The Smell of Money
How do I even bring it up?
I was alone with the question when a knock sounded behind me. Perhaps the house was too quiet. Small as the sound was, it made me jump.
"Young master, there's a phone call for you."
A phone call? I opened the door at once, and one of the staff bent at the waist to bring his eyes level with mine.
"They say it's the department chair. A professor at the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University."
The department chair. The man who had looked so easily bent by power. Why him? He wouldn't be calling just to ask whether I'd settled in all right. Could it have something to do with the painting?
"Will you take it?"
"Yes."
I answered and started down the long corridor.
"Jihun, do you remember my voice?"
"Yes, Professor. Hello."
"Heh heh. Nothing else—I'm calling about a work. You know the student, Yoo Seonho. I reached him a few hours ago."
"Really?"
"To be precise, I went all the way to Yoo Seonho's house. You were waiting, Jihun. I could hardly sit around making leisurely phone calls."
The moment the name Hyeon-gang gets attached, does everyone turn this eager?
"Ah, I'm not trying to claim credit. I simply have to pass along the facts. At any rate, he says he was so busy preparing to study abroad that he couldn't take the calls. Even so... I must have telephoned any number of times..."
Only after wringing every drop of credit from the story did the chair go on.
"I asked the fellow whether he was willing to sell the painting. He hesitated a little. So I told him: London runs a bit expensive, doesn't it? Sell when someone will pay you a proper price. That's how you come out ahead."
L-London?
Banksy was British too. Did this mean one more point of contact between Yoo Seonho and Banksy?
"The moment I named the price, he said he'd sell at once. Well, you did bid high. For a novice, money like that—anyway. He must have been pleased. He said he'd throw the drawings in for free."
"You've gone to such trouble."
"Trouble? Not at all. It's art lovers like you, Jihun, who keep us fed."
I thought the call might end there.
"The painting will be at your house within ten minutes."
"Pardon?"
"Why trouble yourself coming all the way to the school again? We'll simply send it from our end. I called in professionals and had it packed properly, so you should receive it without a scratch."
He wasn't wrong. Right on cue, the doorbell rang. Ding-dong!
"It seems it's already here?"
"Aigoo, I'd better hang up. Jihun, please give my regards to your grandfather. You will, won't you?"
Give my regards to your grandfather. That was the line this man had gone all the way to a student's house to earn, closing the deal(?) along the way. Well. Whatever.
Setting the receiver down and reaching the front door took a full minute. An adult would have covered it in a moment, but an eleven-year-old's scurrying steps left me no choice. Perhaps that was why. By the time I reached the entrance, men in suits were already stepping into the house.
"Where shall we put it?"
They aimed the question straight at me, as if they already knew I was the painting's owner.
"This way, please."
Chairman Park had said he wanted to see the painting first. It's still before he leaves the office. I couldn't let outsiders into the study on my own say. Leaving it in front of the door would do.
"Please unwrap it here."
The words were hardly out of my mouth before they began stripping the packing away. The safeguards were meticulous to the point of excess. A moment later, one of them spoke.
"One oil painting and forty-eight drawings. Delivery complete. Would you care to inspect them?"
At the man's words I shook my head at once. While the packing came apart, they had already made me confirm everything again and again.
"May we be on our way, then?"
"Thank you. You really did work hard."
When I bent in a bow, the two men bowed along with me. I saw them off to the door, and on the way back I stole a glance at the clock. Half past six in the afternoon.
As recently as after school, buying Yoo Seonho's painting had consumed every bit of me. And how many hours has it been? Now I was completely fixated on Dürer's last drawing. What else could I do? The same way I got my hands on this one... Dürer's last drawing, too, and quickly—ahem!
At any rate, the painting had arrived, so before the day was out I would have a chance to speak with Chairman Park. Strike while the iron is hot, as they say. Maybe this is just as well. About thirty minutes until he left the office. What would be the right thing to say?
I set my back against the wall and sank quietly into thought.
Home from work, Chairman Park sat down to the meal before anything else. He took the head of the table, and with him at the center Park Jongin and Song Suhee faced each other. I sat beside Dad, and Park Yugeon beside Mom.
The table was quiet, as it always was. So long as Chairman Park did not speak first, no one else opened a mouth. Nor was that the whole of it. The chairman set great store by table manners, so every mouth stayed shut tight enough that not even the sound of chewing could be heard. It could not have been quieter.
The meal seemed about to end without a hitch. Then—
"Third."
At the word, Park Jongin set his spoon and chopsticks down before anything else and quickly rinsed his mouth with water.
"Yes, Father."
"Looking into a semiconductor company, are you?"
"Yes. There is a firm that holds the technology but is in severe financial trouble. I have been approaching them with care."
