Period of Distrust by Park Kyung-Ni (Part 4)

On a cold day approaching the lunar New Year, the ajumeoni from Galwol-dong came to visit, all wrapped up in a scarf. For some reason, she seemed a little more distracted than usual.

“I came because there’s something I want to discuss with you…but I’m not sure where to start.”

“…?”

She sat down quietly, as though she was uncomfortable bringing up the subject.

“Well…well, here’s the thing. I lent some money to someone but they died. What am I to do?”

Jinyong looked suspiciously at the ajumeoni.

“I didn’t even get a penny’s interest on the money I took in May…”

Seeing Jinyong’s changing expression, the ajumeoni shut her mouth. May was when she came for Jinyong’s gye money. It was also the month the gye ended. It was not just that though. A few months ago, there were several people who would visit her place, acting all friendly, in order to get the gye money.

“How much did you lend?” Jinyong spoke for the first time.

“Five hundred thousand hwan.”

Inside, Jinyong was surprised. She had thought the ajumeoni just used it to cover her debts, so what could this secret payment mean? Jinyong looked coldly at the ajumeoni. The ajumeoni spoke with tears in her eyes.

“With no kids and no husband, that was all I had left. It doesn’t bear thinking about how much I’ve lost. I thought if all went well I could pay off my debts, but when I gave away that money, I doomed myself.”

Jinyong wanted to corner her, asking where this business that spent the capitol was.

The ajumeoni briefly wiped her tears away and started to explain the details. The dead person was an executive director at the company which used her money, but she had not seen a single penny of interest on the five hundred thousand hwan she lent in May. She grew uneasy so pestered the executive director to withdraw the money, but he did not. At her wit’s end, she consulted a fellow Christian, and left it to her husband, Mr Kim, who said he would look into it. This Mr Kim’s methods were unusual, but he finally received a bank draft from the company president but a few days later, the executive director died in a traffic accident. The fact that he had received this bank draft from the president was most fortunate, but for some reason, this Mr Kim did not hand it over and she was not sure if he had defrauded her or not. But even if she was suspicious of him or found it hard to bear, the person to whom she gave the money was now dead and there was no way she, as a woman, could get the money off this president. She beat her breast in frustration.

Once she had heard everything, Jinyong said,

“How on earth did you know this man to give him the money?”

“Well, you know Sangbae right? He’s Sangbae’s dad.”

“What? Sangbae, that student who got christened?”

The ajumeoni blushed. Jinyong grew irritated. She recalled her saying that Sangbae’s father would be going to Seoul for business.

“So he was just using religion.”

The ajumeoni looked down as if blinded by Jinyong’s eyes.

“I don’t know, now I think about it, everything seems pre-planned. Even getting christened…”

“Is there a stronger guarantee of credibility than religion?”

The ajumeoni grew dejected at Jinyong’s sarcasm. Jinyong averted her eyes from the dejected ajumeoni.

This ajumeoni who trusted and gave away her money because of a christening, who trusted and left someone to sort her money because they were a Christian, you could only say that she was simple. Thinking as such, Jinyong looked at her again. Her desire to interrogate the ajumeoni about her weak point had already disappeared.

 “So what do you plan to do?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“I think it would be good if Mr Kim takes care of business and you take the bank draft.”

“But what if he doesn’t take care of it, and doesn’t visit me?”

“Then you’ll see he had an entirely different ambition.”

“Then if he doesn’t take care of it, can you help me out? I think you’ll easily see him if you’re just one woman,” she pleaded.

“I don’t know.”

She hated that kind of thing. But after discovering her weakness, rejecting her seemed fiendish, so she said with an apathetic expression,

“We’ll go together.”

Then her mother, ignorant of all this, walked in with the lunch. The ajumeoni chatted away as she ate her lunch, seemingly much relieved.

“I guess even if you have money it’s a problem. You’re scared at first and don’t think of other people.”

Jinyong swallowed her food expressionlessly.

“Don’t say anything, just find the money and do the business…your honour or whatever doesn’t matter…I’d like to get some capitol too.”

“You just need to find a job.”

“Is it that easy? If I can’t, I should just sell bread on the street.”

