The Tiger's Test
Like one of the old guardian posts at a village gate—those grim carved totems meant to frighten off whatever came walking in—Chairman Park glared at the painting, terrible light in his eyes.
If the man in that portrait were alive, and had to meet those eyes himself, what would he feel? Stripped to the skin, every last thing about him taken in and understood?
The thought struck, and the hair on the back of my hand stood up stiff. A moment ago, that had been exactly my own state. I had gone so far as to chill myself with the fancy that those eyes had looked clean through me, all the way into my previous life.
Does that even make sense?
My head said no. And yet, so long as I endured a giant's gaze, possibilities beyond common sense kept lining up one after another.
While I turned all of it over, Chairman Park's eyes stayed fixed on the work alone. The silence held so long that Jo Sudeok took the hint and sent his students out.
A short while later, once he had made sure that only three of us remained in the studio—myself, Jo Sudeok, and the chairman—he came over and caught my eye.
Boss. What is this?
I don't know either.
Through that brief exchange, Chairman Park went on looking at nothing but the painting.
How long passed like that? At last he turned his head slowly toward me, he who had seemed ready to be drawn bodily into the canvas. The man had a real eye for art. What would he make of it? I was listening, quiet, when he said something I had never once expected.
"Jihun. You step outside a minute."
With the painting between them, Jo Sudeok and Chairman Park faced one another across an unusually long table. A fair stretch of wood lay between the two men, and still Jo swallowed—carefully, a dry click in the throat. Would even that sound cross the chairman's mood? He knew the worry was foolish. He knew, and every small motion had his nerves drawn tight all the same. Proof enough of how badly he was wound.
Park Yonghak, by contrast, watched him with the most ordinary of looks. They say a gaze is power itself. The moment their eyes met, Jo let his fall, as if the toes of his shoes had suddenly become fascinating.
Ah. He's been standing all this time. Should I offer him a chair?
He was still turning it over when the chairman spoke first.
"Fine suit."
"Ah, this? The young master gave it to me. His eye is exceptional, so..."
"Heard a lot about you through my grandson."
"Please, Chairman. Speak easy with me."
When Chairman Park put on formal manners, the people around him only grew more uncomfortable. Used to that reaction, perhaps, he slowly changed his tone.
"Meant to ask you this, the day I got you in front of me."
"Please."
"Heard you were helping a boy of eleven, and I'll be straight. Suspicion came first."
"I'd have thought the same..."
"Angling for a line into Hyeon-gang. Or else a hunger for politics."
Jo had no answer for that.
"Watched you quiet, though. More of a serious streak in you than I figured."
Jo ducked his head at once, thanks in the bow.
"Don't mean every doubt of mine is settled."
"...Sir?"
"A man like you, weathered every storm there is, trailing after a boy of eleven. Why?"
A question he had not seen coming. He could not easily open his mouth. But what choice was there? Poor answer or not, an answer had to be given.
"As you said, Chairman, I wanted a line into Hyeon-gang. At the start, that was certainly true. No—I feel something like it even now. I asked that when the museum opens, my pictures be the first ones hung."
Chairman Park waited calmly for what came next, and that calm let Jo go on.
"But little by little, my heart changed. Meeting the young master, a strange thought came over me. I think that's when I fell for him..."
"A strange thought?"
"Ah. I should have explained. It's so personal I worry you won't feel it with me. Hmm. A rival, you might say. There was someone I looked up to for a very long time."
"Painter Kim Hwanki, you mean?"
Jo was thrown, though he never let it show.
"Yes. That's right. My life's aim. After Master Kim Hwanki turned his back on the world, I lived like a buoy adrift on the open sea. The wages of having used art as a tool of competition. And then I met the young master."
As if he sensed the true story beginning, Park Yonghak's back went ramrod straight.
"His brilliance needs no praise from me, but the particular thing I felt was a little different. In the young master's eyes I saw a universe. Twice in my life I have known that."
The first, of course, would have been the moment he stood before Master Kim Hwanki.
"Perhaps that's why. A thoroughly absurd idea came over me."
"Absurd?"
"Yes. If I say this, you'll think I've lost my mind. Haaah. I suddenly wondered whether Master Kim Hwanki hadn't come back to stand before me in the young master's shape."
The chairman said nothing.
"I know. A vague hunch, without a single ground to stand on. But once that supposition rose in me, I was drawn to the young master at a terrible speed. Past any hope of stopping myself."
Jo stole a careful look at the chairman's face. Imagination though it was, he had just hung a wild tale on another house's precious grandson. Fortunately, Chairman Park showed no particular reaction.
"Looking back on it now... I think what once bewitched me in Master Kim was the very thing I felt in the young master. The shiver of the moment you stand before a vast talent. That may be the precise way to put it."
