Counting stars by LTI Korea Library

Count i ngSt ar s

KyeYong-muk

Tr ans l at edbyEugeneLar s en-Hal l l oc k

Counting Stars By Kye Yong-muk Translated by Eugene Larsen-Hallock

Literature Translation Institute of Korea 1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and Literature Translation Institute of Korea. The original manuscripts to these translations were provided by Gongumadang of Korea Copyright Commission.

The National Library of Korea Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kye, Yong-muk Counting stars [electronic resource] / authored by Kye Yong-muk ; translated by Eugene Larsen-Hallock. – [Seoul] : Literature Translation Institute of Korea, 2014 p. 원표제: 별을 헨다 Translated from Korean ISBN 978-89-93360-61-5 05810 : Not for sale 813.61-KDC5 895.733-DDC21

CIP2014031612

About Kye Yong-muk

Kye Yong-muk (1904 - 1961), was born Ha Tae-yong on September 8, 1904, in Seoncheon, Pyeonganbuk-do, Korea. He attended Whimoon Normal School (present day Whimoon High School), and began his literary pursuits alongside the pioneers of modern Korean literature, including authors such as Yom Sang-seop, Nam gung-byeok, and Kim Dong-in. In 1928, he travelled to Japan to enroll in Toyo University. The real beginning of Kye’s career as a writer can be said to have begun with the publication of his short story “Mr. Choi” (Choi Seobang) in the literary magazine The Joseon Literary Sphere (Joseon Mundan). His reputation as a writer would then be firmly established with the publication of works such as “The Human Arachnid” (Indujiju), “Idiot Adada” (Baekchi Adada). “Idiot Adada” played an especially large role in bringing Kye to the attention of a mass audience and securing his position as a writer of short fiction, well known and remembered even to the present day. While most of his earlier works, including “Mr. Choi” and “The Human Arachnid,” evince a tendency toward the class-conscious realism of the 1920’s, his work after “Idiot Adada” largely embraced an aestheticism that stressed a humanistic focus on art as the creation of beauty. While Kye was not a prolific writer, he is highly regarded for the highly compressed aesthetic of restraint seen in the rich descriptions and taut structures of his stories. Following independence, Kye attempted to maintain neutrality even as the Korean literary world was riven by an increasingly fractious left-right divide, and published the literary journal Joseon with Jeong Bi-seok. He passed away in 1961, in the midst of the serialization of a novel for Modern Literature (Hyeondae Munhak). His stories in this collection include “Like a Chicken on a Folding Screen” (Byeongpung-e Geurin Dalk-i), “Idiot Adada,” and “Counting Stars.”

About “Counting Stars” “Counting Stars” was first published in 1946 in the Dong-a Ilbo newspaper. The story is set in post-liberation Seoul, and captures a contemporary perspective on the tremendous upheavals taking place in Korean society at that time. The main character and his mother have returned from Manchuria to find that Korea has radically changed in their absence. Landing in Incheon, they discover that the 38th parallel prevents them from returning to their old home in the north, while the influx of returnees makes it impossible for them to find a house in Seoul. The relations between people have changed, and the main character soon realizes that society has entered into a state of silent war with itself: an

emotional war that prefigures the fratricidal hostilities that would erupt on the Korean peninsula less than four years later.

Counting Stars

1. Even after he had climbed to the top of the very highest peak, no matter how he stood on his tiptoes and craned his neck, the lofty peak of the mountain before him would not be dominated and submit to falling beneath his gaze. Behind the mountain, exploding out into the distance as though it would touch the sky was the sea—the blue sea of his hometown, oh, the sea, the sea he longed for. He stood up on his toes again, raising his heels as high as he could. But, of course, he wasn’t any taller than before. That damned mountain top still stood before him, blocking his view. “Oo-ahh!” It felt as though he might feel better if he could even just yell over the top of it. He yelled until his throat was raw. “Oo-ahh!” But, unable to make it over the peak, the sound of his call reflected off the flank of the mountain and came back to him, echoing futilely off into the valley, and startling his mother where she worked gathering fallen leaves farther down the slope. Startled with a jump by the sudden loud sound, his mother hid the rake behind her back and looked around warily. She was searching for the source of the sound. To his mother’s ears, the sound of a person’s voice had become even more terrifying than the sound of a gun. Their house, if you could call it that, was a thatched one room mountain hut with a single layer of straw sacks wrapped thinly around the outside. The days were getting cold, and they needed to prepare for winter. But the grass along the ridge was off limits. There was a man who would come and berate them severely, eyes shot red with fury, saying that if all the grass were gone the houses below the hill would be threatened by mudslides and avalanches. This man made his mother nervous every time she went out to gather leaves. His senseless yell only served to frighten his mother, and was of no aid or comfort to her. Trying to let her know that it was him, he stretched out his body and waved, but there was no way for his mother to understand what he was trying to express. When she looked up and saw his shadow at the top of the mountain, she quickly snuck back into the house, abandoning the leaves she had been gathering. She must have thought that he was the young man with the angry eyes who came by to lambast her every morning.

