Nothing Goes According to Plan
Who could have come out, that they were giving me treatment like this?
The first face that rose to mind was my father's—Vice Chairman Park Jongin.
Hm.
Did a waiting vice chairman mean they simply waived a few of the formalities? In any case, a male flight attendant took the lead, and I followed. He matched his pace to mine and walked slowly.
I had been certain we were heading for the exit. I was wrong. Where he brought me was the airport's VIP lounge. Some five bodyguards, the moment they saw me, offered small bows of the head. The attendant's part ended there. From then on a bodyguard guided me deeper inside, and knocked lightly upon a door shut fast.
Creeeak.
It opened from within.
"The young master has arrived."
A man who looked to be the chief secretary made the report in a low voice. The face that appeared next—
"Grandfather!"
It was Chairman Park Yonghak himself.
"What are you doing here?"
"What—someplace I'm not allowed to come?"
An ordinary little boy might have run straight into his arms. But the moment for that had already passed, and I wasn't shameless enough besides. True to my nature, I reached for a light joke.
"Korea just took another loss."
"What kind of talk is that?"
"The man who steers the whole economy came all the way out to the airport. That's a loss for the nation, isn't it?"
"Today's Sunday."
Well, now. I had made a similar joke before leaving for America. It had been a Sunday then, too. Ahem.
"You came out to meet me yourself because it's a holiday?"
"Meet you? Nonsense!"
"Then what?"
"I keep hearing the most outrageous things. You think I can just sit at home?"
"...?"
"What's your granddad's hobby?"
"Let's see."
"My own grandson doesn't know his granddad's hobby?"
Collecting antique art. I knew it perfectly well, and still I only rounded my eyes.
"You even sold your granddad a painting, and still..."
"Ah."
"Now it comes back to you, and you nod?"
"I haven't adjusted to the time difference. I think I'm still foggy."
At that, Chairman Park shot me a sidelong look. Cornered, so you're pretending to be sleepy—something of the sort.
"I'm sitting at home, and your name keeps reaching my ears. They say you got hold of a Dürer and sold it to some German fellow. So I told them myself. My grandson would never do a thing like that. A boy who knows plain as day that his granddad collects paintings—would he go and dispose of one without a word to me?"
His eyes said that if I had something to say, I was welcome to try.
"Did you come all this way just to scold me?"
"What?"
"And here I thought you'd come running in your socks because your grandson was home..."
"You weren't off suffering through years of study abroad. A boy back from a few days' trip—what's so precious about that, that I'd come out to meet him?"
Chairman! If you're going to lie, at least wipe the honey out of those eyes before you speak.
The Dürer is nothing but a pretext!
You needed an excuse to come all the way to the airport. That's all this is.
I knew exactly what he was thinking, and still I put on a child's sullen face.
"I didn't go on a trip."
"Then what?"
"I went on business, the same as you, Grandfather."
"The same as your granddad?"
"Yes. Earning foreign currency, there isn't a place you haven't been."
"Hah. Think you're about to catch it, so did your father tell you to start with flattery?"
"If I tell the truth, does that count as flattery?"
"Well. Had you learned it from your father, there's no way you'd talk this smooth."
He gave a short scoff.
"So. Did you bring back a heap of foreign currency?"
"A huge heap!"
"However much money matters... your granddad loves paintings. You ought to have shown me at least once, no? You could have sold it to me."
"It wasn't your taste."
"A boy who forgets even my hobby somehow remembers my taste?"
"Of course."
For a moment, curiosity stirred in Chairman Park's eyes. A look that said, go on, let's hear it.
"You pursue the completeness of a work, Grandfather. But this was nothing but a sketch. Even that had barely caught the frame of it. What it did have, being Dürer's last drawing, was a symbolism you could be sure of."
"Who told you I chase completeness over symbolism?"
"I guessed it, reading the signs. If a piece is good, you'll pay a fortune even for a college student's painting. Doesn't that mean you care more about aesthetic completeness than what an artist's name is worth?"
Chairman Park gave no answer, but I did not miss the assent folded into his silence.
"Besides, it wasn't a painting I could transfer to you. Moving a picture from my room into your study—no one would say a word about that..."
"...?"
"Moving the money in your account into my bankbook is rather more complicated."
"You mean the gift tax?"
I nodded.
"We'd write a proper contract and make it a transaction. What's there to worry about?"
"The facts can be twisted any way someone likes."
"Twisted?"
"If I were a reporter, I felt sure I could print as malicious a story as I pleased."
A painting deal with his own grandson, for the sake of an illegal gift.
Can you believe it, folks? They say this sketch is worth tens of billions of won.
