But who can I ask about it? This wasn’t an urgent matter, but his curiosity was piqued. He suddenly felt frustrated. He could hardly question his father directly, and apart from him, there was no one.
It occurred to him that he could get the information he wanted from one of his father’s friends. He considered which one would be best but soon stopped himself, realizing that it would only cause trouble were it to be known that he’d been probing into the past. The affair must be the greatest secret of his father’s life. It had taken place between two churchgoers, and although he still enjoyed the trust of the church, his actions had been scandalous at the time. It was certainly not something to bring up recklessly, if Deok-gi cared anything at all about his father’s honor.
Oddly enough, the more he tried to care for his father, the more his old hatred for him surged up, in place of the natural feelings one might expect between a son and his father. He felt sorry for his mother and also for Gyeong-ae. He felt bad for the daughter Gyeong-ae had given birth to, be she alive or dead, the little sister that he had never met. He even pitied his own sister and himself.
His father was not a remarkable man, but he might have been happy if he had his son’s respect.
Deok-gi struggled with himself. It is true that Grandfather isn’t the most understanding person in the world, but if Father hadn’t had the affair, Mother might actually have been happy, and we might have been a happy family. Gyeong-ae might have been better off, too.
With the coming of the Western New Year, Deok-gi had turned twenty-three — old enough to have a good grasp of the evils of the world but young enough not to be influenced by them.
“Mother, has Father been drinking recently?” Deok-gi stopped sipping his rice tea and looked at his mother, who was turned away from him.
“Who cares what he’s been doing? He could be out drinking or visiting gisaeng houses.” She may have realized that her snub was too harsh and added with a smile, “He probably hasn’t been drinking. He never asks us to bring out the liquor tray for him.”
Deok-gi thought he heard a hint of mockery in his mother’s remark.
Sitting on the colder side of the room with the brazier between her and her mother-in-law, Deok-gi’s wife chimed in, “Don’t worry about Father’s drinking. You just worry about yourself.”
“Stop nagging!” Deok-gi rebuffed as he tried to light a cigarette from the ashes of the flame.
His mother, somewhat surprised, looked at him. “Have you been drinking, too?”
“Last night he came home dead drunk in the middle of the night,” his wife said. Afraid of her husband’s reproach, she left the room quickly with the meal tray in her hands.
“There’s not much you can do when it runs in the family, but it’s not a good idea for you to start drinking at your age,” his mother scolded gently.
“It wasn’t my fault. A friend took me. Anyway, a few drinks don’t make you a drunk and. ” Deok-gi trailed off, and his mother waited a moment for what might come next but then jumped in, “Are you worried about your father? Well, that’s just the way he is.”
“I wouldn’t really care about it if he didn’t write those articles in the newspaper promoting abstinence. If he didn’t talk about these things and stopped attending church, I wouldn’t care. But he gives moralizing speeches all day long, morning till night, and then he goes prowling from dive to dive. You think people don’t know about it? It’ll come out sooner or later. It might be different if our financial situation forced him to cling to his religion just to beg for handouts from Westerners.”
Deok-gi spoke in a firm but low voice, his anger kept barely under wraps. He remembered how excitedly Byeong-hwa had reported seeing Deok-gi’s father in a sleazy bar near Naeng-dong, outside Saemun.
“Why are you telling me all this?” his mother retorted. “Why don’t you find your father and tell him what’s on your mind to his face?”
Well, what about you, Mother? Deok-gi was tempted to reply. Instead of behaving like a stranger, pretending you don’t care what your husband does, what if you actually made an effort to look after Father properly and discouraged him from such behavior? Don’t you think that might help Father’s situation, not to mention the situation with the rest of the family?
Deok-gi bit his tongue, and the conversation came to a halt. Mother and son sat quietly and smoked.
The baby started crying loudly from somewhere near the middle gate. Deok-gi’s mother looked out the front window and scolded the maid, “Why are you running around in this cold weather?” She then soothed the child from where she was sitting. “Don’t worry, honey. It’s all right, stop crying. It’s all right, it’s all right now, that’s enough.”
Deok-gi’s wife ran outside and returned with the crying child in her arms, followed by the maid. The grandmother held out her hand, but the baby nuzzled his face in his mother’s chest and kept crying.
“What are you doing? Why won’t you say hello to Grandma?”The mother was hesitant as she talked to her baby, probably shy about exposing her breasts.
“Go ahead and nurse him,” Deok-gi’s mother said, looking at her precious grandson.
The baby closed his eyes with the nipple in his mouth.
“He was just tired,” commented his grandmother.
“It ’s no wonder. He wakes up at dawn, ready and eager to play,” her daughter-in-law replied.
As if nothing more were left to say, the two women stopped talking. The maid, bored by the silence, left the room and headed to the veranda. The mother-in-law struck up a new conversation.
“It must be hard for you in this cold weather. The backs of your hands look frostbitten.” Frowning, Deok-gi’s mother stared at her daughter-in-law sitting with the baby held in her reddened hands.
“They’re not too bad,” replied the daughter-in-law with a smile, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.
“So the Main Room sweeps everything in your direction and pretends she doesn’t know how to manage, right?”
“That’s exactly what she does!” Tears welled up in the young woman’s eyes at her mother-in-law’s kind words. “She never even leaves her room. All she does is play with that child day and night.”
“The maid, too?”
“Of course. From the very beginning, she never properly instructed the maid as to what she should and shouldn’t do.”
“What about the new maidservant?”
“Well, she cooks, but she’s a piece of work. After only a few days here, she started to kiss up to the Main Room. She’s in and out of there constantly.”
“Who brought her in?”
“I don’t know for sure. Grandfather brought her from the outer quarters and told us that she would be with us from then on, so probably a guest in the outer quarters did.”
“It’s a shame.”
“What do you mean?”
“With the maidservant getting so close to the Main Room, as if she were her personal attendant, it must be difficult for you, to be caught in the middle.”
Deok-gi’s wife didn’t reply, but sniffled with her head bowed, apparently moved to tears by her mother-in-law’s sympathetic reaction.
“The servant thumbs her nose at you because you’re young. And your elder behaves so atrociously. I know how hard it must be on you. I wouldn’t have a single worry or complaint if only you could live with me! But this is my fate, I suppose,” her mother-in-law added — instead of saying, “It’s all God’s will,” since she was not Christian.
Deok-gi stood up, refusing to listen any further. He wanted to tell his wife to stop her useless prattle but kept quiet while his mother was still present. Walking out to the outer quarters, he heaved a deep sigh. What would happen to the family if things went on like this?