The previous morning his mother had said with a sigh, “Every time I hear the rustle of a magpie taking off from the pines, my stomach drops at the sound!” She had just returned to the house carrying a heaping armful of leaves and was stretching her back. He didn’t know what to make of what she had said. It had been a year since they had returned to Korea, and the winter was about to return again. Unable to find a home for the two of them to live, he had brought his mother to this hut. Finding himself unable to straighten this worrisome wrinkle in their lives, he felt like he wasn’t in control of his life. Like he wasn’t a full person. His family had always been poor, and his father had also had to struggle in Manchuria until the day he died. But he couldn’t accept that even after returning to his homeland his fate was only to inherit that poverty. Their lives had actually been happier in Manchuria. There, if you just worked hard, you didn’t need to worry about having enough to eat and being able to survive. And once you got used to the terrain and the water, it even stopped feeling like a foreign land. But here in their homeland, hard work wasn’t worth anything. Here, he had to do whatever work was available to him, whatever it might be. But even though he was willing to do his best and work as hard as he needed to, he couldn’t get even a meager house or a single job. The Japanese had withdrawn and independence had come. He had welcomed the news, and his mother was pleased that she would be buried in her homeland when she had died. But it bothered her that they had not been able to bury his father there as well. And if she wanted to be buried in her homeland, his father would have wanted it too, so they had to take his father’s remains with them. Having to spend the night digging up his father’s grave and gathering his remains had been enough to disturb the rest of even the living. His remains were now at his mother’s side in the hut, still wrapped in the carrying cloth they had used to bring him from Manchuria. Even though they were back in their homeland, they couldn’t bury him just anywhere. They had to wait for an opportunity to return to their hometown. If they had taken the train, it would have been a straight shot to their hometown, but they heard coming by boat was safer and so they took the boat even though it meant a detour. They disembarked at Incheon, thinking that since it was all their country, it wouldn’t matter if they simply got off wherever the boat stopped. But when they arrived, they were surprised to find that the South and North had started to become almost two separate countries, divided by the 38th parallel. Thinking that there was no reason for them not to go where they wanted in their own country, they decided to cross the 38 th parallel boundary line. But when they tried to cross, they heard the bang of a gunshot from a mountain top and one of the other people travelling with them fell over dead. After this ordeal attempting to cross the border-that-wasn’t at the 38th parallel, they reconsidered their destination. Even if they went back to their hometown, they no longer had any relatives there and there wouldn’t be much waiting for them if they went. So no matter where they

ended up, they needed to start out from scratch. Reasoning that Seoul was as much a part of their homeland as anywhere else, they unpacked their bags and tried to make a life for themselves there, but life only got harder with every passing day, and then winter was upon them. The cold in their hut would only get worse. Wrapped only in a single blanket, his mother spent the nights groaning, and he felt strangled by feelings of helplessness. He longed for fresh air. Feeling like he was about to cry, he went out for a hike. The mountain air was refreshing, but he longed for his hometown. He had played in the sea there—the sea of his hometown, the blue sea, the refreshing sea—since his umbilical cord had been cut, and it seemed like getting just one good look at the ocean would be enough to make his heart as clear as the wide-open sea. Climbing to the top of the mountain and yelling a bit gave him some release, but the morning was growing late and he was only left with the feeling of his grumbling stomach telling him to eat.