And then they would hide the artist's name and show only the picture to people passing in the street. Forget tens of billions—someone would be sure to say it wasn't worth even a few tens of thousands of won.
"So you cleaned it up on your own end, to keep anyone from grabbing a handle later. That what you're saying?"
"When I entered the New Spring Literary Contest. The reporters called endlessly because of me. I understood it that day. Even if you don't mean to, it turns into trouble in the end. I've tried to be careful ever since."
The words were mine, and they sounded remarkably plausible. The truth was only that selling it in Germany paid better. I had dragged in one excuse after another, lest any talent for business start to show. Chairman Park, of course, did not look as if he believed every word of it.
If he'll believe even part of it, that's something.
But when does the world ever turn only as I wish? Chairman Park changed his expression and asked.
"So how much did you make?"
"Thirty billion won."
"The tax?"
"They said the German side would pay it."
The corner of his mouth climbed as high as it would go. Chairman Park spoke with a peculiar smile.
"How did you ever get it in your head to make that German pay the tax as well?"
"Professor Jo Sudeok helped with the tax."
"Jo Sudeok did?"
"Yes. He went into the negotiation in my place, and he was so skilled he even settled all of the tax."
I tried, lightly, to turn every bit of the credit over to Jo Sudeok.
"Is that so. Then did Professor Jo also tell you where the painting was?"
Chairman Park went straight for the heart of it.
"I'm asking whether it was Jo Sudeok who told you Dürer's last drawing was in Boston."
"..."
"Why so quiet?"
"I was the one who conceived this project. Without Professor Jo Sudeok's help it would have been impossible, but the idea was mine. That's the truth."
"Then how did you know Dürer's last drawing was in Boston?"
I swallowed. I had known this question was coming, and I had turned the answer over more than once.
The man across from me is a giant who has weathered every storm there is.
He was not someone I could fool with a handful of words. Nor could I smooth it over by calling it a trade secret, so I opened my mouth as carefully as I could.
"I thought of this project when I went to Insadong."
"You mean the day you followed your mother to Insadong?"
"Yes. Mom said she had to clock in at Insadong every single day. Only then could she see the new pieces coming in."
His face asked what any of that had to do with going to America.
"So I asked her. Why do people bring things to Insadong?"
Song Suhee had explained it by way of the difference between America and Korea. In America, when someone dies, they open a flea market to dispose of what is left behind. Korea has no such custom. So when an heirloom turns up that is awkward to deal with, people look to Insadong first. I explained that much, then went on.
"Hearing it made me greedy. Korea can have an heirloom's worth appraised through Insadong... but in America, things must often pass into a stranger's hands with no one even knowing what they're worth."
"So you flew to America to hunt for treasure?"
"Yes."
Up to there, it held together. It did not explain why Boston. Naturally, Chairman Park asked about that.
"So. Of all the places there are, why pick Boston and fly straight there?"
"I had the most conservative region in mind."
"Conservative?"
"Collecting antique art means honoring the culture of the past, and longing for it. So where old art was concerned, I judged the conservative East would be better. And I singled out Boston, among the East, because of the Ivy League."
"You mean you chose a place that has turned out elites for generations."
"That's right."
"You played the numbers."
"Yes. I only chose, among the options I had, the place that looked to have the highest odds."
I knew it could not be a perfect answer. But I had built a logical ground, piece by piece.
And it was a plain fact that I had had a conversation like that with Song Suhee.
I judged it could not be dismissed as a complete lie. All that remained was to wait for Chairman Park's reaction.
But.
"..."
Contrary to what I had expected, Chairman Park said nothing in particular. Instead he simply gazed at me, still, with eyes of bottomless depth. All we had done was meet each other's eyes. I swallowed. My throat bobbed, hard.
It was not even a suspicious glare. Those eyes, deep as a well, had only watched me for a few seconds. In that instant a fine prickle of gooseflesh rose across the back of my hand, and then the hair all over my body began to stand, each strand racing the next. It felt as if the air around me had plunged several degrees. Even so, I could not look away. Even if Chairman Park's eyes became an X-ray and saw clean through every joint of bone in me, I had to keep a blank face and wait for him to speak.
How much time passed that way?
"Have you said everything that's in you?"
Chairman Park asked, his face calm.
"I'm asking if there's anything you left out. Anything you couldn't say."
What did he want to know? Or did he already know, and was he only sounding me out? Unfortunately, those eyes alone gave me nothing I could read. If anything, I nearly fell into the illusion that they had looked straight through to my previous life.
Right then.
"Jihun."
As if he missed a cigarette he had quit long ago, Chairman Park flicked two fingers, then went on.
"Your granddad's lived a whole life. Do you know what I've come to feel, down in my bones?"
"...What?"