A Southern Prisoner's Life (2)
Bam! Bam! Bam!
The sound of pickaxes striking rock echoed through the cavern — and ironically, electric bulbs glowed overhead. The steam engine that pumped water out of the mine was already there anyway, so a generator had been installed as a bonus, with power lines strung throughout. Before that, they had worked by lamplight and torchlight, and it had been miserable.
"Agh, it stings…"
"Did it split open again? Wrap some cloth around it. Once the calluses form, it'll hurt a lot less."
Until quite recently, Do Ban-an's hands had ordered people around while draped in silk in the warm southern reaches of Vietnam. Now they were a mess of blood and blisters.
"I thought I'd gotten the hang of it, but it's still hard…"
"Tricks like this aren't learned with the head — they're learned with the body. So suffer a little longer…"
Kim Il-sung had done his best to coach him from beside, but this wasn't something you could simply know. Do Ban-an was fated to suffer a while yet.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
"Well, thank goodness the pickaxe is sturdy."
"Otherwise you'd have starved to death long ago?"
Even when it struck the rock awkwardly, the pick never snapped. That much was a mercy.
"Everything they give us here turns out to be good stuff, doesn't it?"
"Hmm? Isn't it? The food's always fresh, too."
"You know there are people out there who eat rotten food, right?"
"What?"
Do Ban-an himself was hardly in that position, of course — but the poorest of the poor would eat just about anything if it kept them alive.
"Is it really that hard to survive out there?"
"The nobles live far too well…"
Saying it aloud, Do Ban-an felt a twinge of conscience. Come to think of it, hadn't the people starved exactly as much as he had taken from them?
"They said you were rich too, Lord An. You lived like that by taking what belonged to the people?"
"Ha… I suppose… I suppose I did live rather wrongly…"
Embarrassed, Do Ban-an's head drooped.
"Oh, come now. I never saw you that way — don't be so hard on yourself. But don't live like that anymore, all right?"
"Right."
He resolved to live honestly from now on — though that left the small matter of why he was sitting in a prison of a place like this.
"Still, this Daehan of yours really is something, isn't it?"
"What do you mean?"
"That steam engine, was it? That great big machine outside."
"Oh, without that thing, nothing gets done."
Someone had to feed it coal or wood at regular intervals, but it lit the tunnels, pumped out the water — and, most importantly, hauled the ore carts when they were loaded down and heavy with minerals.
"Somehow, I keep thinking this is actually a rather livable place."
"You think? I've never lived out there, so I wouldn't know."
Once you wiped away the memory of his life as a noble, it really was a livable place. The money was decent if you worked hard, and if you truly wanted, you could buy silk or jewels. The only thing you couldn't have was weapons.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
"Oh! Copper!"
"Oh, excellent! Kim, you old dog, well done!"
There was one rule at the mine: miners formed teams of a certain size and dug tunnels in separate locations. Never enter another team's tunnel — that was the first rule. The second was to keep the dirt and rubble from your digging cleared away neatly. This particular digging site belonged to just the two of them.
"Hahaha! A whole week of digging for nothing, and we finally found it!"
"Let's make some money!"
They had driven this new tunnel deeper in hopes of a bigger payday. For a week and more, the two of them had dug and dug, praying for a vein to appear, and time and again they had come up empty-handed. But now that they'd struck a copper vein, all they had to do was follow it deeper and the money would pour in.
"Dig fast and load it up!"
"Lord An! Don't forget what I told you — you have to buy winter clothes!"
"I know, I know!"
Do Ban-an answered offhandedly. Kim Il-sung noticed how casually he brushed it off and sighed to himself.
'He might go and lose a friend this winter. And doesn't he have a wife and three children back home…?'
The two of them piled ore into the cart in a frenzy. Time to head back to the village.
"It'd be so nice if they had one of those little trains here…"
"I suggested that too, but they said if it broke down there'd be no one to maintain it, so no."