2. Feeling impatient, he had gulped down his breakfast. But his steps were slowed by the thought of the “favor” that had been offered to him by a friend. No matter how many times he thought it over, there was no way he could go through with it. On the other side of Jingogae Ridge1, there was a Japanese home that someone had occupied without going through the right procedures. If he wanted, his friend could help him go through the official procedures and have that person evicted so he could take the house for his own. The friend had asked him to come before noon, so that they could meet and the friend could help him with the procedures that would need to be done. He was terrified by the prospect of having to spend the winter in the woods, but he couldn’t help worrying that if he took over the house the person being chased out would end up in the same position as he was in now. He hadn’t been living in the woods when he first arrived in Seoul. They initially had the good fortune of finding a tatami room in a Japanese house, and, while it wasn’t anything much, the conviviality of that room had helped them make it through the previous winter. Even before the spring thaw, however, they had been kicked out for not having followed the right procedures, and they had spent the last nine months in the woods. He couldn’t bring himself to just put his scruples aside and chase someone else out into the cold while he took their house. He had had several opportunities like this; this time wasn’t the first time he’d heard about that sort of thing being done, and it wasn’t even the first time 1

a ridge located in present-day Myeong-dong

someone had offered to do him the favor of helping with the procedures. He turned his friend’s suggestion down flat. Laughing at his foolishness, his friend had said, “You’ll never survive in this world if you go around thinking that the cats need to look out for the mice.” Then his friend continued, “If you keep trying to be nice like that, you’ll freeze to death this very winter. Just you see.” As he listened to his friend speak, it seemed as though what his friend was saying might turn out to be more than just words. “Well, if that other guy gets chased out, then he would need to be able to find another home, so…” “Humph, so you’re worried that if he doesn’t have a house he’ll end up spending the winter in the woods like you? Don’t worry about what happens to him. If you just don’t think about it and do what I say, you’ll get a house.” Without even getting his approval, his friend willfully ignored what he thought and made a unilateral appointment for them to meet the next day and discuss the matter further. He hadn’t known this friend for very long or had a chance to get to know him well. Their only connection was that they had happened to be on the same ship coming back from Manchuria and met on board. He happened to run into the friend again the day before as he was returning home from a real estate office. But he was thankful as could be for the friend’s concern. But he knew that accepting kindness didn’t necessarily lead you down the right path. He couldn’t say that he had never felt greed, but he had managed to live more than thirty years without sacrificing his principles. It wouldn’t do for him to let himself go now, even if his friend accused him of being ungrateful. On this day, too, the indisputably right thing for him to do was to find another real estate office. But even if his friend had set their appointment without asking him, it was likely that the friend would be waiting for him to come. So as he set out from home, he decided that he would stop by to see his friend first before continuing on his way. His friend had only told him to meet at the Nammichangjeong 2 entrance into Namdaemun Market, but there were so many people carrying things about and rummaging through the goods for sale that he couldn’t find his friend. Adults, children, old people, and even women bustled about with goods, hauling them, carrying them on their heads, pushing them, and shoving them around. Squeezing into the mass of people, he saw a familiar silhouette standing in a corner. His friend was haggling over the price of a jacket. He had already put the jacket on over his suit. But the jacket’s owner, unsatisfied with the price his

present day Namchang-dong

friend was offering, was pulling at the jacket and telling him to take it off. The seller looked to be a young man of around twenty-five who still hadn’t realized how the world worked. “What do you mean you won’t sell it! Eight-hundred won is a good price, but you’re not willing to sell it for that? Did you just bring it as a hiyakashi3?” His friend glared at the young man and swatted his hand away. “Well, I can’t sell it for that. You need to give me the full two-thousand,” the young man said, reaching for the jacket again. His friend’s eyes narrowed even more aggressively. “Take what I’m giving you,” his friend said, shoving some bills into the young man’s pocket and then turning to leave. Pulling the money out and clenching it in his fist, the young man chased after him, shouting, “Hey! You there!” The young man grabbed his friend by the sleeve. “Hey! What’re you grabbing at me for? I’ve got places to be,” his friend said. “Give it to me.” “Give you what?” “Give me the jacket.” “Are you out of your mind? You sold it to me. You already had the money in your wallet. And then you try to change your mind… Do you think I’m a complete idiot? Going around selling things and then going back on it…” His friend shook off the young man’s hand and then grabbed it, pulling the young man in until their foreheads were almost touching. He glared at the young man and gave him a hard shove on the chest. “This won’t end well for you.” After being pushed back, the young man kept his distance and lost the nerve to press the matter further. The young man just looked impotently at his opponent, muttering to himself in disbelief—before counting the money he got and tucking it away. It was a frightening sight. A war without guns. And he was terrified when he discovered that his friend was a combatant in that war. Did all the people bustling around him have the same silent weapons hidden deep within their hearts? Afraid of getting caught in the crossfire, no one would help anyone else. His friend seemed to be looking for him. Wanting to get out of the market as soon as possible, he called out to his friend, “Hey! Hey, there!” “Did you just get here?” “I’ve got some things to do today, so I think I’ll need to get going. It seemed like you might be waiting for me, so I thought I should drop by.” 3

