동백꽃

Today again our rooster was being chased about. I had just eaten lunch and was on my way out to gather firewood. Just as I started up the mountain path, behind me came a great fluttering of wings and a frantic squawking and crowing. Startled, I turned my head — and sure enough, the two of them were at it again.

Jeomsun's family rooster (a big-headed brute, solid and ill-favoured as a badger) was tearing into our small-bodied rooster without mercy. And not just any old beating either: he'd dart in with a flurry of wings, peck the comb, withdraw a moment, then dart in again, this time pecking the neck. Putting on a regular show as he wore him to a thread. And our miserable bird, every time he was struck, drove his beak into the dirt and let out only one piteous squeak — kik, kik. The unhealed comb would be pecked again, and the bright red blood dripped down in great gobs.

Watching this from above, I felt as though my own head had split and the blood were running from it; sparks burst in my eyes. I almost shouldered my A-frame stick and ran in to whack Jeomsun's rooster, then thought better of it and only shooed them apart with a feint.

This time too it must have been Jeomsun who'd set them on each other. To get a rise out of me — that was without a doubt her aim. Why this little wench has lately taken to growling at me as if she'd eat me alive, I cannot say.

Even the matter of the potatoes four days ago — I'd done not the slightest thing wrong by her. If a girl is going off to gather wild herbs, then go off and gather wild herbs — what's the meaning of pestering a man as he's putting up a fence? And quietly too, deadening the sound of her own footsteps, sneaking up behind me to ask —

"Hey! You doing the work all by yourself?"

— putting on this idle prattle.

Up to yesterday she and I scarcely talked, and even when we ran into each other we acted as if we hadn't seen one another and kept our reserve perfectly proper. Why she's grown so chummy with me all of a sudden today, I cannot fathom. The cheek of it — a girl barely the size of a colt, talking to a fellow at his work…

"Of course alone — what'm I supposed to do, gather a crowd?"

When I spat that out at her —

"You like working?"

or else,

"Why not wait till midsummer? Putting up a fence already?"

She rambled on with this and that, then, afraid someone would hear, clapped a hand over her mouth and giggled into it. Nothing especially funny about any of it — perhaps the warm weather had set in and the wench had gone clean off her head, I suspected. On top of that, after a moment, she glanced back toward her house, slid her right hand out of the front of her apron, and thrust it abruptly under my chin. Three thick potatoes — when she'd roasted them I couldn't say, but the steam was still puffing off them — were squeezed tight in her fist.

"You folks ain't got these, have you?"

she said in a self-satisfied loud voice, and added that since folks finding out that she'd given them to me would mean trouble, I should hurry up and eat them right there. And then —

"Spring potatoes are mighty fine, you know."

"I don't eat potatoes. You eat them yourself."

Without even turning my head, with the hand that had been working I shoved the potatoes back over my shoulder. But she showed no sign of leaving; not only that, she began breathing in odd huffing breaths, growing rougher by the moment. Wondering what now, I turned and looked — and was truly taken aback. We'd been in this village going on three years, and I had never once seen Jeomsun's swarthy face flush as red as a carrot in this fashion. On top of that, with venom in her eyes she stared me down a long while, and at the end tears even welled in them. And, snatching up her basket, she clenched her teeth and bolted for the paddy bank, all but tripping over herself as she went.

When some elder of the village happened to ask,

"You'd better hurry up and get married, eh?"

with a laugh,

"No worry, mister! When the time comes I'll go right enough!"

— that was Jeomsun, easy as anything. By nature she's not a girl given to bashfulness, nor the kind of half-wit who'd let tears come into her eyes for being put out. Were she vexed she'd sooner bring her basket down hard on my back and run off.

But the dreadful figure she cut going off, and ever since then, the moment she sees me she works herself up as if to swallow me whole.

Granted that not eating the potatoes she offered may have been rude — but she gave them, didn't she? So why "You folks ain't got these"? Even apart from that — they're the land stewards and we hold our patch of land at their pleasure, so we're forever bowing and scraping. When we first came to this village and were in straits with no roof over our heads, it was Jeomsun's family who'd given us the lot to set our house on and helped us put it up. And whenever our farming ran short of provisions, Mother and Father would go to Jeomsun's people and borrow without delay, and afterward they'd praise the family up to the very heavens, swearing such generous folk were not to be found again. All the while, when two seventeen-year-olds were seen whispering and going about together, the village would talk — Mother was the one to give me the warning. Because if I and Jeomsun got up to anything, Jeomsun's family would be wroth, and we'd lose the land and be turned out of the house both.

And here this wench, for no reason at all, was working herself into a fury and trying to drive me to the grave.