There his answer ended. He had unraveled those skein-tangled feelings well enough, hadn't he? He had just awarded himself that private mark when the chairman spoke.
"Don't sound like a lie."
"Thank y—"
"Still a part I don't follow."
"Sir?"
"Thinking of Painter Kim and taking a personal liking—that can happen. It's your freedom. I won't make a case of it."
Jo's look asked the rest, and the edged voice went on.
"The man you answer to keeps pulling off things that extraordinary, and not once but again and again. Ought to sit down serious and ask where that ability comes from. No?"
"Feels like Painter Kim walked back into the world, so an eleven-year-old turns up a canvas worth tens of millions and you just let it pass? He jabs a finger at the choicest land there is and says he'll buy it, and the first thing you do is nod?"
"Th-that's because he inherited your blood, Chairman..."
"Why? My blood in him, and living easy is just how the world ought to work?"
The words came down like a hammer. Jo's mind seemed to bleach white. Even so, this was a moment to wrench his mouth open.
"The young master is... remarkable past anything I can say. When he got his hands on the Dürer, I was badly shocked myself. Truly. B-but."
The chairman waited.
"I never set out to learn where that gift comes from. For the same reason I wouldn't ask, were I serving you, where your own insight comes from."
"I'm past seventy. The boy's eleven."
"With respect—if the young master were seventy, that ability still wouldn't dim. A talent that only stands out when you stop to remember the age... that's nothing more than having studied ahead."
In the arts, the phrase child prodigy passes easily enough. People usually fasten on the child. The real stress belongs on prodigy.
"Truly outstanding talent makes you forget age. Picasso was like that. From the moment he was born until the day he closed his eyes, there was never a time he wasn't a genius. For a man like that, age doesn't matter. You're too busy looking at the talent."
"Comparing Jihun to Picasso?"
"I only wanted to stress that age, as a yardstick, is secondary."
"A fanatic, if I ever saw one."
At the chairman's words, Jo quietly lowered his head.
"Say you're right. Grant the boy a startling gift."
Jo waited.
"Qualified clear through to lead Hyeon-gang, and he keeps wriggling out of it. What do you figure on doing?"
"Sir?"
"Picasso won't pick up a brush. Just keeps running. What then, I'm asking."
"That's..."
"Plain as day he'll grow into the greatest painter in the world, and you'll leave him to live however he pleases?"
Was this what it felt like, a tiger growling in your face? Jo drove his half-bowed head deeper still.
"M-my opinion doesn't matter. Judgment and decision belong entirely to the young master. So until he speaks, I won't think, and I won't move..."
"And if I tell you to?"
Jo went rigid.
"Boy needs using proper, so sit him at a desk. I order it. Then what?"
No answer came.
"A brush in those small hands, tender as new shoots. Good for Picasso too, isn't it?"
They say you can walk into a tiger's den and live, so long as you keep your wits. Had whoever said it actually gone in? Jo fought to lock his trembling legs.
"Th-the young master's future is his alone. Even if what you say is the right direction, Chairman... it would be difficult for me to step in..."
"Won't listen to me, and a heavy loss comes of it. Even then?"
"A loss?"
"Get on my bad side and still expect to live in one piece? That's wanting too much."
"Ah—I hadn't thought that far... Hmm. If you'd rather I not stay in one piece... if you could tell me how far I have to crumble before you're satisfied... just a reasonable line, and I'll make preparations..."
"I'm Jihun's grandfather. You think I'm going to eat the boy?"
"How could you. I—no, never. You'll raise him dear. Of course you will. Only..."
The chairman's look asked the rest.
"That precious intention—if it were carried properly to the young master, and he were urged in the open... wouldn't that be better? In my poor opinion, that's the feeling I..."
"Think the rascal will listen?"
"It won't be easy, of course. But whispering behind his back and laying plans... for the young master, still growing, that could be a wound..."
"And you said age don't matter, set against talent."
"Ah, yes, yes. Let me correct myself. A private talk of this kind would wound anyone, not only someone still growing. Adults included, you might say..."
Had he imagined it? A subtle change began to stir in Chairman Park's eyes, keen as a walk along a knife's edge—a brutal winter ending, and new shoots coming up one by one.
What was this? Had the anger... eased?
The question he had pressed down rose late. No. Why would Chairman Park Yonghak, of all men—
What could he possibly lack, that he'd hold me here and keep up a catechism like this?
Only one answer suggested itself.
Don't tell me he's testing me.
Whether he was timber fit to attend a beloved grandson—had the chairman himself stepped in to try him? Yes. There was no other reason for this.
As if to prove the thought, there came a soft snap, like a folded fan flung wide, and Chairman Park broke into a great smile. Every trace of the hostile look was gone. As if he had become another man, he patted Jo Sudeok on the shoulder.
The shock must have been too great. Like a man under a spell, Jo Sudeok only nodded.