“You studied so much, there’s no way you won’t get one if you try. I guess I should do business. But a gye’s best for earning money. It’s not even hard work…” she said, putting her spoon down and picking her teeth with a matchstick.

Of course you think like that, such a nerve. Jinyong looked into the ajumeoni’s eyes. They were clear, without a trace of evil.

“In any case, you’ve got to make money. Money’s the best. In the world…” Unawares, her tone this time sounded frustrated and repulsed by the deed she had committed.

“Then, as the saying goes, although you’ll be hungry if you outlive your children, you’ll be confident if you have money,” the mother agreed enthusiastically.

Jinyong felt a light dizziness. She quickly turned away as if to erase their faces from her sight.

“Will I go to heaven like this? Money, money, ha ha,” the ajumeoni burst out laughing, got up and put on her gloves.

Jinyong felt that again, there was an unease and despair hidden in that laugh. She raised her head and looked at her. As expected, she was a pained, lonely woman.

After the ajumeoni left, Jinyong collapsed on her bedding. Her body was untangled like cotton.

She was certain that the gas from the heater burning in the room was leaking out. If the gas fills the room, I’ll die.

Before she knew it, she had fallen into a painful sleep.

The boy soldier with the burst guts appeared in her dream. She tried and tried to wake herself from it.

“It’s a holiday the day after tomorrow so I’ll have to send a thousand hwan to the temple…” She could faintly hear her mother talking. She raised herself up and opened her eyes.

“Ghosts and humans, they’re the same…others eating their share and my Munsu biting his fingers, waiting for his mum.”

Having completely awoken, Jinyong jumped out of bed. She took her coat and scarf, walked out of the room and put them on.

In the kitchen, she put a box of matches in her coat pocket, and then she left the house.

She had decided to finally do today what she had wanted to do in her heart for a long time.

She walked along the uphill road covered in bright snow. She felt her hair stand on end like a hedgehog.

Her scarf and coat skirt fluttered in the wind. The snow sitting on the treetops flew down onto her coat collar.

Jinyong walked on mechanically.

When she entered the temple courtyard, the old monk who had said, “just like you, monks need to eat to live,” was coming out of the nunnery. The temple was still, with no other signs of life.

Whilst aware that the muscles in her face were convulsing, she approached the monk.

“I, here’s the thing. We’re going to the country this time, and I want to take my child’s picture and tablet.” She spoke softly with her head bowed. The monk looked at her with snow-white eyes, then said as if recalling something,

“Are you moving? Then what am I meant to do? Just leave it. You don’t want to forget it in the holiday post.”

She jerked up her lowered head and turned to him.

“There’s nothing to interfere. Give me the picture, quickly,” she snapped. The monk looked puzzled and muttered something to himself as he entered the sanctuary.

When the monk finally came out with Munsu’s picture and tablet, Jinyong snatched them and walked out the gate without a word of parting.

The angered monk watched her leave, then walked back, muttering to himself.

Jinyong was not angry at the monk. She just wanted to get the picture and leave the temple as quickly as possible.

Jinyong returned to the road and climbed up the hill. As she walked, she peeked here and there. Once she arrived at a dry, snowless lawn behind a large rock, she flopped down on it. Then she took Munsu’s picture and tablet and gazed at them for a moment.

A short while later, she took a match out of her pocket and lit the photo. She then threw the tablet into the flames. But rather than the picture burning, the flames subsided. She took a tissue out of her pocket and tore it on top of the picture. It started to burn again.

The picture was completely burned. The yellow smoke was starting to thin out. Jinyong watched as the smoke disappeared into the wind.

“I only have painful memories left. Only memories of your cruel death.”

Two tracks of tears ran down her still face.

The winter sky was heartlessly clear. The snow resting on the treetops flew down with the wind onto her coat collar.

“That’s right, I’ve still got life left in me. A life that can resist,” she muttered as she grabbed onto the tree and went down the snowy slope.

Period of Distrust by Park Kyung-Ni (Part 3)

After the monk selling rice had left, Jinyong’s mother waited for mid-July. This was when the All Soul’s Day for the dead took place.

