One Left: A Novel Page 6

  The tiniest drop of this solution turned water red, a little more made it black. Fatal if swallowed, it was used for washing the girls’ privates.

  Wandering in search of the girl in the yellow dress, she finds herself in front of the mini-mart. The man who runs it is combing his wife’s hair. Eyes closed, the wife entrusts herself to him, and it’s like he’s taken her in his embrace the way he supports her from behind. Even at a distance she can almost feel the trembling hand holding the orange, hatchet-shaped comb. How marvelous—he’s got the palsy and there he is combing her hair! Combing as if it’s the only task left for him in this world.

  The wife is paralyzed from the waist down and keeps to the living quarters at the back of the shop, lying sideways and facing out. From there she does checkout for the customers and their purchases. The alteration shop woman finds her unsightly and won’t buy so much as a pack of gum there. Even though she knows the mart woman would have an awful time hoisting herself to a sitting position.

  Maybe they’re having the time of their life, this couple. Maybe it’s so they can savor this blessing for as long as possible that he takes the longest time combing her hair.

  As far as she knows, he used to work at city hall, was the envy of all, but gambled away a fortune and the family was ruined. To pay off his gambling debts he went to work at a fish farm on a coastal island and there he had a stroke. The alteration woman blames the wife’s disability on the husband. I mean, think about it, she’ll say. After the husband had his stroke, the wife did this, that, and the other thing to pay off what remained of his debt, and then one day she slipped on a sheet of ice and injured her spinal cord. Three surgeries later she still couldn’t stand, and that’s when the man took on the mini-mart.

  There, he did it, he’s dropped the comb. Standing still as a statue, she waits for him to pick it up.

  Her feet have brought her to an alley she doesn’t normally visit; 15-bŏnji is a labyrinth of interlocking alleys with no apparent logic to the layout. Some of the alleys seem endless, others are short and blunted, and just when you’re getting used to them forking in two or even three, you run into a dead end. And then there are the alleys that look like roller coasters.

  And now guess what? It’s the old man. Who’s never by himself, who always has his son in tow. The son is well over 50 but functions at the level of a 5- or 6-year-old due to a birth defect. You would never believe the two of them are father and son. The father with his knotty chin and wavy hair is slight and appears to be bending over to get a closer look at the world, whereas the son is gigantic like a wrestler, his eyebrows thick and his features well defined.

  She’s often witnessed the father cajoling the massive son after he’s stopped dead in his tracks in the alley. But she’s never seen him snarling and threatening the son or venting his fury at him.

  According to the Seoul Beauty Parlor woman, the old man is absolutely devoted to the son. Decades ago he was visited by social workers who suggested sending the son to a facility; the old man grabbed a kitchen knife and all hell broke loose. Since then no one has dared bring up the issue with him.

  What if I run into them? This is her constant concern, even though it’s this father and son whom she encounters most frequently among the denizens of 15-bŏnji. They’ve never once acknowledged her, much less harassed her, but her heart goes into overdrive at the sight of them.

  She’s hit by a urine stink but can’t tell if it’s coming from them or from the alley.

  The old man roams 15-bŏnji scavenging electric wire from the deserted homes, then strips out the copper and sells it to the junk dealer. The old man’s house is down the hill from the house where she lives, separated by two alleys, its backyard visible beyond the collapsed wall. The yard is a war zone of bundles of electric wire and copper.

  She wonders how he strips the copper from the wire. Like peeling blood vessels from a dead animal?

  Oh no! There it is, the orange onion sack. And inside it a kitten.

  It’s the old man’s side job. He’s a merciless hunter of kittens in 15-bŏnji, and he sells them at the market. No one raises a stink about it—the kittens are strays bred among strays. According to the beauty parlor woman he gets 5,000 wŏn per kitten—at the very least.

  Four months ago she was roaming the alleys like today when she came across the old man at work: his hand shaped like a bird’s foot darting out to grab a kitten around the neck, then stuffing it into the orange onion bag as the terrified creature clawed at the air, then hanging the elongated bag from the gate of the nearest of the vacated houses. The ideal snare, that mesh bag.

