This attempt at a short story was composed for a competition from actual events experienced variously by the author, his wife and her late mother, including the lethal flooding of Central Seoul in the summer of 2022. Also portrayed are some circumstances related to the death of Chang Chun-Ha, the pro-democracy activist whose body was found near Pocheon in 1975.
‘This late in the summer,’ says my neighbour. ‘In July we had almost none. But now. So much of it.’
I shake my head. ‘The corn…’
‘I’ve given up hope.’ She looks out at furiously, endlessly falling rain. ‘And the rice yield… bad enough last year. We’re expecting worse this time.’
‘Well,’ I say, ‘not that it really helps, I realise, but I shan’t be wanting rent for the fields. No, no,’ as she demurs, ‘I couldn’t have managed on my own. Impossible. And I’m so glad not to have to worry about the place…’ The drumming on the pane intensifies; we hear thunder. Nothing can be seen of those fields, the town, the mountains. ‘Obviously something’s awry. With the monsoon. My daughter…’ at this I recall the grinning child on her father’s shoulders, under a great sun hat, before the bright road into Cheorwon. Back then it lay further from the farm and quietly meandered, lined with poplar trees. ‘My daughter was at a demonstration, this week, down in Seoul. She gets worked up, at the government. Yes, we know they’re a bunch of gangsters. But you see now it’s – which is it – Kepco’s new project in Vietnam, but like all those big firms, still using coal. Hence the sea is too warm and we get all this. She explains it to me, I didn’t know. Well, be that as it may and all power to her, and her friends, but… I hope she doesn’t cause trouble for herself. And then, when you try to explain to them what it was like for us… in those years…’
‘Just having to survive. No, that’s right. But how could they understand, to be fair?’ There’s just enough daylight in the room to see her leaning towards me. ‘Anyway surely you needn’t worry about Bo-Geum. Can’t imagine her doing anything daft.’
The kettle is empty. ‘I was just trying to remember. When was it that they widened the road?’ Rising, switching things on, I nod towards the front door. ‘Was it Roh Tae-Woo or Kim Yeong-Sam? I mean, when they straightened it and pulled up the trees and turned it into this awful highway for the tanks and what have you.’
‘Oh. Kim Yeong-Sam.’ She frowns. ‘I think. Or was it? I was practically a child myself. Yes, that was a shame. Now we hear them racing up and down morning, noon and night… the kids that is, never mind the army.’ Pausing, listening. ‘But it doesn’t seem all that bad from here. Does it keep you awake?’
‘No, not as a rule. I just notice it when I’m in the yard…’
‘I do hope not. You must make sure you sleep. So important. And the place is spotless, if I may say so. Really no need to do any more. We’ll take care of it.’
‘Well, that pantry… I was just going to see to it before I go to bed…’
‘Really, what’s wrong with it? You should see ours, good God. Now… what’s funny?’
‘Nothing… only, cleaning the pantry takes me back to that trip to Cambodia with Bo-Geum and her family. I was all excited. The first time we’d been anywhere. I cleaned it just before we left… now I always enjoy it, you see…’ She’s half-listening. Dogs are barking; her husband’s car turns into the yard. ‘Four shelves, three walls, the floor. Eighty-four tiles. I work my way round and it feels like that day all over again. All those memories, inch by inch. And each time you know, they aren’t quite the same…’
Now with a familiar stab comes another memory: of the same child, but solitary and under threat; and of a tall pine on a remote mountain path.
‘Look, are you in pain? Please do sit down…’
‘Not at all. Nothing at all.’
I might wince involuntarily, I don’t know how many times a day. Why? As if I alone had been responsible for everything. Even if I were, there it is; nothing to be done.
They’ll pick me up in the morning. Just as far as the bus station, I insist. Then I really will be all right, as far as Seoul. Bo-Geum will be there. She wanted to come up and collect me. Nonsense, no need. All that way and back.
Two miles to the bus, no more. If only I could still walk. I always walked. Yes, that’s the trouble. It’s all down there in Seoul, nothing up here. Hospitals, universities. Business. Where it all goes on. The intensity, the weariness. You can keep it, frankly. But it can’t be avoided, in the end.
Morning, and yet more rain beating on the windows. I see grey light. On the edge of wakefulness I still feel, for a second, the pressure of fingers on my shoulder. Then it isn’t there and never was there. It’s ten years now. But I felt that weighty but tender hand and heard the murmured phrase: Come home. How alive the past is, in full detail, unveiled. If you drop into it without thought, without touching the sides. The wrinkles when he smiled. The awareness in his eyes. Wherever I’m going, it will be wherever he is. When they’re done with me.
