A Meeting with Father (2)
Kim Chirok set down the backpack he had carried up the mountain.
"What's this?" his father asked.
"Five kilos of rice, some canned food, and a whole roast chicken. The rice was heavy, so I only brought a small bag."
"That's kind of you."
"How do you even get rice all the way up here?"
"I've got that, haven't I? The A-frame carrier."
"You haul that thing all the way to Wasu-ri?"
"No. There's a grain shop along the way. With that on my back, I can bring up a whole sack of rice without breaking a sweat."
His father laughed as he said it. The gaps in his teeth were still there, unrepaired.
"You've got a generator here, don't you?"
"I do, but I hardly ever run it. I'm a man who rises with the sun and lies down when it sets."
"I've got a job now, so it's time you came down from the mountain."
"You got a job? Haha. That's wonderful news. So what kind of company is it?"
"I work in the Strategic Planning Office at H Group."
"H Group, you said?"
His father's eyes went wide.
"The pay is decent, too. So come to Seoul. I've rented a villa in Bongcheon-dong—one with a proper living room."
"If I went, I'd only be a burden."
"I'm the one earning money now."
"And what would I even do in Seoul? Sit in a corner of the room all day and shuffle off to the park now and then? I'll stay here a while yet."
"Stop playing the pauper and wrap up this mountain life already."
"That chicken you brought smells good. Come inside and let's eat."
Kim Chirok stepped into the dim little hut. A verse was stuck to the wall.
The green mountains look upon me and say: live in silence.
The open sky looks upon me and say: live without stain.
Lay down your anger. Lay down your greed.
Live as water lives, as the wind lives—and then be gone.
Kim Chirok's face tightened as he read it.
No wonder he can't get by, hanging up stuff like that. Aigoo. There really is no talking to my father. If he'd just live a little more ambitiously, a little more actively—how much better would that be?
His father brought out a half-finished bottle of soju. Even in a hut like this, there was soju.
"It's a mercy you're not starving up here."
"I moved my registered address over to Kimhwa, so the basic pension comes in—three hundred thousand won. I sell the mushrooms and wild greens I forage, and I've planted a patch of aralia shoots on the government land just out front."
"So you won't go hungry, at least."
"And a beekeeper down in Geunnam-myeon said he'd give me a split hive, so I thought I might try keeping bees."
His father smiled as he said it. He seemed a man who had never learned a single trick of cunning in his life, living with a kind of stubborn, unguarded innocence.
"How much could you possibly make keeping bees? Come down from the mountain."
Bees could pay, if you scaled them up. But with his father's health as it was, there was no chance of running anything large.
His father picked up a drumstick.
"I don't want to go just yet. Oh—how's your mother's health? She can't work anymore, I suppose?"
"Mother's home all the time now, too, with her arthritis."
"Aigoo. I've got a lot to answer for."
He tipped back the soju in one swallow.
"Father. You have your ID card, don't you?"
"My ID? I do. This area's close to the front, so of course I keep identification."
"Then let's finish the chicken and go down to Wasu-ri together. I'll buy you a phone."
"A phone? I'm not a man who carries around the so-called conveniences of civilization—no cell phone, no credit card, no driver's license. Those things only chain a person down."
"Who doesn't have a phone these days? If you get a budget phone, the monthly fee is barely anything."
"I still don't want one."
"You and Mother aren't young anymore, and neither of you is in good health. If something happened suddenly, you wouldn't even be able to call. And if I were away on a business trip, I couldn't get out here to Wasu-ri in time."
"Well, that's true, but—"
"I'm not saying you should use it to call people for no reason. You live in a place like this. You need it for safety, if nothing else."
"Hmm."
"And phones these days can even track your location. If you took a fall out here in the mountains, you could still call 119. How is that not a good thing?"
That last argument seemed to sway him, if only a little.
"Phones are expensive, though."
"A budget phone isn't expensive. I keep telling you."
"Let me think about it."
"Never mind thinking. Let's go right now."
"Let's eat the chicken first and think it over."
His father looked genuinely torn. It really would be a problem if something happened and they couldn't reach each other. When you were younger, you could shrug that sort of thing off and live as you pleased. But age had a way of changing a man's mind, and he seemed, at last, to be considering a phone.
Father and son ate the roast chicken with gusto. The puppy that had been waiting outside poked its head into the hut and whimpered, as if to ask why they were keeping all the chicken to themselves. Kim Chirok tossed it a bone.
His father stopped him in a hurry.
"Don't give a dog chicken bones! They catch in the throat! You never give a dog chicken bones!"
"Is that so?"
So Kim Chirok tore off a piece of breast meat instead and tossed that.
Once the chicken was gone, his father flopped onto his back in the hut and lay there staring at the ceiling, clearly turning something over in his mind.