  All the while, the adult son looked on meekly like a grade schooler in detention. She feels somehow as if the entire process is being imprinted step by step on his brain.

  This time the old man hangs the bag with the kitten from a utility pole and strides off down the alley.

  Whether from exhaustion or resignation the kitten in the bag is dead still, not thrashing about, not yowling. On the one hand it would seem fortunate if the kitten has early on accepted its fate, but at the same time she’s nagged by a thought: judging from the bones jutting against its hide, it wasn’t nursed much.

  If 15-bŏnji were a backwoods hollow instead of a redevelopment zone where cats run free, would the old man be hunting rabbits, pheasants, or boar?

  She also wonders what he’ll buy with the 5,000 wŏn he gets for a kitten? Rice, eggs, salt, ramyŏn, milk, potatoes, flour?

  At the mini-mart 5,000 wŏn will buy a tray of eggs. About a month ago she saw him purchase a tray of eggs there.

  Or maybe he uses that money to pay for his electricity, his water, his gas?

  Sensing her presence, the kitten releases a feeble but persistent meow. Her face hardens as she looks about the alley. No one there but her and the kitten.

  The bag is within reach if she gets up on tiptoe. But she dares not retrieve the bag and free the kitten. She no longer has the heart.

  It’s not that she lacks mercy but rather she’s too old to be dispensing it. This is how she rationalizes it, but still she’s swept by guilt. She tries to convince herself that no harm’s been done, and yet she feels something wicked has happened.

  As soon as the kitten was bagged it belonged to the old man.

  Just like the girls became the property of a haha, okusan, obasan, or otosan after they were snatched and taken away while weeding the field, picking cotton, fetching water from the village well, returning home from washing laundry in the stream, heading to school, or tending to their ailing father.

  Back in the beginning, was that how people staked out the virgin land? And the chestnut trees, the persimmon trees, and the other trees that bear nuts and fruit? And the streams? And the dogs, the goats, the pigs, and the other pets and livestock?

  At the Manchuria comfort station the girls were livestock, no different from chickens or goats. If the girls didn’t obey or were caught trying to escape, otosan would lead them around by a leather leash looped about their necks.

  4

  SHE STANDS OUTSIDE the gate, gaze fixed on the house. She feels she’s been gone since she was a baby and is allowed to return only now that she’s aged all she possibly can, almost a century later.

  She’s scared to open the gate and enter the yard. She’d like to return to the alley but realizes she has no place to go.

  Placing the mask from the girl off to the side of the veranda, she goes to the faucet, turns it on, and watches the water gurgle from the sky-blue hose. As the water swirls around the drain she has the illusion she’s being swept away by it.

  She stares blankly as the reflection of her face in the washbasin breaks up, then tilts the basin to empty the water as well as the reflection, the water reminding her of the tap water with which she used to clean her privates at the comfort station.

  Haha instructed the girls to use a solution, but she preferred plain water because the red color of the solution made her feel she was washing her privates with th
e blood of a farm animal.

  The number of times she washed herself equaled the number of men who had come and gone from her the previous day. She washed and she washed until the flesh she washed felt as if it belonged to someone else and not her. Having to use cold water even in winter, she could feel the cold invade her down below.

  Pretty, oval-faced Hyangsuk, a P’yŏngyang kisaeng academy graduate who was coveted among the officers, suffered terribly from menstrual cramps. Unable to take men during her period, she was led to the nearby village by haha, who instructed a Chinese gynecologist to apply an icepack to her privates. It felt like her frozen privates were breaking off, she whimpered, and then out squirted a flood of dark blood.

  “Your blood’s dead!” declared Kŭmbok ŏnni.

  Word got out among the girls that the icepack treatment had shrunk Hyangsuk’s uterus to the size of a chicken gizzard.