It was the evening of the day after she'd gone off in tears. I was coming down the mountain with a heavy load of firewood on my A-frame when from somewhere came the sound of a chicken being murdered. Whose house could be slaughtering a chicken, I wondered, and as I came round behind Jeomsun's wattle fence, my eyes went round as moons. Jeomsun was sitting alone on her own porch, and there in front of her skirt she had pinned down our brood hen, and —

"You wretched layer! Die, just die!"

— and she was beating her without mercy. And if she'd at least gone for the head, well and good — but punching, knuckle and all, into the very rump, so as to make sure she would lay no more eggs.

My eyes lit with two angry fires, and my limbs trembled, but I cast a glance about and only then saw that there was no one else at Jeomsun's house. I caught up my A-frame stick at once and brought it down hard on the middle of the wattle fence, and —

"You wench! Trying to keep someone else's hen from laying, are you?"

— I roared at her.

But Jeomsun gave not the slightest start; she sat just as composed as before and went on with her "Die, die," beating away at the bird as if it were her own. From this it was perfectly clear she'd timed it for when I'd be coming down off the mountain, had taken the bird in hand beforehand, and was now whacking it under my nose for me to see.

But, that being so, I couldn't very well charge into someone else's house and brawl with a girl, and I saw I was at a sharp disadvantage. Each time the hen took a blow, the only thing I could do was bring my A-frame stick down on the wattle fence again. The more I struck the wattle, though, the more the woven brushwood gave way, leaving only the bare stakes. But however I thought about it, I was the one coming out behind.

"Hey, you wench! You really mean to kill someone else's hen?"

When, eyes hatchet-sharp, I bawled at her again, only then did she come pattering over to the wattle, take aim straight for my head where I stood beyond it, and fling the hen at me.

"Ugh, what a foul thing! Foul!"

"And who told you to keep holding the foul thing all this while? Wretched girl, you—"

— and as if I too found the thing foul, I turned and went hurrying along the wattle, my temper risen as high as it could rise — for as the hen flailed, she'd given my forehead a great slap of wet droppings, and from the look of it, not only had the egg-sac burst, but she'd surely taken a deep-set hurt as well. And to my back, in a voice barely meant for me to hear,

"You fool!"

"Hey! You're a born cripple, ain't you?"

As if that weren't enough,

"Hey! Your daddy's a eunuch, they say?"

"What — my daddy's a eunuch, is that it?"

— I was about to fire back, and a fever rose in my head and I whipped my head about to look — but Jeomsun's head, which by rights ought to have still been above the wattle, was nowhere to be seen. Then, as I turned to go, again she flung the same insults out beyond the wattle. To take all this abuse and not get back so much as a single retort — when I thought of it, I was so vexed I didn't even feel my big toe split where it caught on a stone, and at last tears welled fierce in both my eyes.

But Jeomsun's persecutions were not these alone.

Saying she was fond of cock's-comb, when there was no one about she would now and then drive her family rooster over and set him on our rooster. Her family's rooster, you see, was a fearsome-looking creature, and when it came to a scrap he was always game for it, so it was a foregone conclusion he would win. So time after time our rooster would have his comb and his eyes left running with blood. Sometimes when our rooster wouldn't come out, this wench would come over with a fistful of feed, lure him out, and set them at it.

Things being thus, I had no choice but to lay my own plan. One day I caught hold of our rooster and slipped quietly over to the fermenting jars. Feeding gochujang to a fighting cock, they say, fills him with such mettle as a sick ox feeds on a pit-viper to draw strength. I scooped a saucer of gochujang out of the jar and worked it in toward the bird's beak, and tried to feed it to him. Whether the bird himself had got a taste for gochujang, he didn't refuse and even put away the better part of half a saucer right enough. Since right after eating he wouldn't show his mettle yet, I shut him up in the roost a while to let the strength come on.

After hauling a couple of A-frame loads of compost out to the field, I took a break, picked up the bird, and stepped outside. As luck had it, no one was out, and only Jeomsun was inside her own wattle, hunched up at some work — pulling old clothes apart, perhaps, or fluffing cotton.

I went over to the field where Jeomsun's family rooster was loafing about, set down our bird, and quietly watched for the issue. The two birds went at it again as ever, but at first there was no result to show for it. With the splendid pecking that came our bird's way he was bleeding again, and for all that he could only beat his wing-roots and leap up and up; he hardly got in a single peck of his own.

But once, for whatever reason, he heaved himself up with all his might and sprang, raked at the eyes with his claws as he came down, and pecked at the comb. The big bird, startled at this, faltered backwards and gave ground. Seizing the moment, our small rooster darted in again like a flash and pecked the comb once more, so that even from that fierce-skulled head the blood couldn't help but run.

Right, I've got it — feeding him gochujang's the trick! — and to myself I was tickled fit to die. Just then, taken aback at my having of all things set up a cock-fight, Jeomsun, who'd come out and was staring over the wattle, looked sour-mouthed and knit her brows.

With both hands I drummed on my own backside and went on calling out,

"That's the way! That's the way!" — my spirits soaring clear up over the top of my head.

