운수 좋은 날

It hung overcast in a sullen, sulking way as if it might snow, but no snow came; instead a rain that was almost ice came down in a steady drip and drizzle.

If ever there was one, this was a lucky day for Kim Chom-ji, who pulled a rickshaw inside the Dongsomun gate — the first such day in a long while. After taking the lady from the front house in to the streetcar line on her way "into town" (the place she was bound for being, strictly speaking, no further outside the gate than where he stood, but never mind), he hung about the streetcar stop on the chance of another fare, sending what was almost a beggar's pleading look at every soul who got off, until at last he was hired to pull a man in a Western suit — a schoolteacher, by the look of him — all the way to Donggwang School.

Thirty jeon for the first, fifty for the second — at the very crack of dawn, this was no everyday occurrence. The truth was, his luck had been so dead and gone that for almost ten days he hadn't seen so much as a coin; and when those three or five copper ten-jeon pieces clinked into his palm, Kim Chom-ji had nearly wept with joy. And how needful that eighty jeon was to him on this day, of all days, no one but he could say. With it, he could wet his dry throat with a cup of cheap rice wine — and, more than that, buy a bowl of seolleongtang for his sick wife.

It had been more than a month now since his wife had been hacking with that cough. They were eating millet rice when they ate at all, half the time skipping meals, so of course she'd never had a single dose of medicine. Not that they couldn't have managed if they'd tried; it was only that he held to a creed of his own — give the disease, that wretch, a dose of medicine and it'd take a liking to the place and keep coming back. Since she'd never been seen by a doctor, no one knew what disease it was; but seeing how she lay flat on her back, unable not only to get up but even to turn on her side, it was clear enough she was in a bad way. The disease had taken this severe a turn ten days ago when a meal of millet rice had brought on a bad bout of indigestion.

That time too, Kim Chom-ji had after a long while got hold of some money and brought home a measure of millet and a bundle of ten-jeon firewood, and — to hear him tell it — that damned wench had set straight at the pot in a wild scramble. With her heart in a hurry and the fire not catching, she'd grabbed the half-cooked stuff with her hand instead of a spoon and shoved it in until knot-like lumps swelled up on either cheek, as if someone might snatch it away from her — and from that very evening she was rolling her eyes back, complaining of a tightness in her chest and a cramp in her belly, throwing a kind of fit. Kim Chom-ji at the time, his temper boiling over, said —

"Hey, you damned wench, no helping a wretched fate — sick from not eating, sick from eating, what'm I supposed to do! Open your eyes properly!" — and he gave the sick woman one slap across the cheek. Her rolled-back eyes did right themselves a little, but a wet film stood in them. Kim Chom-ji's own eyelids burned hot too.

For all that, the patient never lost her appetite. For three days now she'd been at her husband, begging for a sip of seolleongtang broth.

"You damned wench! A woman who can't even keep millet rice down — seolleongtang! She'll just stuff it in and have another fit!" — that was the way he'd shouted her down. And yet not being able to buy it for her had not sat easy in his heart.

Now he could buy the seolleongtang. He could buy a bowl of porridge for little Gaedongi (three years old) too, who whined with hunger beside his sick mother. — Kim Chom-ji's heart, with eighty jeon clutched in his palm, was full to the brim. But his good fortune did not stop there. He was wiping the back of his neck — sweat and rainwater running mingled — with a Japanese-cotton kerchief that had become more an oil-rag than anything else, when, just as he was rounding the school gate, a voice from behind called, "Rickshaw!" Kim Chom-ji could see at one glance that the man hailing him was a student at that very school. The student demanded straight off, "How much to Namdaemun Station?"

No doubt he was a fellow boarding at the school, taking advantage of the winter holiday to go home to the country. He had set his mind on going today, but with the rain and his luggage he'd been at a loss what to do, until catching sight of Kim Chom-ji he'd come running out. Why else would he be dragging his shoes along, half-unlaced, in a "kokura" Western suit, getting a steady soaking on his way after Kim Chom-ji?