  Haha and otosan would have a girl’s uterus removed at their pleasure—yet another way in which the girls were treated like livestock. If a girl got pregnant, her uterus was removed fetus and all as a preventive measure. A pregnant girl wouldn’t fetch the price of a dog.

  Barely 13 when taken to the comfort station and with no experience of a menstrual cycle, she saw how hot and bothered the mature girls were about the possibility of becoming pregnant. If a girl showed signs of morning sickness or a bulging stomach, otosan took her away in the truck, and by the end of the day the girl would return looking as if she’d been drained of blood.

  The girls simply couldn’t imagine their uteruses being cut out.

  Even with all the on-the-spot abortions and uterus removals, there were a few girls who got pregnant and had a baby, thanks to a torn or unused sakku.

  When she missed her period, Ch’unhŭi ŏnni had a pregnancy scare and tried to induce an abortion with a clothes iron. Hanok ŏnni handled the iron, using chopsticks to feed its fuel box. The more coals she added, the hotter the iron became.

  Ch’unhŭi ŏnni scowled. “Damn, that’s hot ! Are you sure this gets rid of it?”

  “Just keep still!” barked Hanok ŏnni as she added one more coal.

  Hanok ŏnni also knew that granny-flower roots would do the job. They bloomed all around the family burial mounds back home. She kept her eyes peeled for them in Manchuria but no luck.

  From the time she starting having a period she was scared above all else by the tearing of a sakku, afraid she would catch a disease or get pregnant. Any semblance of a tear and she would bolt up and beg the irritated soldier to use a new one.

  When she bolted up as if thunderstruck, fleas shot from her like sesame seeds in a fry pan.

  Haha also handed out bean-sized pills. Supposedly they prevented disease. Once when she thought no one was looking she threw hers into the outhouse pit, but haha found out and she caught a beating. I had to go and tell her I threw them away—why didn’t I just say I took them? She didn’t know how to lie.

  The strong-smelling pills felt like fire in their nostrils. The girls had no idea they were made of mercury.

  Even during their periods the girls took the soldiers. Deep into their vagina went a cotton ball the size of a quail egg to block the flow of blood. The more soldiers they took, the deeper the cotton ball went. Whenever she spread her legs to put in the cotton, she felt downy like a duck.

  Very rarely there would be a stillbirth. Too much scrubbing with the solution and the injections of the toxic 606 tended to make sure a fetus wouldn’t survive till birth.

  Once while they were eating, Suok ŏnni began writhing in pain. Kŭmbok ŏnni felt her belly. “I think you’re pregnant.”

  Suok ŏnni’ s face turned white.

  A few days later otosan took her in his truck to the nearby village. What with the soldiers they were taking, the girls didn’t notice Suok ŏnni’ s return until the next morning. Peeping into her room, they saw her shivering and heard her teeth chattering. The blanket that covered her body reeked of urine and menstrual flow. Haegŭm brought her own blanket and covered Suok ŏnni. Yŏnsun did likewise. She herself took the hand that stuck out from the blanket; it felt like bones encased in ice.

  “They said I was seven months along.” Suok ŏnni heaved a sigh; her breath had the strong smell of steamed eggplant. “It was a boy, and one side was black and rotten from head to toe.”

  Kŭmbok ŏnni dabbed at her face and neck with a damp towel.

  “If he was seven months, he must have had his fingers?” Suok ŏnni said to Kŭmbok ŏnni.

  “My baby brother came out two months early but his face was fine,” mumbled Haegŭm. “Mom asked me to count his fingers, and yup, he had all ten. Then she said to count his toes. I guess she was afraid he was missing something. I told her they were all there. And that’s when she told me to give him to her to hold. I think she was really worried. But like I said, his face was fine, and his hair was pretty nice too.”

  At that point Hanok ŏnni nudged her.

  After Suok ŏnni lost the baby her eyes were never the same. Her irises never stayed put but kept rolling upward as though they would dis-appear forever.

