What kind of a party are they throwing? A house-warming party?
Deok-gi was greeted by the Suwon woman clad in a white mourning dress, who rose along with his father’s concubine. The well-fed, imposing woman seated beside them had to be Maedang. His father, sitting on the new day mattress in the warmest part of the room, seemed to shrink sheepishly.
Clerk Choe was planted near the door, while Chang-hun was nowhere to be seen.
“Did you sleep here last night?” Deok-gi asked the Suwon woman.
“Yes. So, what do you think? Quite a different place with all this grandeur, isn’t it?” said the Suwon woman mischievously, looking around the room.
Deok-gi was silent.
What astonished Deok-gi most were the reflected faces in the mirrors everywhere he turned. Even his own face jumped out at him through a bright array of women’s overcoats, hats, and scarves hanging on the wall. The mirrors opposite each other reflected the objects in the room several times over. This mirror chamber must have been Maedang’s idea, and he couldn’t help but wince at her taste. The room was incomprehensibly stifling.
“Son, did you take a look at what I sent you yesterday?” Deok-gi didn’t respond. “If you can’t pay, just leave the bills here.” Sang-hun wasn’t in any mood to fight over bills in the presence of the gaggle of young ladies.
“It’s not that I don’t mean to pay them, but. ” Deok-gi’s heart was pounding with rage so it was almost impossible to go on. “Isn’t all this a little extravagant, considering our situation? Wouldn’t it have been enough if you had simply brought the furniture from the other house?”
Deok-gi felt it was utterly wasteful to shell out more than a thousand won merely to decorate the main room. It would be no easy feat to come up with the money to pay for it.
“What situation are you talking about? If you are going to speak with such arrogance, just leave the bills here and get out. As for the things that are lying around in the other house, you can use them yourself.”
“If you stop and think of how you used to oppose my grandfather’s spending on the ancestors’ graves. ”
“Who asked you to support me? This is disgusting — are you my supervisor? Send me the rice-refinery ledger today.” Sang-hun was intentionally unpleasant.
“If you told me to hand over other things, not just the refinery, I’d do so willingly. But if you keep spending money like water, how can I hand the reins to you?”
“I’m claiming what is mine, whether you agree to it or not.”
“Will it disappear if you let me take care of it?”
“You talk like a thief. You’re saying you can’t pay a thousand won, aren’t you?”
Writhing with rage, the father approached his son and was about slap him on the face, but Deok-gi stood up and his father’s palm struck his shoulder. Deok-gi wasn’t sure whether his father was sick or going senile, but he quickly went out to the veranda, thinking that he shouldn’t fan his father’s agitation. His affection for his father was draining away; he now felt as if they came from different worlds. Deok-gi’s heart went out to him, though, understanding that a person who loses his faith often will lead a chaotic life after his ambitions and hopes are dashed. On the other hand, without faith, his father was free to be himself and break loose from the constraints that had been imposed on him. But how could he have fallen so far, so late in life? Instead of feeling antagonism toward his father, Deok-gi merely felt sad.
When he returned home, Deok-gi wrote a dozen checks and gave them to Secretary Ji with the bills from the stores.
Sang-hun had set up house with his concubine, but Deok-gi still had to decide what to do with the Suwon woman. The situation was a headache. She had left Deok-gi’s house with the child, telling him that they were going to stay at Sang-hun’s. Deok-gi had asked the tenants at the Taepyeong-dong house to move out as soon as possible, but the Suwon woman wasn’t interested. She stretched out her hand and demanded that he give her her due. She wanted it now and not — as her late husband’s will specified — after the three-year mourning period was over.
“Do you think your share will shrink if you don’t take it now? Will you need spending money for the next three years? It’s not as if I won’t provide you with food and other necessities. How can you go against my grandfather’s wishes when it’s been only a month since his death?”
“He could have made such a provision because he was afraid that I might not respect the three-year mourning period. Can’t you trust me?”
“You are talking about trust? You’re the one who trusts no one — that ’s why you’re demanding your portion now.”
“Well, as they say, if your knife is mixed in with the knives from other households, it’ll be difficult to find it later. Family assets are strange. Who knows what may happen?”
They argued for two days. Deok-gi’s father came over the day the Suwon woman moved and ordered his son to open the safe. “Give what has to be given as soon as possible. There’s no use holding on to it. If she wants to go, she’ll go. If she cares enough, she’ll stay with our family for three years.”
And so the Suwon woman and her daughter received their shares. Deok-gi’s father took this opportunity to get his share of three hundred bags as well. After this was done, Deok-gi gave five hundred won to Secretary Ji, who asked if he could keep it for him. He wanted the money to be used for his own funeral and if anything was left over, he asked that it be given to his only daughter. Deok-gi told him not to worry about his funeral expenses and urged him to take the money and use it as he saw fit. Ji declined the offer and told Deok-gi to hold onto it, because he had nowhere to spend it and his daughter was not exactly starving.
Tongues wagged about how Deok-gi’s father splurged on setting up house with his concubine, how he drove out his lawful wife, and how abominably the Suwon woman behaved. But now that Deok-gi had put the matter to rest — now that his mother was living with him and his father and the Suwon woman had settled down as they wished — things appeared to take a quieter course.
Wistful Affection
With the renewed calm, Deok-gi began to think of resuming his studies, and he soon made plans to leave for Kyoto after the coming month’s first-day rite. He hadn’t prepared for his examinations and would probably have to sit for a makeup test, but he was hoping to graduate and enter Keijo Imperial University. It would take only two months, including travel. When the time came and he was ready to leave, he came down with a fever. He wasn’t sick enough to stay in bed, so he took a couple of doses of Secretary Ji’s Chinese medicine, which Ji had concocted for him with the skills he had honed while caring for Deok-gi’s grandfather. Deok-gi’s fever, however, didn’t subside. His body ached all over from exhaustion, which wasn’t surprising, given the pressure of the funeral, his late-night outings to help Byeong-hwa, and the stress of settling various household affairs. Several days had passed since the evening he began to feel ill, but he hadn’t gotten any better. Byeong-hwa learned that Deok-gi was sick and came by to see how his friend was feeling. Although trembling with a high fever, Deok-gi was full of questions: “How’s business? Are detectives still on your case? Is Pil-sun’s father doing all right?”
When Byeong-hwa returned to the store, he told Pil-sun that Deok-gi had asked after her father. Though pleased, she said with some anxiety, “He’s done so much for us, and I can’t even go see him!”
Byeong-hwa didn’t encourage her to visit him. Byeong-hwa and Won-sam took turns visiting Deok-gi every morning and evening, but Pil-sun couldn’t muster the nerve to join them, though her heart ached for him.