The day before mid-July, her mother had already gone to the temple and arranged for the event, taking Munsu’s picture and two thousand hwan. So, the next morning, as soon as the first light appeared in the sky, Jinyong followed her mother out of the house, carrying a basket of fruit. They went up a fairly steep road towards B National School until they saw the courtyard of the temple. With all the exorcisms, the temple was at its busiest today, so the women from the village had come to help out.

The large-framed chief monk rejoiced at seeing the mother.

“My, how devoted of you to come so early…”

The mother dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief.

“Please look after our child. Please. He’s so pitiful…”

She blew her nose. There was no way that this monk, who had had his fill of the mother’s sorrow last evening, would be content to listen to this again. In an extremely business-like fashion, he said,

“But the lady who’s meant to go first still hasn’t arrived, so what can I do?” He was lost in thought for a moment.

There was no way of knowing what kind of lady she was, but the temple seemed to think her an extremely valuable guest. The mother gave a bitter smile and stared at the monk.

“Then do our child first.” The monk looked at her for a while.

“Then… shall I start with you, madam?” The monk decided as such and then called out to the monk passing by.

“Brother!”

This “brother” turned around. Compared to the smooth-faced chief monk, he looked much older, and even his face was gaunt.

“This lady paid two thousand hwan last evening, but the lady who was meant to go first hasn’t arrived yet, so if we let her go first, she’ll be done before the other lady gets here.”

From his manner of speaking, it seemed as though he respected the other monk’s opinion.

Instead of replying, the old monk looked the mother and daughter up and down, but since their money barely amounted to anything, he just left curtly.

Jinyong and her mother stood blankly with their backs to the sanctuary.

The sun was rising over the ridge ahead. Jinyong was unaffected by the bright morning, as if she was simply looking at a mural.

She wondered how shameless it must have been of them to pay the lowest amount but come at the crack of dawn expecting to go first.

A young monk carrying the offerings came by.

“Excuse me, is that tall monk not here?” The mother was asking about the one who came selling rice.

“He doesn’t stay in the temple much,” he answered simply and went into the sanctuary.

The prayers for the dead started soon after. Jinyong was greatly disappointed when the old monk sounded the moktak (*wooden percussion instrument) and started the prayers as if dozing off. She was sorry that it was not the large chief monk with the rich, sonorous voice. She felt that if they were going to do this, they should at least have a good shaman.

While he prayed, the monk leered at Jinyong, who was standing blankly next to her bowing mother. She wore a purple dress and her waist seemed unspeakably thin. Her dark eyes stood out in her otherwise pale face.

The monk was still leering inappropriately at her. Whenever she felt his eyes on her, she awkwardly bowed her head down as if she was being pressed. Just like the proverb ‘a monk’s heart isn’t in the prayers, but in the rice offerings’ she thought that his monk’s heart was not in his prayers, but in her attitude of coming to the temple but not worshipping. She felt more and more fatigued as if she had had some kind of confrontation with the monk.

A while seemed to have passed. The chief monk panted into the sanctuary.

“Brother, hurry up. The lady has come now. Just summarise it.”

The chief monk hurried to a corner of the sanctuary. The old monk moved on to the departed in front of the altar. It was doubtful whether had had finished the scriptures properly. The young monk who had carried the offerings before came in with a wide bowl. He looked back at the mother and daughter and gestured to them to go up to the altar.

Jinyong lay down before the picture of Munsu. At first, warm tears gushed out uncontrollably onto the cold floor. She could feel Munsu deeply in her heart.

“Munsu, eat up, you poor child…”

Jinyong had never heard her mother’s voice sound so sad. Her mother put a stick of incense in the burner and offered twenty ten hwan notes, crisp as though they had just come from the bank, to the dead. Then Jinyong got up and offered incense. When she turned back, she saw the monk crane his neck and peek at the money. That crisp, new money looked like only a hundred hwan. Jinyong hung her head in shame.

The young monk who carried the bowl pushed the money forward and said sullenly,

“The donation is too small. In this world or that world, you still need money. Why don’t you go see your friends and go back?”

Jinyong felt the blood rush to her head. She cursed her mother’s cheapness for not bringing any more money.

The young monk took the food laid out next to the altar piece by piece and put it in the bowl. Shoots, ddok, fish, fruit, his hand went for them one by one. When his hand approached the mouth-watering honey biscuits, the monk who had sounded the moktak suddenly shouted out fiercely,

“That’s enough!”

