Dumulmeori 두물머리

A short story by Lee Yun-gi (이윤기, 1947–2010), about my family

“Does an old man with one foot in the grave deserve the chamcheok—those tears that fall when a parent buries a child? That’s why we never told him. He’d lived his years; we just wanted him to pass away without knowing. What he doesn’t know hasn’t happened in this world…… But I never imagined he’d stay so sharp for so long. How could Hae-il have known?”

“It is a terrible situation.”

“It is…… He didn’t used to be this way, but lately he gets so irritable over every letter Andy’s mother sends. That Kuk-il, he says—unless his wrist is broken, why is he sending printed letters instead of writing them by hand?…… A living father cursing his dead son. No matter how many times we tell him that everyone writes and prints by machine these days, he won’t hear it. Hae-il deliberately kept a telephone out of this house so news of his brother couldn’t reach the old man’s ears. But lately his nagging to get one installed is unbearable. He dug his heels in about getting a hearing aid before, but now he says if he wants to call Kuk-il and hear his voice he’ll need one after all—hurry up and install the phone and buy him a hearing aid, he begs. They say you can endure a life of tearful submission, but you can’t endure a life of forced pretense…… With grief behind me and pretense ahead of me, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Hae-il will do his part, and Kuk-il’s too. When I watched Hae-il handle the funeral arrangements in the States, I saw how composed he was. Not an easy thing for someone making their first trip to America.”

“I just wish it would end…… I personally wish it would end quickly. When anyone says they’re coming down from Seoul, my heart flutters all day long. That’s why I’ve forbidden anyone but Hae-il’s family from setting foot in Dumulmeori. I must be sick to the very core.”

“……Please, don’t say that.”

Before a single cigarette had burned down, the old man’s voice rose from inside. It wasn’t so much anger as a voice feigning thunder. Hae-il’s wife, who was setting a drinking table with raw vegetables and birthday foods on the wide wooden bench by the brushwood gate, explained.

“He’s asking why everyone bolts outside the moment they put down their spoons. After being apart so long, why not sit and talk properly instead of scattering like widows who can’t stomach the smell of a widower—that’s what he’s saying. But sitting across from Father for any length of time takes everything you have. We’re always terrified the subject of his eldest son will come up……”

“Isn’t Hae-il in there with him?”

“He must find having the same conversation every day tiresome.”

“For us, we eat a few meals and head back to Seoul—but Mother and Myeong-il have to endure it daily. How hard it must be. Even our children try to avoid being alone with their grandfather. Because sitting alone with Grandfather means lying to him. My husband Wook steps outside at the slightest excuse. Then Father asks where he went. When I say he stepped out for a cigarette, Father tells him to come smoke right in front of him. If you can believe it.”

“Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Myeong-il.”

“He went to Manguri to collect restaurant scraps. A friend of his runs a massive galbi restaurant out there, and my goodness, you wouldn’t believe how much food waste comes out of a place like that…… enough to feed twenty dogs, they say.”

“Myeong-il must be getting up there in age, isn’t he?”

“He passed forty long ago.”

“He’s a bit old to just be raising dogs, isn’t he?”

“Father anchored him here. Ever since he sent his eldest son far away, he’s clung to the children he has left…… Once Father passes, I imagine he’ll move back to Seoul. We aren’t allowed to lay a single finger on this house while Father is alive, either. And now I’ve said it out loud…… I sound exactly like a daughter-in-law just waiting for her father-in-law to die……”

The farmhouse had been there a long time, but it sat beautifully on the land. Hae-il’s wife had mentioned that backing against a mountain was auspicious but facing one was a flaw. Yet the mountain in front wasn’t so much a looming peak as a gently trailing slope, and to me there was nothing flawed about it at all. The house faced due south. In the old days that would have been a necessity for light and warmth, but now, with reliable energy and plate glass everywhere, it hardly seemed worth insisting on. If they ever remodeled, rotating it toward the mouth of the valley would probably suit it better.

Only after their mother retreated indoors did Hae-il come outside.

I walked his land with him. There were four generous plots of hillside field; combined, they easily amounted to three or four thousand pyeong. The fields were dotted with young trees, none of them looking more than two years in the ground.

“You’ve planted quite a few trees. Give it ten years and this will be a proper forest.”