  Whenever she had an injection of the dark red, endlessly burning 606, she felt her arm was coming off, it hurt so much. For the next several days, it was like heaven and earth had switched places; she couldn’t keep food down and she gave off a pungent, nauseating smell. Her monthly cycle went out of whack. No one told the girls they were being injected with an arsenic compound that could leave them sterile. Not even the nurse who injected them. Haha told the girls it was a blood purifier—a flat-out lie.

  She detested washing sakku as much as getting the 606 shot. What with haha badgering the girls to use them sparingly and never handing out enough of them in the first place, the girls would wash and reuse them. The soldiers who had come and gone from them tossed the used sakku in the can on their way out. The fishy stink from the sakku heaped in the can left the girls retching. After breakfast the girls took their cans to the washing area and cleaned the sakku of ejaculate inside and out. After drying them on a sheet of plywood they added a sprink-ling of white disinfecting powder. Every time the girls cleaned the sakku they would shudder at the thought of all the soldiers who had come and gone from them the previous night. And at the prospect of having to take the same number of soldiers during the night to come.

  While the sakku were drying, the girls were in the yard taking in the sun. But they never had enough time because the soldiers began flocking in at nine in the morning. The enlisted men came between nine and five, the NCOs from five to ten, and the officers from ten to midnight. Some of the officers came in the middle of the night.

  That morning, too, the girls washed and hung their sakku to dry before gathering in the yard. Punsŏn stretched her legs out toward the sun; for most of the winter she’d been making the rounds of the other girls’ rooms to keep herself warm, ever since her body had shut down because of the cold and dampness and she could no longer take men—after which haha cut off her supply of hot water for her canister pack and the pea coal for her brazier. Punsŏn used to visit her just long enough to warm her feet with the hot-water pack.

  The Manchurian winter was so cold your breath and your pee would turn to ice as soon as you released it. Waking up in the morning, the girls were greeted with a sheet of ice on the window-side wall stretching to the ceiling. They braved the frigid winter with a blanket or two, the hot-water canister, and pea coal. The coal ration from haha was barely enough to keep them from freezing to death.

  “Mom was about to marry me off,” said Kisuk ŏnni to the girls huddled in the yard. Another strategy she used to avoid the military police with their red armbands was to hide in the rice chest. Kisuk ŏnni also tried hiding in a crematory but was caught and then brought to the comfort station.

  From the other girls at the station she learned that fretful parents were quick to try to marry off their daughters—whether to a widower with kids, a shriveled old man, or a man who was missing a leg—anything to prev
ent them from being taken away. But this was a mistaken assumption, as some girls were taken away in the presence of their husbands. The Japanese soldiers and military police had a sixth sense for ferreting out unmarried girls who tried to disguise themselves as married by wearing their hair in a bun covered by a towel.

  “My father faked a marriage report for me,” said Hanok ŏnni, eyes half shut from a sleepless night. “Ch’oe was the man’s name, he was sixteen years older . . . and I never did meet him face to face. My father made him swear he’d cancel the marriage report if I hooked up with someone I actually liked. So I went around with my hair in a bun, but the village head’s wife found out it was a fake marriage and she played a trick on me, said if I worked three years at a needle factory I’d make a pile of money. You see, the village head was Japanese.”

  “And where are you going to find an unmarried guy, anyway? They’d all been taken away to be soldiers, miners, or factory workers. This friend of mine had a face that was full of life and a wrinkled old man for a husband . . . damn shame!” Tongsuk ŏnni smiled faintly as she said this.

  “Damn shame or not, I kind of wish I’d married an old man.” Aesun’s tone was strained and monotonous; if there is such a thing as a threadbare voice it was hers.

  While the girls were being taken away to serve in the Women’s Labor Corps or at the comfort stations, the boys were drafted to work in the mines, the steel yards, the ammunition factories, the airports, and the railroad construction sites. Tongsuk ŏnni said her brother left their home village in Nonsan to work in Japan.

  “He saw this ad in the paper that an ironworks in Japan was hiring. They needed a hundred men and were providing housing, the same pay the Japanese got, and a certificate once you complete the two-year training period. And he was just itching to learn a trade.”