"How long have you had an interest in semiconductors?"
"Since my years studying abroad."
"Why? 'Cause those Japanese boys are raising hell over semiconductors?"
Park Jongin quietly straightened in his seat. He seemed to have judged that this would be an important conversation.
"In those years abroad, my only joy was working with electronic devices. When a new product appeared, I would use it, take it apart, and put it back together. That was my daily work."
"..."
"Then, from a certain point on, products using transistors instead of vacuum tubes began to multiply. Even audio equipment, slow to accept change, was switching over one piece at a time."
"And once you'd tried them, how were they?"
"Vacuum tubes, made entirely by hand, seemed better where the sound was concerned. They were, however, wholly unsuited to mass production. The transistor method, by contrast, was cheap, gave off little heat, and the sound changed sharply depending on which components one used."
"So the semiconductor way... the cost is low, mass production is possible, and the room to develop is limitless besides?"
"That is correct."
As was well known, Park Jongin was the reclusive manager. Rather than meeting crowds of people the way a politician would, he was the sort to shut himself in a back room and dig into a single field with everything he had. The story of how, for the audio business, he had used every product on the market for months at a time was famous.
Perhaps because he knew that temperament in his son, Chairman Park asked nothing further about the technical details.
"You mean to buy a company some other man built with blood and sweat, it's going to cost a heap. Where are you planning to get the money?"
"..."
"Why no answer? Don't tell me you meant to hold your hand out to the company."
Wait. What was wrong with company money going into semiconductors? I was someone who meant to hold my own hand out to Grandfather before long, and this conversation struck me more sharply than any I had heard.
"Semiconductors are good, sure. Who doesn't know they've got a future? The problem is, that thing's a hippo that eats money. Forget a year or two. Let ten years pass and there's still no clear way to get it back. How are you going to persuade the shareholders?"
"..."
"Don't tell me you meant to shove this old man out front and have me go begging to them."
"...No."
"You fought it out with brothers ten years your senior and took the vice chairman's seat. Ought to show a boldness to match, shouldn't you?"
"You are right."
"If you're certain you can make semiconductors succeed, then dig it out with your own money."
"..."
"Do that, and the credit that comes of it—you can keep the whole of it for yourself, can't you?"
"..."
"...!"
"You got that?"
"I—I will take it to heart."
The airless talk ended, and silence came back, and even then Chairman Park's last words would not leave my ear.
What is truly certain, you do not share with anyone else.
Dürer's last drawing... twenty billion won... I'll give you ten times your investment...
I had meant to make the request once, clean and bold. Damn it. After hearing a thing like that, what kind of investment pitch was I supposed to give? My plan had already split at the seams, and right then—
"Jihun. Went and bought a painting, did you?"
It was Chairman Park.
"Yes, Grandfather."
"All right. Finish eating and come to the study."
"...Yes."
"Let's see how fine a thing you picked."
"..."
A private audience with not a shred of hope in it(?).
The long meal was ending just like that.
In Park Yonghak's study, Chairman Park examined the work with the greatest care. Heavy steps carried him forward until he was close enough to inspect the finest details.
This was Park Yonghak, a man whose collection stood at the level of a national museum. His eye hardly needed saying. He had lived with fine paintings beyond counting; one look, and the answer would more or less come. This, besides, was only a university freshman's picture. Even so.
"Hmmm."
Park Yonghak took the piece in with nothing but caution. While the time passed, I sank into thoughts of my own.
Judging by what had been said at the table, help from Chairman Park would not come easily. Giving up, though, made no sense. That won't do. There had to be some way. If I first drew up a list of architects living in Boston and then sifted for the ones who kept paintings in their homes, the number of people I needed would drop sharply. Of course, the sifting itself all costs money...
If I pinched and pinched, couldn't I somehow scrape through on about fifty million won? I had roughly ten million won of my own. If I could only make up what I lacked! But where do I find that? My head was a knot of such thoughts when he turned toward me.
"What are you doing, standing there like that? Sit down. Your legs will hurt."
"Ah, I'm all right."
"Not bored, are you?"
"No. It's fun, being back here behind you."
A short breath of laughter escaped him, and he took off his magnifying glass. The viewing seemed more or less finished.
"You picked this painting yourself, did you?"
"Yes."
"What about it pleased you so?"
"It looked... a little different from the other paintings."
"...?"
"The others seemed to want to do just one thing well. Modest, you could say. But this one was different. The greed to do everything well. I was drawn to that ambition, so full it was spilling over."
"To your eyes, does this look like a work that succeeded?"
"No. It only looks crammed full of greed."
"Then why'd you bring a painting like that?"
"Ah. Well. That's..."
"Speak."
"The smell of money?"
It was the first moment Chairman Park had shown any interest in what I said.