“I left home so young—when would I have ever had the chance to fell a tree? Right after the tragedy with Kuk-il, I was fixing up the house to bring our parents here, and I noticed a persimmon tree had grown too large over the yard. It just wouldn’t do. Even if it bore fruit, there’s nobody left to eat persimmons these days, and they’re no good for the market either. So I had it cut down. Father agreed. But after it came down, I found myself staring down at the stump without thinking and started counting the rings—and hyung, would you believe it? The persimmon tree was the exact same age as me. I felt such shame. But I just felt it and let it go. Then one day, by chance, I read a poem by a Koryo-saram poet in Russia—an ethnic Korean living there. He wrote about almost the exact same experience. He’d cut down a spruce and idly counted the haedori—the annual rings—only to find the tree was the same age as him. Now, I had just felt shame and moved on, but this poet sang out like thunder. He wept. A late awakening, I suppose.”

“You awakened early enough. I’ve lived my whole life without ever properly planting a single tree.”

“Then come here. I’ll lend you the land. Build a house.”

“In due time.”

Even after we returned to the wooden bench with the drinks laid out, Hae-il carelessly kept drifting back to talk of land. But I had something I needed to say to him. I had to figure out whether he truly had the right to keep news of his brother’s death from their father. And after that, I had to tell him what I had seen and heard, up close, of his sister-in-law and the children.

“Do you think your father will pass away without ever knowing Kuk-il has left this world?”

“They say you need twenty lies to hold up one—that’s what this has come to. But I can’t go back, and I can’t go forward. What would you have me do?”

“I don’t know. I know you did it out of consideration for your father. Perhaps I’ve just grown too accustomed to thinking the American way—but seeing him here, my heart feels heavy as stone. You said you never told him, and I kept telling myself, until now, until this very moment: surely not……”

“I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. If I were to tell him now, I don’t think Father could survive a bolt from a clear sky like this. Sometimes I think it would have been better to tell him right then, so we could all grieve together. If he had known when the whole family was mourning, he might have grieved alongside us—and perhaps even found it in him to comfort us. I’m sorry. Maybe I’m just not trained in the American way of thinking, but if I myself were ever handed a diagnosis of cancer, I might well live and die without ever knowing, while every single member of my family knew. The sentence known to everyone. The sentence unknown only to me.”

“What happened to Kuk-il…… when I’m honest about it, I’m not without blame. I drank alongside him…… drank relentlessly, right alongside him. Just a few days ago, I heard that a Chinese man who runs a liquor store in a neighborhood near mine was attacked by robbers. It wasn’t Kuk-il who drank the alcohol; the stress drank him. Whether you die by a bullet or by the bottle, what’s the difference, he used to say…… And I went on drinking with him to the bitter end. It’s disgraceful.”

“Not everyone who drinks dies of liver disease. A man without will becomes a slave to drink, and a slave to drink ruins his liver, and knowing the disease will kill him anyway, he finishes himself off with the bottle. A slow suicide.”

“That’s the impression I had too. It’s not a business you can run unless you’ve got the stomach to wear a gun……”

“Was Kuk-il worn down by his wife’s nagging?”

“Have you heard something from my sister-in-law?”

“Contact? Unless I call her, she never calls. Never has, never will. I know it isn’t easy for a woman to run a liquor store all alone. But for someone with elderly in-laws still living—you wouldn’t expect that……”

“Your father still doesn’t know his eldest son is gone. It’s been nearly three years, and he doesn’t know because of you. Is this right?”

“……Why bring this up so suddenly.”

“You hid it because the news was simply too devastating. Right?”

“Why are you pushing this?”

“Do you think I want it to be this way too?”

“You have something to say.”

“Yes. Your sister-in-law…… I believe she is going to remarry soon.”

“……!”

“A Korean tax official with the IRS in our district. I don’t know him well, but we’ve crossed paths at dinner several times. When the rumors reached me, I went and asked him directly. He didn’t deny it.”

“Is he a widower?”

“They say he has two daughters with an American wife.”

“Then what happens to our Andy and Tami?”

“What do you mean, what happens? Andy is in twelfth grade—he’s old enough to go off to college this fall. First and second year, living in the dormitory is mandatory, so whether there’s a home to return to or not makes little difference. Tami is in ninth grade…… somewhere between middle school third year and high school first year by our reckoning. How Korean are those two, really? For those siblings, I got the distinct impression that their mother’s remarriage would be a shock just as severe as their father’s death. As for me, I couldn’t keep this from you. When the announcement comes that she’s remarrying, make the time to set aside and go see how the kids are holding up. I think that would be best.”

“I’ll do that…… but it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.”

“Should I have kept it to myself? Since you’d find out eventually, should I have stayed quiet until you heard it straight from your sister-in-law?”

