Beasts of a Little Land(103)
25
Republic
1945
IT WAS THE COLORFUL LIGHT FILTERING THROUGH THE STAINED GLASS ceiling that woke JungHo. He had been hiding in a safe house, an abandoned chapel that was kept from demolition simply due to negligence. Since it was supposed to be empty, JungHo had been careful not to make any noises or movements. He never went out, surviving only on food dropped off once a week by MyungBo’s servant.
He stood next to the clear-glass window, which was laced with a spiderweb crack around a bullet hole. The sky outside was the warm, energetic blue of a hot summer day. He put a finger through the bullet hole, the jagged edge cutting into his skin and drawing tiny droplets of blood. He inhaled deeply; there was something different in the air outside. His throat closed with longing. Like someone hypnotized, JungHo pulled on his clothes and walked out of the chapel.
The streets, whitewashed by the sun directly overhead, were eerily empty of people. JungHo walked alone for a few blocks before passing by a couple of laborers—not digging and bagging sand, but squatting on the ground and chatting.
“Pardon me, what’s the date today?” JungHo asked them. His voice trembled with the effort to roll his tongue, stiffened from disuse.
“It’s the fifteenth of August,” one of the men replied. JungHo nodded; being alone for so long, he had lost the exact count of the days earlier in the summer.
“Is something the matter? Where is everyone?” JungHo asked again, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand.
“Why, we’re wondering the same thing, young fellow. The officer in charge never showed up this morning and most people went home . . .” the man said, eyeing JungHo’s bleeding finger and leaning back warily. JungHo nodded at them in thanks and walked on. For the first time in JungHo’s memory, there were no officers, gendarmes, or policemen on the streets.
A young man burst out of an alley to JungHo’s right, shouting at the top of his lungs and rupturing the heady silence.
“Japan has surrendered!” his voice rang. “Korea is independent!”
“The Japanese emperor has surrendered!” Someone else echoed his words, unseen. The words had to sink into JungHo’s mind for a second before he realized this had to be true.
Like a dam breaking at the last raindrop, people poured out onto the streets with breathtaking speed. JungHo was soon surrounded by hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of people, embracing, singing, crying, and shouting manseh. Strangers were no longer strangers, recognizing souls in one another’s faces. An enveloping feeling of love so sharp as to be painful ran through JungHo’s being. Who or what this passion was for, it was unclear—maybe that was the nature of the greatest love. Unable to suppress the feeling, he cried out. In this moment, weeping in ecstasy, he realized that he had never before known true happiness. His throat choked with saltiness and his eyes clouded with tears, and he willingly lost himself to this desperate joy, this freedom.
The white-hot sun warmed to a fiery orange, then the stars rose like mist over the heat of the earth. The celebrations went on all night as, one by one, political inmates were released from jails and prisons. When the crowd finally dispersed, JungHo headed to MyungBo’s house, where his mentor embraced him like a son. Activists from all walks of life kept coming and going until sunrise.
By morning, the Japanese emperor’s surrender announcement had reached even the most remote provinces, and the whole country knew unmistakably that they were independent. The cheers and cries on the streets were deafening, and made it impossible to just sit at home and not join in. JungHo walked out of MyungBo’s house without any fear for the first time in twenty years. He was not a beggar or a wanted man—only a man just like anyone else. Every part of society, from Rightists, Leftists, gentlemen, paupers, students, to even butchers and prostitutes, was reveling freely as equals.
Among the crowd dressed in their best clothes and waving homemade taegukgi flags, he spotted a woman and did a double take. She looked haggard, bloated, and old beyond her years—much older even than JungHo—but there was still something in her face that reminded him of the ten-year-old courtesan apprentice that he once knew. It was Lotus.
“JUNGHO! YOU’RE BACK!” JADE SHRIEKED, pulling the gate wide open and jumping up and down. “Oh god, let me take a look at you. I thought I’d never see you again!”
Jade was still reaching toward him when she realized how coldly he stared at her. Her smile faded and gave way to dismay. For a moment she’d believed that he’d come to forgive her and celebrate the independence. The reason for their fallout no longer existed; he would never have to risk his life again, and so she wouldn’t be asked to give her opinion on it. But with JungHo’s silence, she realized that they would never become friends again. Her face burned, and she was deeply conscious of how homely she looked. Her hair was dull and more than a little gray, and her hands were knotted with veins. Perhaps JungHo could have been won over if she’d been a little less washed out.
“I’ve only come to take you to Lotus,” he said at last. “Grab your jacket.”
He led Jade to a squalid patch in YongSan, where rank brothels had sprouted like sores along the side of the hill. There, among half-naked women cursing one another and washing their underclothes, Lotus was sitting listlessly with long, disheveled hair, humming a song from the twenties. When she saw Jade, they both burst into tears and ran to hug each other.