"Hah…"
Where the people of Daehan mined, small mining trains ran the rails — but that didn't apply to men like them. After all, what these two dug was done partly to keep them confined, partly to put criminals to work. With neither yield nor efficiency factored in, no one intended to bother maintaining trains just to make prisoners dig.
"Let's just push it for now."
"Hnnnnngh!"
Loaded to the brim, the ore cart was far from light.
"Let's lever it along with the pickaxes!"
Using the principle of the lever against the wooden sleepers of the track, the two men strained and inched the cart forward. When they reached one of the mine's main galleries, they tied a rope that lay on the ground to the cart. From there, the rope would be hitched to the engine outside, and the machine's power would haul the cart up the slope.
"Kim, I'm in your hands."
"Right. Lord An, if anything goes wrong, you pull that brake hard, you hear?"
"Of course!"
The mine made its ropes by twisting cotton fibers together — but rope cost money, and the men were too stingy to replace it, so you never knew when one might snap. The one securing their cart now had broken any number of times and was knotted together in pieces.
"Oof. It won't snap on our turn, will it?"
"Hey now! Have you never heard that words become seeds?"
"Ah — sorry, sorry."
If the rope snapped, the runaway cart could barrel down into the depths below. As long as it didn't flatten somebody, that would be luck.
Just in case, one man rode on the cart itself, ready to yank the brake. And that role fell to Do Ban-an, who was still clumsy with the machinery.
"Here we go!"
Kim Il-sung came up outside first.
"Oh! No one's using it?"
The engine was shared between teams, so if someone was using it, you had to wait a while. When the loads were light, teams would wait their turns and hitch several carts together in a chain — but right now nobody else was around, so they could just use it. Honestly, that was better anyway. The more carts you hitched, the more often the rope snapped.
Chugga-chugga, rrrrr…
"Oh! Here it comes."
Kim Il-sung was winding the rope around a rotating drum on the machine to draw it in. Using the machine's full power directly could snap the rope before anyone knew it, so he was harnessing its strength only indirectly.
Creak… creeeak…
The cart, which had been climbing steadily, seemed to have entered a steep section — an ominous sound rose from the rope.
"Whew. Every time I hear that, my blood runs cold."
Being made of cotton, the rope groaned like that often. It scared Kim Il-sung too, truth be told, and he slowed his winding a little.
Even so, the cart climbed out without much trouble.
"Kim! Can you hear me?"
"Yeah! Lord An!"
Do Ban-an's shout from inside carried clearly to the surface — they must be close now.
Creak… creeeak…
Then came a sound that was anything but normal.
"Huh?"
Twang!
They were almost out — and the rope had snapped.
"No!"
The severed end was being sucked back down into the mine at terrifying speed.
Squeeeak, squeeeak, squeeeak.
"Haha. Sounds like you dug a lot today."
Do Ban-an was climbing the slope right beside the cart, giving it a gentle push now and then. He'd been taught to relieve the machine's pull by even a little, so accidents would be less likely. Besides, staying this close meant that if the rope snapped, he could grab hold in an instant and pull the brake.
Squeeeak… groaaan…
"Ugh. The hills are always the scary part."
Heart in his throat, Do Ban-an clung tight to the cart. He'd made this climb pushing carts many times before, but today, somehow, his gut felt off.
After pushing a long while, he judged they'd come far enough and called out to Kim Il-sung.
"Kim! Can you hear me?"
"Yeah!"
With an answer coming back from up top, his nerves eased considerably. They must be nearly out.
Perhaps that slight lapse made him ease off his pushing — and that was the moment.
Creeeak — SNAP!
"Gah!"
The rope parted with a sound like something bursting, whipping away.
For a split second the cart hung frozen — then it lurched, ready to roll backward down the slope.
"No!"
Slam!
In that fleeting instant, Do Ban-an vaulted onto the cart. To reach the brake without losing a breath.