"All the way to Namdaemun Station, you say?" — and Kim Chom-ji hesitated for a moment. Was he loath, in this downpour with no rain gear, to go splashing all that distance? Had the first and second fares already been enough for him? No — that wasn't it. Strangely enough, before this run of fortune that came biting at his heels one after another, he was a touch frightened. And his wife's parting words as he'd left the house had begun to gnaw at him. — When the call had come from the lady at the front house, the patient, with a pleading look in those uncommonly large, sunken eyes that seemed the only living thing left in her bone-thin face, had murmured in a voice no louder than a mosquito's, "Don't go out today. For mercy's sake, stay home. I'm so ill —" and her breath had rattled and rasped in her chest.

Kim Chom-ji at the time had said as if it were nothing, "Tch, you damned wench, the things you'll come out with. Sit here clinging to one another and who's going to feed us, eh?" — and as he had bounded out, the patient, raising her arm as if to hold him back, called after him in a choked voice, "I told you not to go — well then come back early, then."

The moment he heard the words "all the way to the station," his wife's convulsively trembling hand, her uncommonly large eyes, her about-to-weep face flickered, one after another, before Kim Chom-ji's eyes. "So how much to Namdaemun Station, I asked you?" — and the student, watching the rickshaw man's face anxiously, muttered as if to himself, "The Incheon train's at eleven, and after that — around two, is it?"

"One won and fifty jeon, please." The words tumbled out of Kim Chom-ji's mouth almost before he knew it. Hearing the enormous sum out of his own mouth, he was startled himself. How long had it been since he'd even named such a figure? And then the courage of the chance to earn that money burned away his worry over the patient. Surely nothing could happen by today, he told himself. Whatever happened, he could not let pass this fortune that was greater than the first and the second doubled together.

"One won fifty's a bit steep." The student tilted his head as he said it.

"Oh no, sir. By the distance, it's over fifteen ri from here to there. And on a wet day like this you ought to give a bit more." — and the rickshaw man's face, breaking into a smile, was overflowing with a joy he could not hide.

"Then I'll give you what you ask. Hurry, won't you?" The young, generous fare left those words behind and went briskly off to put on his clothes and gather his luggage.

With the student aboard, Kim Chom-ji's legs grew strangely light. Less running than nearly flying. The wheels too turned at such speed that they did not so much roll as slide, like a skate gliding over ice. The frozen ground was made the more slippery by the rain.

Before long the legs of the puller grew heavy. The reason was that he was nearing his own house. A fresh worry pressed on his chest. "Don't go out today. I'm so ill —" the words rang and rang in his ear. And the patient's sunken eyes seemed to be glaring at him as if in reproach. Then it seemed he could hear Gaedongi's loud sobbing, "waah, waah." And the rasping of breath being gathered in gulps. "What is it now? I'll miss the train!" — the impatient cry of his fare barely reached his ear. Coming to himself with a start, Kim Chom-ji found himself stopped, half-crouched, in the middle of the road, the rickshaw shafts still in his hand.

"Yes, yes." — and Kim Chom-ji ran on again. The further the house drew behind, the more spirit came back into Kim Chom-ji's stride. As if only by working his legs faster could he forget the worries and cares that kept rising into his head without rest.

Having pulled him to the station and got those astonishing one won fifty jeon truly into his own hand, the puller — never thinking, as he himself had said, of the ten ri he'd come splashing through the rain — was as grateful as if he had been given the money for free. Joyful as if he'd come into a sudden fortune. Bowing several times to the young fare who was scarcely older than his own son might have been, "Have a safe trip, sir," he said with the most respectful manner.

But going back through this downpour, with an empty rickshaw rattling away — that was beyond all bearing. As the sweat his labour had brought out cooled, a chill began to creep up out of his hungry guts and out of his sodden clothes, and he felt to the marrow how the matter of one won fifty jeon was at once a fine thing and a wretched thing. As he set off from the station his step had no strength in it. His whole body shrank in upon itself; he felt as if he might fall down on the spot and never get up.

"Damn it all! To go rattling back home in this rain with an empty rickshaw. Begging-bowl rain, may-your-grandmother-be-cursed rain — what right have you to come slapping at a man's face like this!"