From Japanese: “a tease.”

“Yeah, I bet you’re busy… You won’t find a house in a million years out there. It doesn’t matter how hard you look…. Let’s get some lunch and drop by my place so I can get changed before we head out.” “No thanks, I’m really…” “Whatever. Come with me,” his friend said, dragging him along by the wrist. He couldn’t just coldly refuse his friend, so he went along. They ended up drinking more than they ate. It had been a long time since he’d been able to eat his fill of beef jjim stew and feel his face warm with liquor, so afterwards he continued with his friend around the base of Namsan Mountain to Huam-dong. His friend’s house was a large Western-style home with red roof tiles that looked like it must have been the home of an executive from some large company. “I got this house the same way,” his friend said. His friend pressed the doorbell button. Neither one of them had anything more than the bags on their backs when they got off the boat in Incheon, but in less than a year his friend had already managed to get himself established. He was surprised to see that it seemed like his friend had even gotten all the furniture he would need, including a large chest and wardrobe. Throwing the jacket onto the tatami floor, his friend said, “To think, this was only eight-hundred won!” He continued, “Even if I only go once a day, I can make enough to eat. Everyone complains that there’s no work, and that rice is expensive. But you don’t make any money sitting around all day. You wouldn’t believe all the stuff the refugees bring with them. Some of them are as week and pliable as the weeds on a grave. They have no idea how to go about selling things, and they’ll just bumble about with the things they’re trying to sell tucked under their arms. If you catch someone like that, then whatever they have is as good as yours. It seems like that jumper might be from Manchuria. It’s leather. Not too bad, huh? That guy selling it was pretty naïve, but he didn’t want to give it to me at first and was pretty persistent about getting some more from me. Some people, they start by selling their overcoats, but pretty soon it’s their shirt, their pants, and then before they know it they’re lying naked in their rooms, counting fly shit on the ceiling. Haha! If you don’t snap to your senses, you’ll be counting fly shit, too.” “You need to have a house to count fly shit. I just count stars,” he said, trying to laugh his friend’s comment off. He treated it as a joke, but he couldn’t say he didn’t think it was true. He was at a loss for what to say. “I’d better get going.” “Hey, wait! Let’s go together. I told you, I can really help you get someone out of a house so you can take it for yourself.”

“It’s just my mother and me. What would we do with anything as big as a house? I’m just going to find a small room.” “You think you’ll get a room, just like that? You’ll need more than ten-thousand won just for the deposit.” “If we can’t find a room, we’ll just head north.” “Nonsense. Do you think someone up there will just give you a house? You need to make things happen yourself. If you can’t make it here, you won’t be able to make it up there. So don’t be rash and stick it out here.” “But what about all the people leaving for the North?” “So you’ve seen people going north—but have you noticed that there are even more coming down this way? In a time of opportunity like this, if you’re not in Seoul, you’re not anywhere.” “Well, you know, today, I really need to…” As he stood up to go, his friend grabbed him by his sleeve. “Just sit down.” “Let go.” “I’m telling you, sit down.” But he shook off his friend’s hand and started to leave. As he walked down the stairs, he could hear his friend behind him muttering, “What a fool… You’d raise the placenta!”4