But it must be six. On your feet, woman. You would get over these things, they just went away. Not now. They accumulate. Like going down one stair, then another; inexorably down. Mother was the same at this age. I catch myself. The shuffling, stomping and groaning. The shoulder-shrugging. When did that start? It’s her, but exactly. I see and hear her, I am her. But she never knew such rain. The season would be long over by now. In our day. Better have the ondol for a while. Floor feels damp. Give it a wipe before I go. Not so bad on the knees, but it’s the getting up. The sea is too warm, Bo-Geum says. Well, her education. What all this was for. Move to Seoul? After all this. An apartment? If I must, I must. There it is. Not so in other countries. She went to see. Not everything in the one city. I don’t really mind. It’s even a relief no longer to be able to choose.
Any rice in the cooker? They said nothing to eat before the procedure. Ah but that’s tomorrow. Have to get there first. A night on the ward. Scans, tests, all the rest of it.
Her lot were the first, free to travel the world. Go hither and yon. For us, just the farming. Unless you were in with the government. With all the money. We had to get on with it. But she did us proud. Who’s that out there? Ji-Hoon’s father. Shouldn’t be digging, heaving those sacks. His back in that state. This heat and humidity. His kids won’t dirty their hands. Like a lot of them. Dreaming. Get rich. As if by magic. Want to be film stars. All in the city. Do their make-up on the train. The whole kit comes out. Photographing themselves, doing nothing. I’ll soon be out of it. Who’ll work the fields, in the end? They said they won’t sell. Not to more builders. Blocks looming over. Block the sun. And empty. Things can’t grow.
Here’s the bus, as they help me out of the car and linger, beaming and bowing.
‘Thanks again. Please… no, the bag isn’t heavy…’
‘Until Friday, then. Lunch at the church. Everyone expects you.’
‘Well, that would be lovely of course…’ I grasp the rail. The driver looks down, hands on the wheel. I look at my feet, still on the road.
‘Of course it will. You’ll feel better in a couple of days – you’ll see.’
The bus ride seems quicker than I remember. But last time I was carrying the garlic and peppers. Though now I think of it that was years ago. Every seat taken. Not now. All private cars. They’re going to cut the service. No good even if I could stay in Cheorwon. Already here’s Do-Bong mountain, smoking between downpours. I step down and take in the air. Clean, for the moment. Revives my senses. I cross to the metro and hear laughter in the lull, as light appears to gather in the sky and in youthful smiles. If I could only hike up those paths with them. I’d drown in the luxuriance of wild lilies. This useless, lachrymose old age. So has the rain stopped at last? But no. By the time the train reaches Hoegi, rills from umbrellas and boot-printed puddles proliferate at every stop. Quite a crowd. Wasn’t that Bo-Geum’s face in there? It wasn’t. She said to meet at the restaurant. Though people often send on something of themselves, just before you run into them. Unwittingly I doze. I’m in the mountain again; that day long ago, under the great pine. The greatest pine. Bo-Geum’s guardian spirit. I see her sitting beneath the tree and then, flung down in a corner of the frame, something flat and broken; there for a moment, half a lifetime ago, now coming into view again. Before the vision is complete I come to myself; here is Dongdaemun. I rise as the doors open but Bo-Geum enters – it is actually she – turning me around and back to my seat.
‘You’re here – what’s this – what about lunch?’
‘Mother, the floods. They closed the market. Could we not eat at the hospital?’
‘We could, but I’ve nothing to -‘
‘I’ve brought you this nightdress. It’s never been worn.’
‘Well, how nice. You’re terribly kind. But what about Yong-Jin and the children – won’t they be home soon?’
‘He has the day off. It’s fine, honestly. They’ll go to the Chinese restaurant. Their favourite.’
We transfer at Jongno Sam-Ga, in whose damp halls files of police lean on their shields; fresh recruits, under orders of some jackanapes so self-important he nearly knocks us over. But we may proceed to Irwon. This train is less full. Some yards away a dishevelled ancient mutters to himself, peering in all directions, picking at his crumpled jacket.
‘Those poor lads.’
‘That’s right. A waste of their lives.’
Again I see the shattered mannequin cast down the mountainside, the rags on the pine needles, in the tail of my eye, as I scrambled fearfully up in search of the tree to which I had secured my child. The woman now beside me. There were boars, wolves. I won’t forgive myself. The harm she might have come to, alone either there or in the empty house. Yet it had to be one or the other. My husband was threshing rice at his brother’s place, up by the border.
