Beasts of a Little Land(107)
It was clear that the courtroom was against Kim SungSoo. But HanChol still felt no fear on behalf of his father-in-law, the grandfather of his three children (SeoHee was at home, heavily pregnant with the fourth), the man who had raised him up from abject poverty.
The judge called forth Kim SungSoo’s lawyer, a plump and pale man wearing thick round glasses and a purple bow tie. He looked around contemptuously at the audience before beginning.
“Your Honor, it would be easy to give in to the worst instincts of humanity when we have just been released from shackles, but it wouldn’t be just. We have heard about Kim SungSoo’s relatives’ crimes, and yes, his uncle was a traitor to be sure. But he died years ago—and is it fair to punish a man for his uncle’s sins? Aside from the fact that Kim SungSoo had a social relationship with policemen and gendarmes, nothing has been proven of his own guilt or treachery. Kim had to pretend to like those men in order to self-preserve—and if we punished every man who ever got along with the Japanese, who would be left alive in this country?
“Contrary to accusations, Kim SungSoo was in fact a patriot who worked tirelessly to bring our country’s independence. His outward friendship with the Japanese was solely to elude suspicion,” the lawyer stated, rocking back and forth on his polished leather shoes. The audience murmured angrily. “What a dog!” a man shouted from the back; it was unclear whether he meant the defendant or his attorney.
“Objection, Your Honor,” the prosecutor cut in, but the judge raised his right hand and the lawyer went on, smiling.
“I have the evidence of the defendant’s patriotic activity,” he said, walking to his corner. When he turned back around, he was holding something rectangular and dark in his hands. At a glance it looked like a small box that women use to hold their jewelry.
“This is the wooden block Kim SungSoo used to make ten thousand Korean flags for March first. For the past thirty years, he had kept this in a hidden alcove in the basement of his publishing house.”
The lawyer raised up the wooden block high over his head and displayed it first to the judge, then to the jury, then finally to the audience. The whorls in its center were still stained dark red and night blue. A hush fell upon them.
“If he had been caught, he would have been imprisoned or even executed. Who among you have risked your life so bravely for this country?” The lawyer went on fiercely, though he already knew he was going to win. He was so sure, in fact, that he’d begun thinking about his dinner. The tide had turned.
In less than an hour, Kim SungSoo was pronounced a free and innocent man, and HanChol was glad to be able to return to his normal life.
*
MYUNGBO BELIEVED IN INYEON—human thread—and that connections and encounters between people were preordained. The best and most important inyeons were between husband and wife, and parent and child. Those bonds do not break even beyond the pale, he knew for a very long time now. What he was just beginning to understand was that hateful inyeon could also last so many years. He had a decades-old contempt for the pro-American Rightists, who showed a servile admiration for that country by adopting English names and speaking with tobacco-scented nostalgia for times spent at Princeton or Georgetown. Before the war, some of them had even appealed to the United States to govern Korea as its protectorate, which MyungBo found impossible to forgive.
As soon as his dream of independence came true, he realized with a vague sense of dread that all of his political rivals had been appointed to the government of the new Republic. But MyungBo still believed he had nothing to fear. For all of his intelligence, it was beyond MyungBo’s capacity to understand the distinct species of humanity whose defining trait is the desire for power.
Even when he awoke one night to the terrible knocking on his gates, the pounding of the fists so incongruous against the silky calm of the white moon, he couldn’t believe that after all he’d been through he would die at the hands of his own countrymen. He reassured his weeping wife that he had done nothing wrong. Because he was so gentle and confident, the policemen hesitated to put handcuffs on him, and waited with their heads bowed while he put on his suit and said goodbye to his family.
“There’s clearly been some mistake. I will be back in a day or two at most. Take good care of your mother while I’m gone.” He smiled at his son, and carefully limped out of the gate. He forbade the family and the servants from seeing him out, so they just stood in the courtyard as his silhouette was quickly swallowed by darkness. When he was sure of being out of their sight, MyungBo held out his hands behind his back and felt the cold metal close around his wrists. He breathed in the night air and was surprised to discover a brief, sharp pang of exhilaration. It was just the feeling of being awake at that hour between the deepest night and the earliest morning. He was reminded of being sixteen or so and staying up all night to read a book, more awake and alive than in the middle of the day. He was sure then of having his entire life ahead of him, and the fresh and smoky smell of 4:00 A.M. had filled him with senseless happiness. Now he was a crippled man with snow-white hair—and the years had passed in the blink of an eye. The meaning of old age was that all the bliss in one’s life must now be found looking backward, not forward. But he had played his part, he’d lived for something greater than himself.
The sun rose in the new Republic just as he was locked in his third-story cell. The window was not so high, and he could see the tiled roofs and bare-branched trees shimmering in the orange light, and the birds singing and gliding across the sky. This, the everlasting stillness of morning, brought him unbearable joy and sorrow. Tears flowed down his cheeks raked by time. Death was such a small price to pay for life.