and children are waiting..."
Ki-jo nodded, and thought.
Then you'll be under me for the rest of your life...