He raged on, growling as if he were defying somebody. Just then, a fresh light shone in his head — namely the thought, "Why am I going off like this? If I hang about here and wait for the next train, I might pick up another fare." Today his fortune had been so uncannily good that who could swear another such windfall wouldn't come? He had been brought to the kind of belief on which a man would lay a bet that the fortune that kept rolling its tail behind it was waiting for him in particular. But standing right at the station, what with the bullying of the station rickshaw men, would not do.

So — and he had done it many times before — he stood his rickshaw a little distance from the streetcar stop in front of the station, between the footpath and the streetcar line, and prowled about the area to take stock. After a while the train came in, and several dozens of passengers came pouring out onto the platform. Among them, looking for a fare, Kim Chom-ji's eye fixed on the figure of a woman in Western-style hair and high-heeled shoes with even a "manteau" wrapped about her — a former gisaeng, perhaps, or some loose-living schoolgirl. He sidled slowly up to her.

"Madam, will you not take a rickshaw?"

The schoolgirl, or whatever she was, drew herself up haughtily for a long moment, kept her lips pressed shut, and did not so much as look at Kim Chom-ji. Kim Chom-ji, like some beggar at his pleading, kept watching her every change of expression and said, "Madam, I'll take you a deal cheaper than the station men. Where would you be going?" — and persistently he laid his own hand on the Japanese-style wicker basket she carried.

"What are you about? Don't bother me." The voice came down on him like thunder, and she turned away. Kim Chom-ji stepped back with an "Oh, very well."

The streetcar came. Kim Chom-ji glared bitterly at the people boarding it. But his foreboding was not wrong. When the streetcar, packed solid with people, began to move, there was one passenger left behind. The look of him, holding an enormous bag — it seemed he'd been pushed off by the conductor for the bag's being too big inside the crowded car. Kim Chom-ji stepped up to him.

"Take a rickshaw, sir."

After some haggling over the price they settled on sixty jeon to Insadong. As the rickshaw grew heavier, his body grew strangely lighter; and again, when the rickshaw grew lighter, the body grew heavier — but this time even his heart began to fret. The picture of his house kept flickering before his eyes, and there was no leisure now to be hoping for fortune. Scolding the legs that felt like tree-stumps and not even his own, he had no choice but to run wildly, every which way.

His step was so urgent that passers-by would worry, "How does that drunken-looking rickshaw man get along on this wet ground!" The dark and rainy sky seemed already to be bordering on twilight. Only when he had reached the gate of Changgyeongwon did he catch the breath that had been at his chin and let his step slow. Step by step, the closer his house came, the stranger and the more uneasy his heart grew. Yet this slackening was not from any easing of mind, but from a fear of the moment when he must come without escape to the full knowledge of the dread misfortune that had come down upon him.

He floundered to stretch out, by even a little, the time before he must run into that misfortune. The joy of having made earnings near a miracle, he wished if he could to keep within him as long as possible. He looked round him this way and that. The way of him was as if to say, "My house — that is, the legs running of themselves toward my misfortune are beyond my own strength to control; whoever it might be, hold me fast, save me, would you."

It was just then that, from a wine-shop by the road, his friend Chisam came out. Chisam's broadly fleshy face had a vermilion glow about it, and the whole of his chin and cheeks was darkly covered in a thick growth of beard — strange contrast indeed to Kim Chom-ji's figure: a sallow face shrunken dry with furrows here and there, and beard, if you could call it beard, only on the chin, looking for all the world like the tuft of a pine-cone tied on upside down.

"There you are, Kim Chom-ji — looks like you've been into town and back. You must've made a fair bit, come and have one with me."

The fat man cried it out at sight of the lean man. The voice, against the body, was soft and friendly. Kim Chom-ji could not say how welcome it was to meet this friend at this moment. He felt as grateful as if Chisam were the very benefactor who had saved his life.

"I see you've already had one. You look as if today's been good for you too." — and Kim Chom-ji's face opened in a smile.

"Tch, am I a man who needs to have a good day before he can drink? Look here — your whole body's like a rat fallen into a water-jar. Come in here at once and dry yourself."

The wine-shop was warm and snug. Each time the lid was lifted off the pot of loach stew, white steam came billowing up, and on the iron grill there was beef-grill and pork and liver and kidney and dried pollack and mungbean pancake hissing and frying — laid out higgledy-piggledy on the side-dish table; and Kim Chom-ji's stomach all at once burned past bearing. If he could have had his way, he'd have swept up every last one of those things to eat before he was satisfied. But the hungry man, for the moment, set into a couple of fat mungbean pancakes and called for a bowl of loach stew.