She was barely a year old. Alone. Must have been terrified. The best part of an hour. I’ve never told her. Nor about the few seconds for which I paused, nor what diverted me. Its lying in a place and manner that it should not. Not stirring at my approach. A fly on a corner of the mouth. All the same, one says ‘Hello?’ to those motionless eyes. You have to tell yourself: well, there’s no longer someone there. He was a stranger. There were dozens like him up there, during the war. But that was twenty years before. At the back of his skull something had collapsed; a doll whose stitching had unravelled. He had tumbled through the bush above him, down to this spot. No rock lay near. The breeze, the creaking branches, the redness of the soil, things busy in it.
The memory tracks on. My child was waiting. I frantically resumed my climb. I had gone as fast as I could but to leave her for an instant was an instant too long. Arms swinging and flailing with each yard gained, I wanted them to pull the mountain down, to have her fall back into them. My eyes roved fearfully ahead as I strained and toiled. Surely we had not come this far. Yet there she sat, bound but unharmed, only the breeze stirring. I thanked God, I thanked the tree. I was aware of a sinister noise – not quite like distant thunder – a column of tanks passing the farm, inaudible on the slopes I had risen from. As distant sound cuts to high peaks, from then on I wanted only to expunge from our lives this hour of separation. Of course, I could not; it had happened, it always will have happened. Breathlessly I unwound the rope as she stared up. She had pulled away the soft tree-bark. Earth fell from her tiny fists. Once on my back, the descent under way, she began to cry. I realized that I had been crying for some minutes.
‘Yes, I am sorry. So very, very sorry. So very sorry.’
‘Why are you sorry, mother?’
Jolted out of reverie, I see that we have stopped at Yaksu. ‘Oh… for the trouble you’ve taken.’ The doors open again; I raise my voice a little. ‘Bringing these clothes. So very thoughtful.’
On that long-ago day I was forced to go down by the track I’d already used three times: up with Bo-Geum, down with the sheaves of mulberry, back to retrieve her. I looked neither left nor right. I did not wish to see the figure again and, though in due course and with dreadful reluctance having to return to that spot, I never did. My back ached but I held on to her, stepping downward as swiftly as I safely could over the stones and roots. Tomorrow she could ride in the barrow, to town with the things for market.
Does she remember the leaves spread out for the silkworms, tables mounted on tables? They were always there, of desperate necessity. We were on our own, we had nothing. But nothing. No, the young now. Can’t imagine. They have their own troubles. But what would they have done when…
‘Ha. What they must think of us. To come here and walk around like that.’
Two embarking foreigners, bearded, burdened with rucksacks and – despite the storm – shirtless, ghastly, glistening, throw themselves down and squint into phones.
‘Perhaps they think they’re… what are they called… the museum in London. Greek. Cen-taur, yes. Ma? There were these wonderful sculptures…’
We leave the tunnel and clatter across the Han, swollen with rain, with the derelict in a sudden frenzy, as if animated by the sombre light of day. He stands and aims an imaginary rifle out over the water. ‘Bang!’ reloading, re-firing. ‘Boom!’ Brandishing bombs. Wildly miming the mayhem of battlefields. A narrow stare from the backpackers, drawn out of their screens. A girl throws eyeliner into her bag and scurries out of range.
Overdressed women hasten in at Apgujeong, vacant seats in their sights, size up the scene and swerve away. But the excitement ceases. Calm though unsteady, the old man approaches the pale hatchet faces, who recoil. Draws himself up, heels together. A salute, a proffered hand, a warm but toothless grin; all rebuffed. They look down and resume their scrolling.
He shuffles nearer us, examining his battered hands. She watches him. ‘Of course they don’t know,’ I decide to say. ‘To him they’re his comrades. The trauma from that war. Vietnam. The dictatorship… he was sent out there with the rest…’
Foreign soldiers from the tanks would proffer sweets that she furiously threw back.
‘The Americans.’ Bitterly. ‘Bankrolled the regime. A quid quo pro. That bastard. Banged up the opposition. Murdered them with hammers, dumped them in the mountains. There’s evidence now. As for his apotheosis, these deluded old fools…’
Seemingly spent, the veteran sits on the floor, cross-legged. Journey’s end.
‘That’s as maybe. Certainly there was no support. His lot were left to get on with it.’
‘And filthy deals with the occupiers. Lousy quisling. Money, and no apology. Your aunt Su-Jeong, and the others – what they went through. “Comfort!” If not for him…’
Of course she is afraid. Has missed her father so terribly.
‘Some would say, there’d be no trains, no hospitals, no doctors.’
‘For God’s sake, Ma. The cost…’ She laughs suddenly. ‘”Why do you read from left to right!” Remember Su-Jeong saying that to those kids – Mormons, where they? – when they stopped you that day.’
‘Well, she was another one. Drinking before breakfast. That’s what those experiences can do to people.’
The torsos alight with rolling gaits, as though after a long sea voyage. A young Japanese couple, unfolding maps, unassumingly takes their place.
