Beasts of a Little Land(21)
“Give me back my things,” he said to Loach, who tossed the drawstring pouch back to him.
JungHo dug into YoungGu’s pocket for the two pennies and added those to the pouch as the other boys silently watched. He started walking out from under the bridge, intending to find a crevice in the levee that would be easier to climb. But when he’d gone about a minute, there was a sound of footsteps running after him, and a shout.
“Hey! Stop there!” It was Loach’s voice.
“What do you want?” JungHo snarled. “You want a beating as well?”
“Don’t go,” Loach said. “Don’t you realize what’s happened?” He took a moment to catch his breath, then blurted out, “You just beat up our chief. That means you’re the chief now.”
JungHo snorted. “I don’t want to be your chief. Let YoungGu enjoy lording it over you and all his underlings. I want no part in it.”
“That’s not how it works!” Loach insisted. “Fine, you don’t want to join us? How are you going to survive out there on your own? Do you think we’re the only band of beggars in Seoul? There are many even in this one district, and then there are real gangs of grown-up criminals—do you think they’d let you live?”
“What’s that to you?” JungHo shouted. “If I die, then I die. You don’t get a say in it!”
“You are such a hothead. I’m only trying to help,” Loach said. “If you want to live, you have to stick with a group. And if you’re the chief, you can do anything you want. You can order the other boys to give you a big share and not even have to beg on the streets yourself.”
“How can you say this, when just a few minutes ago you were YoungGu’s right-hand man?” JungHo asked scornfully.
“I’m no one’s right-hand man,” Loach snorted. “I do what I can to survive. If you weren’t such a bullheaded idiot, you’d do the same.”
The two boys locked eyes for a moment. Loach had smiled while leading him to their den, and had smiled while stealing his money. He was one of those boys with small, tadpole-shaped eyes whose easy, cheap smiles for anyone and everyone made them inscrutable and loathsome. As JungHo’s mind arrived at this conclusion, he suppressed an overwhelming urge to give Loach a nasty black eye. But it was undeniable that the city boy hadn’t directly lied or intended him harm, and in this case, was telling the truth about the necessity of sticking together.
In the next instant, Loach extended his hand. JungHo took it without even knowing why—then surprised himself by shaking it up and down a few times, before they both dropped their hands as though embarrassed.
“Come on, let’s go,” Loach said. “Pretty soon, the kids who went out will come back. We have acrobats, pickpockets, straight-up beggars. Hopefully we’ll have made enough today for some supper.”
“What do you guys eat normally?” JungHo couldn’t help but ask, filled with curiosity and hope.
“Stew, or potatoes if we’re lucky. Old fish, things like that.”
“I could really use some stew. I haven’t eaten anything in more than a day,” JungHo said, and even as he spoke he felt ashamed at revealing himself.
“Me neither. But you only really need to eat every other day. My mother used to tell me that,” Loach said with another easy smile. This time, it didn’t seem so contemptible in JungHo’s eyes.
5
The Friend from Shanghai
1918
EVERY HUMAN BEING FUNDAMENTALLY BELIEVES IN HIS OR HER UNIQUE and inherent significance, without which life would be unbearable; but in Kim SungSoo’s psyche, that belief was not merely a foundation but the pièce de résistance. He himself was not conscious of that fact, of course, since such people are precisely the least likely to admit to selfishness. Being a well-educated, modern man, he had his own code of conduct and was sufficiently pleased with himself for meeting it without too many difficulties. That is to say, he was pro-independence but against any form of native activism (change could only come top-down through imploring the United States to free Korea, he believed). Among friends, he would say aptly vitriolic comments about the oppression, enjoying the eloquence of his own speech and the smooth taste of his Japanese cigarettes. He could carry on love affairs that were physically, financially, and sometimes even emotionally involving; but he wouldn’t be so base as to flaunt them in front of his wife, subjecting her to needless humiliation. In short, his moral character was no worse than any other Korean male who is born the only son of a prominent landowning family with an annual income of nearly two hundred thousand won.
When Kim SungSoo was young, his father was known around the entire province simply as “Rich Man Kim,” and he himself was called “Little Master,” not only by their own servants but also by peasants for miles around and in neighboring villages. Like all sons of wealthy landlords, he was sent away to Seoul for high school, followed by university. He was betrothed and married at twenty, to an official’s daughter who had only recently graduated from a Christian women’s college. They lived together for almost three years in the five-room guesthouse at his uncle’s mansion, across the courtyard from the main building. SungSoo spent those days mingling with his friends, all young men of wealth and education, and carousing with courtesans at expensive restaurants. At night, he came home senselessly inebriated to his wife, and let her undress him and gently admonish him. She’d been educated by American missionaries at school, but at home she’d also been taught that an ideal wife embraces her husband’s flaws with patience and self-sacrifice. But Kim SungSoo’s uncle, a government official who would eventually become a count in the wake of the Annexation in 1910, determined that his nephew couldn’t go on wasting away family fortune and his own talent, and had him sent to Japan for further studies.