The young monk glanced at Jinyong and hurried outside to place the food on the stone for offerings.

Jinyong was taken aback. She had not objected to their dealings at first. But like this, how could she not explode into rage? She poured her anger that could not be directed at anyone in particular into her tears. As she cried, she felt Munsu’s hands wrap around her neck. An insane loneliness and pain rose up inside her.

The young monk came back from giving away the food, and now started to collect the fruit.

“You should take this. The cloth…” he said, turning to the mother.

Jinyong looked at the young monk with her red, bloodshot eyes.

“I don’t have a job. Stop!” Her voice was almost a scream. The old monk came out into the sanctuary, having finished off his work.

“Why aren’t you taking back what you brought?”

The mother answered instead of Jinyong, who could not even look at him.

“Well, that…” She glanced at Jinyong’s face. The old monk gulped and said,

“Monks need to eat to live just like you.”

Jinyong’s eyes glistened.

“You’ll need to eat breakfast, but it’s so early it won’t be ready yet. Would you like to wait?” The young man left with these words.

Jinyong perched on a stone in the sanctuary. The words “in this word or that world, you still need money,” ran through her mind again. Of course it had always been business for them. But if this was true, did that mean the monks’ respect for Munsu’s memory was calculated according to the amount of money they gave them?

Jinyong was seething with anger over this when a smartly dressed young woman, seemingly this valuable woman who was meant to go first, came into the sanctuary, guided by the chief monk. A short while later, the sound of him reading the prayers seeped outside. His voice came from his stomach and was worthy of the sleeping Buddha waking up for the first time and listening with his full attention.

Jinyong jumped up.

“Mum, let’s just go.”

Clearly they did not come to the temple just to eat. Knowing that she could not stop Jinyong from walking off, the mother said to the old monk hovering in the courtyard,

“We’re just going to go.”

“You should at least eat some breakfast…you’re going?”

He did not try to stop them at all. He walked them to the temple gate.

“Just like you, monks need to eat to live.”

Jinyong was more dumbfounded than enraged.

She walked down the road wordlessly, grabbing at weeds as she went. The same thought floated around her head: that she had left Munsu alone in an unfamiliar inn without any money to pay for it.

She felt her forehead: it was hot like a fireball.

Jinyong was ill throughout midsummer. Since her tuberculosis had only minor symptoms at first, it had been completely ignored and had gradually grown worse. What’s more, it continually developed into other illnesses. Even if she just drank cold water, her stomach ached. Her eyes were always sore and her mouth was constantly blistered. It even reached her ears. The cavity in her tooth she had ignored for years started to ache and it throbbed all through the night.

Jinyong trembled in fear as her body started to dissolve. Hers was a life like an earthworm stretched out under the blazing sun.

Jinyong’s body and moreover, her mind, were dissolving like this.

Each night, the sound of her son crying, the sound of mountains, hills and houses collapsing resounded in her ears; visions of glass smashing and countless shards piercing her face; when she closed her eyes, the face of the boy soldier with the burst guts, her husband’s face, her child’s face, pink, yellow, blue and lastly black, she was covered by those colours in turn and then finally an infinite space engulfed her surroundings like fog.

Noises, feelings, colours – Jinyong’s nerves went off track in this order. Unable to take this any longer, she hauled her neglected body over to H hospital. But in the end, she gave up on going there too as it was too far.

Having to use what little remained of their money on living expenses also played a part in this. However, the real reason was that she had seen them sell empty bottles that had once contained foreign-made medicine for injections.

Y Hospital concealed the amount they used, S Hospital was a shambles and H Hospital sold empty medicine bottles.

When the nurse was counting empty bottles, Jinyong intuitively thought it was fake medicine. But it was not only H Hospital that sold empty bottles. And even with these empty bottles, she could not say for certain that they were fake. Ink bottles, paint bottles or even ground pepper bottles were commonly used. But the truth was that the streets were flooded with fake medicine. The merchants would all insist that their fake was the real thing. Thinking this, Jinyong thought that doctors with medical authority behind them were just like merchants and thus they were becoming less and less trustworthy. Of course, no matter how insignificant an empty bottle it is, it belongs to that doctor and it is his basic right to sell it. Even so, instead than their basic rights, Jinyong thought only of the fake medicine, spreading invisibly like pests.