‘They’re drenched, look. What’s going on with the floods?
‘There was no preparation. Nothing. Since the mayor died – you know – sorry, but the stories are rubbish. The prosecutors, the press, doing as they always do. He knew they wouldn’t stop, savaging his family. He didn’t have time to be doing those things they accuse him of. When he switched off his phone out in Seongbuk that morning… mother, it’s true. They were all peddling that trash before his ashes were cold. Junked his legislation. They’re in with the developers, that’s why. Now you can’t see the mountain for vacant apartments that no-one can afford. And Gwanghwamun. The trees ripped up, that awful statue. Pyeongyang kitsch…’
‘All right. Well?’
‘Well, only they poured concrete over the lot and didn’t upgrade the drains. So of course the areas below filled with water. It’s worse by the hour… they knew the rain was coming and did nothing.’
Briefly the doors draw aside to reveal a bier, beneath… no: a bench, beneath a sleeping cleaner. The chance arising. They work absurd hours. It’s quiet this far down the line. We hear him breathe but I watch carefully, also to see.
‘When those students went down with the ferry… the same dissembling. The shame on this country. You know what? It’s as if the Japanese never actually left…’
‘Bo-Geum, I’m going into hospital today and I can’t be all that sure that I’m coming out again.’
She covers her face with her hands, pushes back her hair. ‘I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be helping…’
‘Yes, please don’t get overwrought. It doesn’t help.’
But of course she’d remember the mulberry. Because when she had grown a little she learned to cut it herself. Washed her own things in the stream. The corn was tall the last time we had to carry laundry back to the house. It was Chuseok. Things were improving, in the middle of life.
Our stop is announced and now there does come, as I move to rise, a brief sweep of pain; like a flare of colour, a bird surprised on the mountain path, the upward thrash of wings. At the same time, all in an instant, I see the momentary grimace on my face mirrored in that of my mother. Of course she would know about this: the decrepitude, the steps down and down. Bo-Geum, busy collecting her things, does not see and anyway could not know, as at her age I could not, even faced with the grimacing and groaning. Nor would I want her to. Sorrowing for the world, while drifting out of reach. Flotsam and jetsam. But other things I do want her to know. Always meant to tell. This as good a day as any. Won’t be many more ahead. Better out than in. Let it fly.
The disruption caused by the rains is such that our train is the last to run. Hospital staff with brooms struggle to expel a broad body of water from the entrance lobby. On the ward several floors above, an additional bed is provided for Bo-Geum. It cheers me to see her eat heartily. Other patients pass us oranges and rice-cake.
‘Take these home. For the children.’
‘Mother. No. You’ll see them soon. And I don’t know when I can leave.’
Food and communion allay my private dread and abate the yearning. I nod off again. I find myself In the farmhouse, opening a chest and unfolding my mother’s hanbok. She wore it at my wedding. The match had her full approval. They got on so warmly, he and she. I’m climbing the steps to the roof. In dreams, somehow, I never hear the wind blow. On the ancient plank of timber that props up the clothes line is a message, painted in ink, as on the roof-beam of a Choseun palace. I read: Stay as you are. The crown of our great plum-tree nudges the parapet. Over and beyond, Cheorwon’s new buildings appear for the first time upside-down, reflected in the rice fields. The waters have been rising steadily. I am marooned, but unafraid.
I’m awake. The moment is here. The dread returns, but I make a opening.
‘Hmm. Bo-Geum, do you remember the mulberry? You were just a tiny thing. The tables stacked up for the silkworms. In that back room.’
‘Ah yes. Scared the daylights out of me. Those little green dragons. As I thought. And I could even hear them munching…’
But here a commotion arises. Exclamations from a group in the corner. Headlines glare down from the TV screen; heads turn. It appears that the havoc has been lethal. Citizens trapped in floodwater. Perishing in their own homes as we trundled through the metropolis. Others, caught in the streets, have been immersed in tunnels, sucked into drains. Once again the most indigent and vulnerable are punished. Talk is quelled, upturned faces blench at the footage. Romping children, their bows long since performed to invalid grandparents, are quietly admonished. Nobody says aloud, ‘How the hell can this happen?’ That is for tomorrow.
She has his eyes. But that they should be seeing such things. Daughter, don’t feel so much. It’s sickening, yes. But anger won’t win. Don’t grieve, smile. Take this money, all I can give. Look after my grandchildren, and yourselves. She protests, through tears.
‘Come off it, Ma. We’re going to Jeju the week after next. You’ll have a great time.’
‘And please… stay as you are.’
When it’s evening in the mountain the flowers of mulberry are still visible, a faint constellation that coheres and brightens on the edge of vision. And now I see the white gown of my waiting escort, Jeoseung Saja.