“If you drink this much, you’ll have to keep drinking tomorrow because your head will still hurt. You’ll never clear your mind!” said Deok-gi, looking at his friend’s glass disapprovingly. He decided to offer some sincere advice. “Stop doing this to yourself. Just make peace with them and go home. How long can you go on leading a vagrant’s life? What can you accomplish in such a state?”
“Make peace? More than compromising with my father, you think I should compromise with the bourgeois guard that keeps watch over the food, don’t you?”
“It makes no sense to keep up this barrier between you and your father. Can’t you see it as an ethical matter between father and son, instead of an undermining of your beliefs?”
“Well, whatever you want to call it, when parents drive a child away because he doesn’t parrot their words and follow their faith, how else can he live his own life without being their possession or slave?” Byeong-hwa was becoming increasingly longwinded as the alcohol kicked in.
“This is an ethical matter concerning the father-son relationship. How can you talk about compromise and personal life when everything boils down to family?” Deok-gi said, fearing that Byeong-hwa might think he had originally brought up the word “compromise” in reference to the relationship between father and son.
“Stop talking bullshit! You go your way and I’ll go mine.”
“A little while ago, you were ranting and raving as if you were ready to sever our friendship, but I’m sure you need someone like me.” Deok-gi’s voice was equally cold.
“For what? Oh, I see. You mean I need to beg you for spare change every now and then, right?”
“What are you talking about? Do you actually think you’re making any sense?” Deok-gi glared at Byeong-hwa.
“At any rate, being friends means that we don’t take advantage of each other. That should go without saying between like-minded comrades,” offered Byeong-hwa, after a moment of thought.
“Comrades? Well, I may not be a like-minded comrade, but you’re not the only one suffering.” Deok-gi’s expression was dark.
“Oh, yes, the luxurious suffering of a bourgeois. Nothing but extravagant sentimentalism,” Byeong-hwa said.
“Someone like you might see it that way, but you don’t know everything that goes on among my family’s three generations.”
“I do know that you’re able to compromise with your grandfather and father, and that’s why you won’t let up with me. And I also know,” Byeong-hwa added spitefully, “that, in your case, you can expect an inheritance!”
Deok-gi stood up without another word and paid the bill.
A New Baby Sister
Two mornings later, Deok-gi snuck out of the house and spent half the day holed up in the library of the Government-General of Korea. He had nothing urgent to research, but there was nowhere else to go to pass the time. If he had stayed home on the day of the ancestral ceremony, he would have had to listen to his grandfather yell at everyone as he bustled around the house. Deok-gi also had little tolerance for the women making such a fuss in the inner quarters. Nor did he like the idea of kneeling before his grandfather to write a ritual text with one of those calligraphic brushes he so rarely used. And he wanted nothing to do with the job of arranging ceremonial food into neat piles on the ritual table. So he had left the house early, before his grandfather could begin ordering him around, and he intended to return home after dark.
Deok-gi left the library before the electric lights came on and headed for Jingogae, thinking he’d get a cup of tea somewhere. He considered trying to find Byeong-hwa, but he knew that if they met up, they’d only end up drinking. And another dose of Byeong-hwa’s sarcastic remarks might give him a headache. It was much better to enjoy some peace and quiet by himself. He stopped at a bookstore, flipped through some books, and left with a couple of magazines. Amid the sounds of gramophones drifting out of several shops, he walked up the street swarming with people.
He thought of Bacchus, which he had visited a few days before with Byeong-hwa, and wondered how Gyeong-ae was doing. It felt like ages ago that they’d met, and the memory of what had happened that night had dimmed, like a faded dream. He considered dropping by once more before he left for Japan to see Gyeong-ae and get to the bottom of what had happened between her and his father. Two nights earlier, he had been tempted to go to Bacchus after eating at the noodle shop off Saemun, but with Byeong-hwa in tow, he wouldn’t have been able to talk discreetly with Gyeong-ae, and it wouldn’t have been a good idea to expose his father’s well-guarded secret to his friend. He had resolved to go back by himself on some other occasion, but it was hard to muster the courage. From the moment his path veered toward Jingogae, however, he realized that stopping at Bacchus had been at the back of his mind.
But they only serve drinks there, no food. thought Deok-gi as he got closer to the bar. He decided not to go in, though he knew he was just making excuses.
If I don’t go in now, I’ll leave without seeing her. And she might find another job before I come home for spring vacation, which means I may never see her again.
Not going in did seem heartless, he thought, and it probably wasn’t polite.
But why isn’t it polite? The problem is between her and my father, and they’ll have to solve it. If it’s already been settled, then that’s that.
He was about to give up. But if a daughter — his younger sister — indeed existed, the situation wouldn’t be that simple.
What should I do? The more complicated this gets, the more difficult it’ll be for me to solve. They must have tried to deal with it somehow. But we have the same blood. If both her parents died, who’d take care of the child?
Deok-gi’s head throbbed. It was a delicate matter since it involved his parents. Besides, Gyeong-ae hadn’t been merely his father’s concubine, but Deok-gi’s childhood friend as well. It wouldn’t matter if he were the type of person who put things behind him once and for all, but he wasn’t. He was emotional and sensitive, and he tended to worry obsessively about one thing or the other.
Well, I guess I’ll have some tea and think about whether or not to go.
He walked slowly, looking for a teahouse.
“Where are you headed?”
He thought he heard a woman’s voice among the crowds on Jingogae, but he kept going.
“Hey!”
The voice came from right behind him. Startled, Deok-gi spun around.
It was Gyeong-ae.
She looked at him wide-eyed without even a trace of a smile on her face, as if she were about to scold him.
Deok-gi couldn’t believe that they had run into each other this way.
“Where’re you going?” Gyeong-ae finally permitted herself a shadow of a smile.
“I’m looking for a nice teahouse.” Deok-gi smiled back.
“But why are you still in town?”
“I leave tomorrow. ” Deok-gi hesitated, not knowing how to end his sentence. He wasn’t inclined to use a formal ending, but it was difficult to justify a familiar one.
“If I weren’t busy, we could go somewhere to talk, but. ” Gyeong-ae hesitated, her eyes wide and blank.
“Well, it’s not too late. How about we have dinner together somewhere nearby? I was thinking of coming to see you anyway.”
“There’s really not much to talk about. The child has a bad cold so I was on my way to — ”
“Let’s just go somewhere and sit down for a while,” Deok-gi said. Hearing her mention the child, Deok-gi felt even more compelled to latch on to her and ask how they were doing.