"Let's go. To Wasu-ri—or rather, Wasu-vegas. I spotted a phone shop on the way here."
"Well..."
"Hurry up and get your ID. Let's go while the thought's still with you."
He took his father by the arm and pulled. His father got up, however reluctantly.
That day, Kim Chirok took his father down to Wasu-ri and bought him a budget phone. His father was a devotee of the Three Without—no phone, no credit card, no driver's license—but once the device was in his hands, he kept turning it over, as if it were some curious new object.
Kim Chirok entered his own number and his mother's.
"I've put my number in. Try calling me."
His father placed the call. Kim Chirok's phone rang, and his father's mouth fell open.
"Try Mother, too."
His father hesitated, looking embarrassed. Kim Chirok figured it was because he was standing right there. It would be nicer, he thought, for the two of them to talk alone.
"Then call Mother after I've gone. I'm sure the two of you have things to say to each other."
He installed a few apps and walked his father through how to use them—how to get on the internet, how to send a text, how to use KakaoTalk.
"The internet might not work well up in the mountains. But if you search, you can even find good poems. Give it a try."
His father was clumsy with the keypad, so Kim Chirok offered to type for him.
"Is there a poem you like? I'll search it."
"Hmm... All right. Try searching 'positive rice.'"
Rice is rice. What on earth is 'positive rice'?
He typed it in. A poem came up—one by the well-known Korean poet H.
Thirty thousand won for a single poem
seems a paltry sum, I'll admit—
but then I think, that's two mal of rice,
and at once my heart becomes a bowl of warm rice...
Kim Chirok let out a short laugh. It was exactly the kind of poem his father would love. Whoever had written it, he figured, was probably as poor as his father.
His father smiled as he read Poet H's verses, then muttered under his breath.
"Heh. Looks like I did all right with this one son, at least."
Kim Chirok pressed two hundred thousand won into his father's hand and said he had to go. Once his paycheck came in he would have to start a savings plan, so he couldn't spare much more than that. His father kept refusing, insisting he wouldn't take it. Kim Chirok stuffed the bills into his father's trouser pocket anyway.
His father went into the Hanaro Mart at the Kimhwa Nonghyup and came back out with a bottle of wildflower honey.
"Give this to your mother."
It occurred to Kim Chirok that however badly circumstances had forced his parents apart, they still seemed, at heart, a loving couple.
He went straight back to Seoul from Wasu-ri that same day. The hut was too cramped for a guest, and his father didn't ask him to stay the night.
His mother met him with a flushed, bright look on her face.
"I got a call from your father. You did well."
The two of them had clearly spoken. Her whole expression looked lighter. Kim Chirok quietly held out the wildflower honey his father had bought.
Monday arrived. That evening, once the day's work at the office was done, Kim Chirok went to the Japanese language academy in Yeoksam-dong.
The grammar textbook was nearly finished. They would wrap it up tomorrow, by the look of things. Once grammar was done, he had been weighing whether to move into the advanced free-talking conversation class or the JLPT prep course.
Just then, a middle-aged man sitting at the back of the room called out in a booming voice.
"When we finish grammar tomorrow, let's have a Chaekgeori!"
At that, the instructor looked straight at Kim Chirok, her expression plainly asking for his agreement. There were about ten students in the class, so he couldn't quite figure why she was looking to him. The young woman seemed, for whatever reason, unusually conscious of him.
"Yes. I'd like that too," he said.
The instructor broke into a wide smile.
"Then tomorrow we'll have just one hour of class, and after that we'll go to dinner."
Everyone cheered and clapped. The lessons themselves had been dull enough, but the mention of dinner brought a cheer from every corner of the room.
The next day arrived—the day they would finish the Japanese grammar book.
Kim Chirok had been studying Japanese since his days at H Chemical, and by now he had reached a considerable level. Among the students were middle-aged men and women who couldn't quite keep up with the lectures, and even the younger ones—college students, by the look of them—struggled. Here, too, the one who stood out was Kim Chirok.
The young instructor had taken an interest in him. He worked at a good company, which surely meant he had graduated from a good school. He was tall, too, and handsome enough—reasons enough, it seemed, for her attention to linger.
They decided to hold the Chaekgeori at a restaurant near the academy. The middle-aged student took the lead, collecting twenty thousand won from each of them. A few people had skipped class that day, and others already had plans, so only seven of them made it to the restaurant—eight, counting the instructor.
The middle-aged student ordered with a flourish: spicy stir-fried pork and beer. Then he turned to Kim Chirok.
"You work at H Group, do you? I saw the badge. That's H Group, all right. I used to work at a company that supplied H Electric, before I retired."
"Is that so?"
"What did you study in school?"
"Business administration."
"If you don't mind my asking—which university?"
"Seoul National University."
At that, the Japanese instructor sitting beside him brightened, her eyes shining.