“This bastard of a life…… I already knew that life wasn’t just full of good things. I knew it was all rotten. But for things to unfold like that over there—it’s really too much.”

“That’s just the kind of country it is. You move there, and people end up built that way too. It pains me to speak of your sister-in-law this way, but it seems she only knew how to lure Kuk-il into emigrating—she never once stopped to measure the wounds he would carry there. She knew how to fell a tree but had no idea how to count its rings. From the moment a seminary graduate stood behind the counter of a liquor store, I felt from the start—what can I even call it—that it might be the beginning of something like a spiritual suicide.”

“Is there a lot I don’t know? In the story of my brother and his wife, are there still so many things I’m missing?”

“Does anyone ever know everything?”

“Among the things you know?”

“I don’t know it all, and neither do you. That’s something you just have to carry. How could anyone know it all?”

“Here comes Myeong-il.”

It must have been because we arrived at Dumulmeori so late in the day. We’d had nothing but a late lunch and a few bowls of makgeolli on the bench, yet the shadows had grown thick. As Myeong-il crossed the yard with the setting sun at his back, his face was already difficult to make out. The moment his small truck rolled into the lower yard, the dogs erupted into a unified frenzy of barking. I hadn’t realized it when I first arrived because they had been quiet, but there were twenty of them in all. Among the dogs lunging out of their kennels at the scent of food was a massive Saint Bernard, and another, a towering mutt mixed with Collie blood.

The old man emerged and told Hae-il to help his youngest brother Myeong-il unload the slop bins from the truck. Hae-il’s mother and wife quickened their pace. Seeing them stoke the fire in the furnace beneath the cast-iron cauldron and scoop dry feed from a sack, it was clear they were going to mix the restaurant scraps with the feed and boil it all down.

Cherry blossoms had bloomed and fallen, then the magnolias, and now it was the season of the wild mountain cherry. Among the pale green forest of the hills in front and behind, the mountain cherry trees were scattered as if planted there by hand. They were visible even on the distant peaks. A haze of yellow dust hung in the air, making it hard to tell if the pale flecks on the far mountains were blossoms or bare rock.

Everyone was moving with purpose. It felt terribly awkward to remain sitting idly on the bench, and I was just rising to my feet when the old man came over and settled himself beside me. I had no choice but to stand up abruptly.

“Sit.”

“Yes, sir.”

He passed the makgeolli bottle toward me and issued his command.

“Pour a cup.”

“I didn’t realize you were drinking, sir. If I had known……”

“Just one.”

“Here—one for you too……”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve all made a tosi of me.”

“Made a tosi of you?”

I hadn’t heard the word tosi used to mean fool since I left my hometown. Back home, we called an idiot a tosi. The word literally refers to the cloth tubes you slip over your sleeves to block the winter chill. Why that specific word became synonymous with being an oblivious fool, I’ll never know.

“Whatever I may look like now, I’m a man who marched all the way to Burma during the Greater East Asia War and made it back alive. What kept us alive in those days wasn’t guns. It was nunchi.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“The year before last, when their father Kuk-il left this world, his wife—Andy’s mother—came to visit. She came right here to Dumulmeori. The only one in this family who hasn’t made a tosi of me is Andy’s mother. From the time she visited, I became a deaf man.”

“……”

“……I’ve lived too long.”

“You’re barely eighty, sir.”

“……Too long. Live too long, and you end up humiliated.”

“When you go back to America—tell our Andy and Tami to come visit their grandfather before he dies. Safe travels…… when will I see you again……”

When Hae-il came around from the inner quarters wiping his hands, the old man rose from the bench and changed the subject.

“When you come back for good, once you’ve raised your kids, come live in Dumulmeori. Live side by side with Hae-il’s family. Like the old days…… When Myeong-il goes off to Seoul, Hae-il is going to be lonely.”

That Hae-il had hurried out, still drying his hands—had he been uneasy that I might say something to the old man I shouldn’t have? The old man left those words behind and went back inside.

“How many long years have you two been friends. You’re a year older than Kuk-il—look after Hae-il well.”

Those were the mother’s words as we said our goodbyes. The old man turned his face away and pretended not to hear.

It was a weekday, so we could head back to Seoul early without trouble. The road from Dumulmeori to Walker Hill, which usually chokes with traffic on weekends, moved freely that day. Unlike on the way out, the love hotels on the way back never once made it into our conversation.

Hae-il’s wife had also said: come and live at Dumulmeori.

The name is beautiful, I replied, and the people here seem large. I suppose I’ll have to come and live here after all.