Rrrrrrumble…
As he scrambled up and turned toward the brake, the cart gathered speed on the downward grade, faster and faster.
"AaaAAAGH!"
ScreeeeEEECH!
The cart hurtled down with a shriek of metal on metal that raised the hair on his neck — but the speed refused to drop.
"Stop! Stop, you blasted thing! Nnnngh!"
It wasn't yet dangerously fast, but Do Ban-an clenched his teeth and hauled on the brake. If they kept rolling down like this and his strength gave out, it would be catastrophic.
Thump.
"STOP!"
Screeeech… ssssssss…
He threw himself under the cart entirely, dangling from the brake with his whole weight and scraping his feet against the ground besides.
"AAAAAGH!"
Did it work? The cart slowed, little by little — and at last, it stopped.
All that remained was Do Ban-an, strength completely drained, hanging off the side of the cart, and his shoes, shredded to rags. The brake lever itself glowed a furious red. It had very nearly been a disaster.
"Lord An! You alive in there!?"
"Hey! I said, are you alive!?"
"Ohhh, thank goodness!"
"That was too close! Look at this."
"Wow…"
Kim Il-sung checked Do Ban-an over and nearly jumped. He must have been wound tighter than a drum, because he'd sweated through a bucketful in those few seconds — his shoes were reduced to rags, and the brake lever was still smoking hot.
"Next time let's load a little less…"
"Yeah. That was way too close."
The two men's overexcitement on their first big strike had been a problem too. The cart they'd hauled out was plenty big for a two-man team — and they'd filled it to the brim. In wages alone, they'd done the work of four to six miners.
"Let's rest a bit…"
"Yeah… my legs are shaking."
After that brief rest, they reattached the rope and hauled the cart out into the open air.
"I'm going to sleep like the dead tonight."
"Me too…"
The sun still hung high in the sky, but apparently the rope scare had wrung them out far more than the labor had.
"Let's take it slow going down."
"Yeah. From what I saw earlier, I figure we should roll a ways, brake to a stop, let it cool, then go again."
"Right. We'll pour a little water on it as we go."
The road from the mine down to the village wasn't steep, but it was all downhill. There were long flat stretches where they could simply ride it, but after the day they'd had, the two men were feeling oddly timid, and began the descent with the utmost care.
Clatter-clatter, clatter-clatter.
"Riding it down is so much easier…"
"It is… but trains must be expensive, huh?"
"They'd have to be bringing in ore worth more than the train's price, or it wouldn't make sense to lay them, I'd think."
Who knew what metal could command such prices — but still, the two men dreamed of the day rails would be laid here too, and the mine could be worked in earnest.
The two reached the village without incident and headed straight for the weighing station.
"Whoa? You two hauled all that by yourselves?"
"Isn't that copper?"
"Impressive!"
This was a coal mining village, so even a sideways glance told people what mineral they were looking at. These two were a jackpot that had struck lucky today — and if they'd truly found a vein, they'd be hauling loads like this for a while yet. The villagers could only look on with envy.
At the weighing station, the men had no notion of the mechanics, but the ore was measured by weight and volume according to type, and a price was set accordingly.
"Hello there."
"Afternoon. Good work out there. Set it down over there and wait a moment, please."
"Sure."
The two men sat on a long bench and waited.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Before them stood what you might call a crusher — a machine that broke ore apart. You brought your ore, fed it in, it got crushed, and they identified the mineral and set the price.
"Oh? Pretty nice haul. Seven pun of copper, no less."
"Is that good?"
"Yes, it's above average. I'll mark you down for eight won."
"WHAT!?"
The two men nearly fell off their bench. Miners typically earned sixty to a hundred won a month — and they'd just made eight won in one go. Even split in two, that was a full four won apiece.
"Hallelujah!"
"Woo-hoo!"
Paid at last for a week of thankless digging, the two of them whooped and hollered to their hearts' content.