3. The midday streets were still being swept by the feet of countless people. The crowds of people sweeping the streets with their feet packed the road. Were the streets this busy every day? Every alley was filled with people who were indifferent to their own countrymen, and who had blocked their ears to the appeals of conscience. Every worksite was crowded with people who were killing time with their sweat. If these people were the ones who were left over, overflowing into the street after everywhere else had been filled, then they really were the ranks of “placenta raising fools.” And all of those fools would be spending their nights counting fly shit, and their days bustling about uselessly with nowhere to go. They would hold steely cold masses of stars to their breasts as they emerged from the womb with nothing to do but help keep the streets clean. He had submitted his resume to a publisher through a refugee aid association, 4

This vivid, uncommon expression implies “You’re such a fool that if you had a child, you’d throw out the baby and raise the placenta instead.”

but when the managing director asked him if he had a home, he put his nose in his porridge5 by answering honestly. The director said he would contact him, but that was half-a-year ago and he hadn’t heard anything. Thinking about it again, he once more felt acutely how large a role having a home played in being acknowledged as a person. He saw a real estate office banner flapping in the wind. He entered the alleyway where the office was located, and was surprised by the sound of gunshots pounding at his ears. “Tang!” Was it the sound of construction—or of destruction? “Tang!” It rang out once more. It was like the sound of a comma being engraved onto a page of history. He quickly looked around. But he couldn’t see anything to indicate where the sounds were coming from. Two magpies burst out and desperately took to the air, flapping heavily as they quickly flew off in the direction of Bukak Mountain, and then the alley was as peaceful as if nothing had happened. Nothing unusual was happening in the street. A streetcar passed. Automobiles raced by. The people showed no reaction. Where had the gunshots come from? Should he just act like he hadn’t heard anything? It wasn’t even close to getting dark, but an American ambulance blew through the middle of Jongno with a pair of lights on its forehead, wailing Ahhhhhhh as it headed off in the direction of Seodaemun. It seemed like something serious might have happened after all. Wondering to himself whether the ambulance was connected with the gunshots, he went back into the alleyway. The real estate office banner had caught his attention. “Do you have any listings for rooms?” “Don’t even ask me about rooms,” the owner said, giving him a pointed look over the top of his glasses before looking back down to the chessboard in front of him. “You don’t have anything at all?” As though the question was too pointless to even warrant attention, the owner continued with his game, muttering “check” into his white beard before straightening his legs. It didn’t seem as though he’d get any more of a response. He came back out to the alleyway. Every day for the whole autumn, he’d been getting nothing but negative responses everywhere he went. He couldn’t find even the slightest lead on a room. All of his effort went into finding a room, all day, every day. His will was exhausted, and so were his legs. When he thought of the bleak future that awaited, the energy drained out of him.

i.e. “shot himself in the foot”

Was the dreary overcast weather a sign of snow? A young man like him wasn’t likely to freeze to death out in the woods, but his mother was over sixty.

4. His mother seemed to have been listening for the sound of his return. She must have already heard the sound of the dry, brittle leaves being crushed beneath his feet because he saw the light in their hut come on as soon as he came around the hill. “Did you get something to eat, Mom?” “It’s already dark out. Did you find a house?” Even before he sat down, his mother set a pot on the table. It was their dinner—a small stack of four wheat ddeok. “Mom, you should have some more. I wasn’t able to find a house today, either.” “Aigu, who knew finding a house could be so difficult. What a mess. I was waiting for you to come back all day.” His mother gave a long sigh, which she had never done before. “You know that guy that’s always yelling and screaming? With the red eyes? He took our rake!” “He what?” “I went out this evening to try getting some more leaves, but then he came by and yelled at me again. He says he can’t understand why we’re up here in this forest causing problems for other people when there’s so much room available in the air raid shelters.” “Then what?” “He said that if we spend the winter up here, the mountain will be stripped down to bare red mud and then all the houses at the bottom of the hill will be wiped out by landslides when the spring comes. Then he got nasty and said we were beggars, and nothing but a nuisance.” “He said that! What happened next?” “So I told him that we were looking for a house. But he just said that no one would rent a house to beggars like us and that we needed to just go to the refugee slum. Imagine, calling Jangchundan6 a slum!” “That’s terrible.” “But just look at this. He said that we needed to leave immediately. He gave me a murderous look, then he took the rake and tore down all the straw sacks. So I had to spend 6