But before long my soul fairly drained out of me and I stood as silent and still as a post. For the big rooster, in revenge for that one peck, was now pecking back in fits and frenzies, and our rooster, unable so much as to flinch, was being beaten beyond recall. Seeing this, this time it was Jeomsun who burst out laughing, and laughing pointedly so it would carry plain over to me.

Unable to stand it any longer, I rushed in, snatched up our rooster, and brought him back into the house. If only I'd given him a bit more gochujang — bringing the fight on too quickly was a bitter regret. Coming back to the fermenting jars, I worked the gochujang up to his beak again. Whether for excitement or what, this time he wouldn't take it at all.

Helpless, I laid the bird down on his back and put a cigarette holder into his mouth. Mixing some gochujang with water, I poured it bit by bit through the opening. The bird seemed somewhat distressed and gave little kik-kik sneezes, but the present discomfort, I thought, was nothing compared to the bleeding day after day.

After about two small saucers' worth of the gochujang water, however, my heart sank entirely. The bird, who'd been so lively, somehow gently twisted his neck back and went limp in my hand. For fear Father might see, I quickly hid him in the roost — and only this morning did he seem to have come round at last.

And after all that, here on my way back I find them at it once more — this wretched girl must have, taking advantage of there being no one home, come into our house, fetched the rooster out from the roost, and brought him out — there's no other explanation.

I caught up the bird again and shut him in, my mind in turmoil; but for all that, I couldn't very well not go up the mountain to gather firewood.

As I broke off dead pine branches, thinking quietly to myself, I felt for all I was worth like wringing that wretched neck of hers. This time, when I went down, I'd lay one good hard one across that wretched girl's spine — and so, gathering my wood half-heartedly, I came tearing back down.

Almost at the house, I heard the sound of a grass-leaf whistle and my feet stopped dead. Among the great boulders strewn along the mountain's foot, the yellow mountain-spicebush blossoms lay sprinkled thick. Tucked in among them sat Jeomsun, blowing the grass-leaf whistle as plaintively as you please. What startled me even more was the flapping of wings — pud-deuk, pud-deuk — that came from in front of her. Without a doubt, this wretch, to provoke me, had once again brought out our rooster, set up the cock-fight right in the path of my way down, and was sitting there in front of it, blowing her grass-leaf whistle as composed as anything.

My temper boiled up to its limit, and along with sparks, tears poured out of both my eyes. Without even pausing to take off my A-frame, I flung it down and, brandishing the A-frame stick, came charging in.

Coming closer, I saw that, sure enough as I had guessed, our rooster was bleeding and at the last gasp. Bird or no bird — that even so she could sit there without batting an eye, blowing her grass-leaf whistle, set my teeth chattering all the more. Even in the village it was being said — and I myself had once thought her a brisk, hard-working girl with a pretty face — but seeing her now, the look in her eyes was for all the world like a fox-cub's.

I rushed in and, before I knew what I was doing, brought down the big rooster with a single blow. The bird flopped over and lay there, not so much as a leg twitching, dead on the spot. And as I stood blank, Jeomsun, with eyes flashing fierce, came at me, and I went sprawling backward.

"You wretch! Why'd you go and kill someone else's chicken?"

"What of it?"

— and as I made to get up,

"What — you brat! Whose chicken do you think it is?"

— and at the shove she gave me square in the chest I went sprawling backward again. And then, thinking it over quietly, I felt both anger and shame, and besides, having gone and done such a thing — now perhaps we really would lose the land and be driven from the house too.

I got unsteadily to my feet, covered my eyes with my sleeve, and on a sudden impulse let out a great wail. But when Jeomsun stepped up close to me and asked,

"Then you won't do it again, ever?"

— only then did it feel as though I'd found a way out. I wiped away my tears at once, and though I'd no idea what it was I wasn't supposed to do, —

"Yeah!"

— I answered without a thought.

"You try doing it again, and I'll keep on giving you no peace, see if I don't."

"Yeah, yeah, I won't do it again now!"

"Don't you worry about the dead chicken — I won't go telling on you."

And with that, as if pushed by some hand or other, she came down hard with both her hands on my shoulders. By the force of which my own body too was carried over, and we tumbled into the very thick of the yellow mountain-spicebush blossoms in their full bloom and were buried there.

By that sharp, sweet scent, my whole mind went giddy, as though the ground itself were giving way.

"Don't you breathe a word!"

"Yeah!"

A moment later, from down below —

"Jeomsun! Jeomsun! Where's that wench gone, dropping her sewing in the middle?"

— and her mother, sounding as if she'd just come back from somewhere, was in a great temper.

Jeomsun, scared half to death, slipped quietly off down beneath the blossoms toward the foot of the mountain; while I, hugging the boulder, had no choice but to crawl on hands and knees up the mountainside as fast as I could go.