“We should serve lunch. It is so cold today that some beef soup would taste good.”
Despite the grandeur of this household (though it was not clear how things would change in Deok-gi’s generation), a good welcome amounted to simple meals, such as rice cake soup during the first months of the year. A meal was reserved for special guests, while cakes and tea were served for most of Deok-gi’s visitors. After all, they couldn’t feed everyone when a dozen or so guests streamed in every day, both in the men’s quarters and the inner quarters. The grandfather had economized this way.
Deok-gi’s wife left, wondering. Already ill at ease, Pil-sun knew that a nerve-racking ordeal lay ahead of her. Couldn’t he just let her go? She had wanted to see Deok-gi, but sitting face-to-face with him now, it became clear that the Deok-gi she’d seen outside and the Deok-gi in his own home were two different people. Though the kindness he showed her was no different from before, an invisible barrier had arisen between them. The yearning had left her. Pil-sun stood up.
“Why do you keep trying to run away? My sister will come home from school soon, and there’s something I’d like to talk to you about as well.”
But he didn’t bring up what was on his mind. Instead, he asked, “Was your father a trader?”
“No, a schoolteacher.”
“Really? Why did he quit?”
“He quit after the March 1, 1919 incident, and he’s been jobless since.”
“He must have suffered.”
“He was in prison for a year and half at the time. Then afterward, he was imprisoned again for four years.”
“Where were you living?” Deok-gi was particularly curious about her father’s life.
“Inside Yeongseongmun. We lived next door to Yeongseongmun School. Everything happened when I was about to start the second grade.” Caught up in the conversation, Pil-sun shed her awkwardness.
“Then you must have been about nine years old.” Deok-gi imagined the young Pil-sun.
“I don’t remember it very well, but my mother was as staunch as my father.” She grinned, probably because she had used the word “staunch,” for she couldn’t bring herself to say “fervent.”
Deok-gi smiled, too.
“Our family’s luck went downhill from that point on. My mother was teaching at Yeongseongmun School at the time, and when I think about it now, she must have gone through so much.” The painful memories came back to her in waves, as she remembered the ordeals of the past ten years, the journey from the house in Yeongseongmun to Sanhaejin. Deok-gi lowered his eyes and wondered if a revolutionary’s blood ran in this girl’s veins.
“I’m sure she did,” Deok-gi agreed.
With the father in prison and the mother fired from the school, there might have been no other way but to sell the house and send the child to work in a factory to make a living for the family. Pil-sun’s family hadn’t been the only one to have undergone such hardship.
“My mother hasn’t changed much since then. But my father has. Though it doesn’t mean that he and Byeong-hwa share the same views.”
“It sounds like your father is straddling the fence. So whose side are you on?”
“I’m also on the fence,” she said with a grin.
“A moderate? You’re an opportunist,” Deok-gi laughed.
“There can be a meeting point,” Pil-sun said. “We pity each other because we’re poor. We have no energy to argue about why the other side is wrong when all of us, in both camps, have had to tighten our belts. That’s how we can understand each other. That would be the picture of our families and society in broad strokes.”
Deok-gi thought Pil-sun’s words, though casually phrased, made sense. “That’s true. There’s definitely a meeting point, whether it’s a social movement or a national movement.”
“That’s why my mother — who doesn’t share Byeong-hwa’s convictions, and says cynical things behind his back — is the first to come to the rescue when there’s an emergency,” Pil-sun said, remembering how her mother had helped Byeong-hwa with Pi-hyeok’s escape.
Deok-gi nodded. “I’m sure she does.”
“From what you are doing for Byeong-hwa, I’d say there is some similarity between you and my mother.”
“You hit the nail right on the head!” Deok-gi laughed, impressed with her insight.
A low table was brought in. Pil-sun was astonished at the array of dishes — sliced boiled beef, pan-fried skewered strips of beef and colorful vegetables, and dried fruit that she had eaten only at weddings and sixtieth-birthday parties she had attended as a child. She was equally surprised that it was Won-sam’s wife who brought in the table, whom she saw every day at the store.
“When I heard you were here, I hurried over. Take your time and enjoy the food,” the woman told her, as if Pil-sun were a member of her own family, and left the room without another word.
Won-sam’s wife came to the house during the daytime to help out, hoping to move in when the current servants quit and the servants’ quarters in the Suwon woman’s new house became vacant. Her life was much less arduous since she had been living in a rented room, and it did her good to receive better treatment from other people, but she couldn’t support herself with the paltry sum her husband made at Sanhaejin. She also didn’t feel like breaking away from such a grand household. She had grown attached to her mistress and was nervous about making ends meet on her own. Also, she wouldn’t be able to eat as well as she was accustomed to. Hearing about Won-sam and his wife, Deok-gi thought they were no different from some liberated black slaves in America.
“Why aren’t you eating?” Pil-sun asked him.
“I have no appetite. I’ll just have some tangerines. But you should eat before the food gets cold.”
Watching Deok-gi peel a tangerine, she lifted the lid off a bowl and discovered rice-cake soup inside.
Well, when I first met him, I slurped noodles he had bought me with my lunch box on my lap! Encouraged by this thought, she picked up the chopsticks. Her throat tightened, though, at the thought of her parents at the hospital. If she could have, she would have wrapped up everything on the table and taken it to them.
She managed to eat a few morsels when Deok-gi’s wife joined them with her baby. Pil-sun felt blood rush to her face again.
“I’m not sure if our food is to your liking, but please enjoy it,” urged Deok-gi’s wife, seeing that Pil-sun hadn’t touched anything but the noodles. She put down the child, went out, and returned with a bowl of rice-cake soup. “Let’s eat together,” she said, sitting across from Pil-sun.
Deok-gi smiled with gratitude at his wife’s kindness.
“It’s been a while since we made the rice cake, so it’s grown rather dry,” she muttered, picking up some beef slices and placing them in Pil-sun’s soup. She had more favorable feelings toward their guest now, having heard Won-sam’s wife praise her in the kitchen.
Now feeling more comfortable, Pil-sun tried various dishes. The sliced beef was tasty; it brought memories of better days when she had been able to sneak slices off the chopping board as her mother prepared her father’s drinking snack, which she would do a few times a year at most. And the egg-coated fried fish delighted her, for her family hadn’t been able to afford it for such a long time, even on New Year’s. She could polish off an entire bowl of rice with just the kimchi, made with seasoned whole cabbage. Something she hadn’t eaten all winter long. How fresh it tasted!
After the meal, Deok-gi’s wife removed the table. After encouraging her to have some fruit, Deok-gi opened the loft door and fumbled inside, his back to her. She wondered whether he was going to give her some food for her father. It would embarrass her to be carrying anything in full view of others when she walked out of the house. Worried, she sat with her head bowed. When Deok-gi was seated in front of her again, she said, “I should take my leave. I’m sorry for making a nuisance of myself.” She bowed.