The famished gut, getting a taste of food, only emptied out the more, demanding more, more. In the blink of an eye he had gulped down a bowl of stew thick with tofu and loach as if it had been water. When he was taking up his third bowl, two double servings of warmed makgeolli were ready. Drinking with Chisam — into a stomach that had been empty all the way through — it ran with a rush along the gut and his face flared. He pressed straight on with another double serving.

Kim Chom-ji's eyes had already begun to glaze. The two pancakes on the grill he chopped roughly into pieces, his cheeks bulging, and called for another two double servings to be poured.

Chisam, looking doubtful, said, "Look here, another round? We've already had four cups apiece — that's forty jeon."

"Bah, you fool, what's so frightful about forty jeon? Today I've made money, I tell you. Today my luck's been good for once."

"How much did you make then?"

"Thirty won I made, thirty won! Damn it, why won't you pour the wine… It's all right, all right, drink as much as you like. Today I've made money like a mountain."

"Oh, the man's drunk now — let's call it off."

"You fool, am I a man this much can get drunk on? Drink up, more." — and yanking Chisam by the ear, the drunkard cried out. And turning on the youth, perhaps fifteen, with the close-cropped head who was pouring the drinks — "You there, you damned little wretch, why aren't you pouring?" he scolded. The cropped-head boy laughed "hee, hee" and cast a questioning look at Chisam. The drunkard noticed the look and burst into a rage, "You bitch's whelps, you damned little wretches, you think I haven't got the money?" — and digging at his waistband, he pulled out a one-won note and flung it down before the cropped-head boy. In the flurry, several copper coins clinked and rolled to the floor.

"Look here, the money's fallen — why are you flinging the money about?" Saying so, Chisam picked up the coins. Kim Chom-ji, even in his cups, opened his eyes wide and looked down at the floor as if to keep watch on where his money had got to, then suddenly threw his head back as if his own action were too sordid for him, and got the angrier still — "Look there, look! You filthy little wretches, do I have no money? You buggers — I'll snap your shin-bones for you." — and taking the coins Chisam picked up for him, "You enemy money! You damned condemned money!" — he flung them sling-shot fashion. The coin, striking the wall and falling, dropped into the basin where the wine was being warmed and rang out a sharp ping, as if it were taking a deserved beating.

The two double servings were drunk down and gone again before they could be poured a second time. Kim Chom-ji sucked the wine off his lips and beard and, looking very pleased with himself, stroked that pine-cone tuft of a beard and shouted, "Pour again, pour again."

When he'd had another cup, Kim Chom-ji slapped Chisam on the shoulder and burst out laughing. So loud was the laugh that every eye in the wine-shop turned to Kim Chom-ji. The laughing man laughed harder still — "Look here, Chisam, shall I tell you a funny story? Today, didn't I take a fare to the station, and —"

"Yes?"

"Going back from there empty-handed didn't sit well with me. So at the streetcar stop I was hanging about looking for another fare — and just then a lady, or a schoolgirl, who's to say — these days who can tell a tart from a young miss apart? — stood there in a 'manteau' getting wet in the rain. Sidling up easy, I said 'Take a rickshaw, madam,' and tried to take her handbag — and she slapped my hand off and turned right round on me — 'What are you about, bothering me!' That voice now, that was a nightingale's voice if ever there was one, ha ha!"

Kim Chom-ji let out, with great skill, a sound truly like a nightingale's. Everyone laughed at once.

"Damn the stuck-up little bitch, who'd touch her, "What are you about, bothering me!" — and her voice, no decency at all, ha ha."

The laughter rose. But before the laughter died down, Kim Chom-ji burst into great rolling sobs.

Chisam stared aghast at the drunk, "Just laughing yourself silly a moment ago — what's all this weeping now?"

Kim Chom-ji, his nose running, sniffed and said, "My old wife is dead."

"What — your wife dead, when?"

"You fool, when else? Today."

"Get on, you mad fool, don't tell tales."

