Beasts of a Little Land(44)
“That’s for helping Luna last time. It’s more money than a grown man makes in a week—you’d have enough food for a month at least. Take it and don’t ever bother us or Jade again.”
“I don’t need this,” JungHo managed to say, pushing the envelope back. “I just wanted to be her friend.”
“You’re a bold little thing, aren’t you?” Dani snorted. “You can’t mix with someone like Jade. She’s going to be a courtesan, possibly the best one I’ve ever trained. And you, you’re nothing but a nameless orphan.”
JungHo wanted to tell her his name, but thought better of it and turned around. He could already hear Dani stepping back inside and bolting the door behind him. He still couldn’t believe that Jade would not even say goodbye to him, that this was the end. He thought that if she knew how much he wanted to talk to her, she would find a way to meet him. So he came by every day and threw a pebble over the wall into the courtyard. Once, he tossed in a smooth, green sea glass that reminded him of her name. That was as clear a message as he could possibly send. But Jade never came out to meet him, and after a very long time, he stopped coming to her house for good.
Part II
1925–1937
11
Jungho Speaks
1925
MY NAME IS NAM JUNGHO. YOU CAN’T START A STORY WITHOUT SAYING your name. When I arrived in Seoul that was the first thing someone asked me. “What’s your name, country bumpkin?” That was Loach by the way, who is still annoying as hell but I can’t forget the fact that he is the oldest friend I’ve got.
I told my underlings that I was named after a legendary tiger in my village in the mountains. It’s a story my older sister used to tell me and my younger sister before falling asleep. There was once a poor woodsman who lived alone with his mother. One evening as he was going back home after chopping wood in the mountains all day, a giant tiger appeared in front of him. Just as the tiger was about to pounce the woodsman started crying, saying, “Oh, my older brother! It is you! I have been waiting to meet you for years and years!”
The tiger got confused, stopped in his tracks and asked, “Um, what? What are you talking about, human?”
“Can’t you remember, Older Brother?” The woodsman wept even louder. “Twenty years ago, you got up in the middle of the night and left our home. I woke up from my sleep and followed you. Then in the mountains you suddenly turned into a tiger as if from some dark curse. That same curse must have erased your human memory too. Ever since, we’ve been hoping to see you again. Come, let’s go home—our mother has been waiting for you all these years.”
In case you’re wondering the woodsman was lying to get out of this alive. But the tiger started thinking and he couldn’t really remember how he used to be before he was a young tiger. Then he was like, “Oh my god, I must really have been a human before!” And he started crying and hugging the woodsman with his giant paws.
“I’m so glad we finally met, Younger Brother.” The tiger wept. “I can’t go home looking like this. I don’t want to scare our mother. But I’ll always watch over you.”
The woodsman hugged the tiger one last time and went back home. The next morning he found a dead rabbit in his courtyard. So he said, “That tiger really thinks we’re his family!” After that there was a deer. And so the tiger kept bringing them food and the woodsman and his mother never went hungry.
Couple of years went by like that and the mother died of old age. The tiger stopped dropping by with food after that. A while later the woodsman was coming down the mountain when he ran into three tiger cubs. Each cub was wearing a white hemp ribbon around his tail. The woodsman asked, “Why are you wearing those ribbons, tigers?” Then one of them replied,
“Our grandmother was a human who lived in the village down the mountain. She passed away and our father grieved for months and couldn’t eat or sleep. He died of sadness in our cave and now we’re in mourning.”
The woodsman cried real tears then and felt sorry for tricking the loyal tiger. So he built a monument to the tiger which was just a huge stone with some carvings in our village square. I couldn’t read it but this really did exist next to the ginkgo tree by the well. So that’s why I’m named JungHo—Jung meaning righteous, Ho meaning tiger—I’d say to my underlings. And even the ones who had heard similar stories at their own villages believed me.
I’m not lying about the tiger monument but the truth is that when I was born my father was overjoyed to finally have a son, so he went to the local astrologer and got my name made. My father paid a rabbit for a real name of Chinese characters when plenty of people just named their kids after the first animal or flower that grabbed their eyes, like Loach for instance who claims his mother had mad cravings for loach soup while she was pregnant with him hence his name. My sisters were also just called May and June after their birth months so that’s how much my father loved me specially. The reason I don’t tell this version is that every year I remember less about my father and whenever I talk about him it’s like opening the lid of a boiling stew and letting the steam get out so there’s less of the good stuff in the end. That’s why I don’t talk about him unless I have to and most of the time it’s enough to look at his cigarette case and my mother’s ring to remember that I’m not nobody but Nam JungHo.