The sunflowers scattered their seeds.

The ajumeoni had said a few days ago that she would return the investment, and as promised, she came with the last remaining ten thousand hwan. They had intended to take back the hundred thousand hwan all at once, but she sent it back bit by bit, and they were now down to their last pennies. After she handed over the money, the ajumeoni stood up to leave and expressed her dissatisfaction at Munsu’s tablet being placed in a temple. Then she scolded her, asking why she worshipping that idol. Jinyong wanted to ask her what didn’t count as an idol, but she suppressed the urge and just looked at her silently. It was not her duty to explain the contradiction.

It was Chuseok.

Jinyong did not stop her mother going to the temple. Instead, she bought fruit and piled it up lovingly in the basket for her. Pears, apples, grapes, chestnuts, dates, there were even three or four types of biscuit.

As Jinyong stood at the gate, watching her mother walk off with the basket, she suddenly recalled the monk saying, “Just like you, the monks have to eat to live.” The monks were eating Munsu’s food – what a waste. How odious. But her face reddened with shame in the next moment. Why did I think such a despicable thing?

Jinyong locked the door and climbed up the hill behind her house.

She wanted to cry, she wanted to shout.

Tents small as crab shells stood here and there on the hill. Not a single wild flower or tree root could be seen: a slum had already developed here and this hill was no longer a hill. A girl’s arm, thin like a spider’s leg, drawing water from the stagnant stream, the sallow faces sticking out of the tents – though she wanted to cry when she left the house and climbed up this hill, she now felt a sense of shame as if hers was an extravagant existence.

Jinyong climbed up for a while, went over a large rock and sat down. The streets visible from the ridge were messy. Wherever there were hills, the houses were clustered together like insects. Inside, there was a temple, a chapel, Eastern and Western things as though it was a transition period and all kinds of different lives which lacked symmetry.

If there was hope inside this kind of city, would it be the trees along the roadside? Would it be the purple clouds brushing past the distant mountains? Jinyong propped up her frail chin in her hands.

The sound of the city buzzed in her ears like a bee and a luxury car slid towards a hill with a villa. Seeing this from the ridge, Jinyong thought it was like an insignificant beetle. A beetle scuttling along.

Jinyong glanced around her surroundings as if for the first time. It’s an impulse of absolutely no meaning. So, what of it? She unconsciously tried to control herself. In fact that was the case. So what of it? So what if it’s like a beetle, like insects, trees, clouds, so?

Jinyong swept up her hair.

All the pain was inside me. All the contradictions were inside me. The gods and Munsu’s touch were all inside me.

But in reality, none of these existed anywhere. Like a prostitute, I visited at two places of worship without honour. I presented offerings and money. But maybe that was a commission I gave to the gods for communication with Munsu. But in reality this commission provided a few more meals for the monks. In the end, I was trying to deceive myself. Munsu won’t be anywhere.

Again, Jinyong swept up her thick hair, which flowed down above her brow. Her pale hands were verging on transparent. Mystery, forewarning, dreams, no this was coincidence. Munsu’s death: it was human error without a doubt. All people get old and then die. Of course, they get old and then they die… Even if my child was already meant to die, I didn’t want to let him die in that way. Like a calf in a slaughterhouse… I should try and hate people. Why am I thinking of a god I don’t know exists? No, a minute ago I said it didn’t exist… No I don’t know. I should hate people. I should rebel. I should put a curse on all the plundering murderers.

Jinyong muttered, rambling to herself for a while like a drunken man. A shadow cast over her face. Clouds passed by in a limitless autumn sky. On the streets, the scene of the Chuseok activities looked like strewn confetti. Jinyong’s eyes, swollen from fever, rose up looking at this. She no longer had the spirit to rebel, she no longer had anything. Only the labyrinth of her empty heart spread out before her eyes.

Jinyong swept up her hair out of habit and climbed down the hill.

The sallow faces in the tent, having come back to this place, Jinyong once again felt a sense of shame as if hers was an extravagant existence.