"Tales? Truly dead, I tell you, truly… To leave my wife's body sprawled there and sit here drinking, I'm a man who ought to be killed, ought to be killed." — and Kim Chom-ji gave great rolling sobs.

Chisam, his cheer a little dampened, said, "Say now — are you telling the truth, or telling a lie? Then come, let's go home." — and pulled at the weeping man's arm.

Shaking off Chisam's pulling hand, Kim Chom-ji, his eyes brimming with tears, broke into a sly grin.

"Who's dead? Nobody's dead." — looking very pleased with himself.

"Why would she be dead? She's alive and kicking. That damned wench is wolfing down her rice as ever. There — I had you on." — and clapping his hands like a child, he laughed.

"Has the man really gone mad? Even I'd heard the missus was sick." — and Chisam, sensing some unease himself, urged Kim Chom-ji again to go home.

"She's not dead, I tell you, not dead."

Kim Chom-ji, in his temper, said it firmly enough, but in the voice was the strain of a man trying hard to make himself believe it. He insisted on putting another whole won's worth onto the bill, took one more double serving each, and went out. The dreary rain still came down in its drip and drizzle.

Drunk as he was, Kim Chom-ji bought the seolleongtang and reached his house. By "his house" of course is meant a rented place — and not the whole of the place rented either, but just one outer room behind the inner one, hired for one won a month plus drawing the water for the household. If Kim Chom-ji had not been three sheets to the wind, his legs might well have shaken at the awful silence that ruled the place when he set one foot inside the gate — a silence like that of the sea after a storm.

Not so much as a hacking cough to be heard. Not so much as a rasping breath. The only thing breaking this tomb-like silence — or rather, deepening it and making it the more ominous — was a faint, dry sucking sound, the sound of a child sucking at the breast. To one with a sharp ear, it would have come to him that there was only the sucking, and no swallowing of milk going gulp-gulp; the child was sucking at an empty breast.

Or perhaps Kim Chom-ji too had a sense of this ominous silence. Else how to explain that, the moment he stepped inside the gate, he shouted — uncharacteristically for him — "You damned wench, your husband's coming in and you don't come out to meet me, you damned wench!" The shout was a kind of bluster — he was trying to drive off the awful certainty that was creeping over him.

In any case Kim Chom-ji shoved the door open. A foul reek that made his throat heave — the dust-smell from under a torn bamboo mat, the smell of feces and urine from unwashed diapers, the smell of clothes laden with all manner of grime, and the smell of the patient's own rotting sweat, all mixed together — struck even Kim Chom-ji's blunt nose.

Stepping into the room, without even a moment to set down the seolleongtang in a corner, the drunkard threw out his throat at full pitch and bellowed.

"You damned wench, lying about night and day is all you do! Your husband's home, can't you get up?" — and with the words he kicked the leg of the woman lying there, hard. But what his foot struck against was not the flesh of a person; it had the feel of a tree-stump. At this the dry sucking sound turned into an "ung-ah" cry. Gaedongi let go the breast he had been at and was crying. Yet his crying was no more than the screwing-up of his whole face, the expression of crying. The "ung-ah" sound did not come from his mouth either, but seemed to come from his belly. He had wept and wept until his throat was raw, and now even the strength to weep was nearly gone.

Seeing that the kick had no effect, the husband flung himself at the head of his wife and, taking that nest-of-sticks of a head and shaking it, "Speak, you wretch, speak! Has your mouth been sealed up, you damned wench?"

"…"

"Eh? Look at her, no answer at all." "…"

"You wretch, are you dead? Why no word?"

"…"

"Eh. No answer again. You really are dead, then."

And then, the moment he made out the white of her eyes turned upward beneath their lids, "These eyes! These eyes! Why can't you look at me, why are you staring only at the ceiling, eh?" — and at the end of that the words choked in his throat. And then, falling from the eyes of the living onto the stiff face of the dead, tears the size of chicken-droppings began to wet that face all over in mottled patches. And all of a sudden, as if half-mad, Kim Chom-ji rubbed his own face against the face of the dead and muttered —

"I bought you the seolleongtang — why can't you eat it, why can't you eat it… how strange today is! And I thought my luck was good…"