a park formerly located on the present site of the Seoul Shilla Hotel

the whole evening going around and putting them all back up again.” “That’s it. There’s no way the people in the North could be this cruel. Mom, let’s leave for the North!” “Do what! How are we supposed to cross that horrible 38th parallel?” “Other people cross it all the time.” “But do they cross north, too?” “Of course they do.” “Let’s go, then. We’ll need to take care of your father’s remains when we get up there. We can’t keep hauling him around with us. What do they say about people in the North? Are they nicer there?” “Well they couldn’t be as bad as they are here.” “Alright, let’s go.” They burned their two remaining candles until late in the night and then left the very next morning. After selling one of their blankets to get money for the trip, they bought two tickets for the night train to Cheongdan7 and went to Seoul Station. They had very little to take with them. He carried his father’s remains slung over his back in their other blanket, while his mother carried the bowl and their two pots on a cord. People overflowed from the station into the street. How could there be so many people everywhere? The inside of the station was so packed with people that there wasn’t even room to move an inch. Squeezing in, he found a seat on a bench for his mother. “I’ll be! If it isn’t the woman from Gonggyeong Valley,” said the woman seated next to his mother, eyes wide with astonishment. The woman took his mother’s hand. “Aren’t you Village Headman Park’s daughter?” asked his mother. His mother also recognized the other woman. They had lived in neighboring villages before his family went to Manchuria, and now they were meeting by chance there in the station. He also recognized the woman’s husband. “Gosh, it must have been a decade!” The enthusiastic handshake felt warm in his hand. The woman asked his mother, “But what are you doing here? When did you get back from Manchuria?” “Well, what brings you here?” “We just came from the North. Life was too hard up there, and people said things are better down here. So we’re on our way to Gangwon-do.” “Oh my! It’s like that in the North, too? We’re heading north right now…” 7

a county located immediately south of the 38th parallel, now part of North Korea

“North? Aigu, don’t even think about going there. The people who are well off do fine, but there’s no way to make ends meet if you’re poor. If the people with money have already taken all the land and houses, what are the rest of us supposed to do? Even the people who didn’t have money to begin with were able to get just as much for themselves through business. If we’d gotten involved in some sort of business, then we would have gotten our hands on some money, too. But Ok-sun’s father here had no interest in any of that and he just laughed at what everyone else was doing. But things only got harder and harder for us. We wouldn’t have gone through that difficult journey across the border if we could have avoided it,” the woman said. “Aigu, you’re in the exact same situation we are. Some of the people who came back from Manchuria with us have made a bit of money dealing on the black market, but my baby here just laughed at them even though we were starving. Looks like things up there are the same as they are here. If it won’t make any difference, what’s the point in crossing that awful border?” “That’s what I’m saying. So things down here are just as difficult, huh? I’ve heard that muslin is selling for thirty or forty won per ja.8” “That was what it was selling for when we came. But that’s a long time ago now. What about houses in the North? Are they easy to find?” “Easy? There aren’t nearly enough homes. There’s a scramble whenever something comes available, no matter what it’s like. So what are the chances of finding a place? There are just so many people coming from Manchuria looking for houses. And then there are the people going around looking for houses because they got chased out of their own homes. It’s the same thing everywhere you look. There’s nothing available. Nothing.” “It’s the same here. We couldn’t find a house, so we’ve been stuck off in the woods, eating nothing but wheat flour ddeok.” “So there aren’t any houses here, either! Even that’s the same as in the North then.” “Now that I’ve heard what you said, it sure seems like even the housing situation is exactly the same. Gosh.” “It looks like we came down here for nothing.” “And we were about to go north for no reason.” This wasn’t just the two women venting their frustrations to each other. The men had been discussing the same things and stood facing each other, looking downcast. People around them began standing up and bustling about. It seemed that the ticket check had begun. “Mom!” “What is it?” 8

approximately 30cm

“I don’t think things will be any better even if we head back to our hometown.” “Well, after hearing what Headman Park’s daughter said, it sure seems that way.” They fidgeted about dejectedly as all the other passengers filed out and the ticket check gate closed. The lobby was suddenly empty, like an ocean drained of water, leaving only a sharp, drafty chill behind.