Yom Sang-seop - Three Generations

The detectives opened all the wardrobe doors, ransacked the desk drawers, opened the bookcase, and quickly searched the loft. Then, they took out the steel box, which had been returned to its place, and attempted to open it.

“We don’t have the key,” the daughter-in-law spoke up to discourage them.

“They got it from your husband,” her father-in-law whispered.

“We’ve got the key, don’t you get it?” the older detective growled, pointing to the younger man, who inserted the key, while entering the combination. The safe clanged open. The gruff detective found the ring of keys, and asked Sang-hun, “Is this the right one?”

“Yes, yes.”

Sang-hun’s wife, standing on the veranda, was unable to understand why her husband was so ill at ease and submissive before the younger man.

They tramped out to the outer quarters. Sang-hun’s wife and daughter-in-law followed. “Are they really detectives?” Sang-hun’s wife asked the keeper of the outer quarters.

He answered dismissively, “Don’t you see how the master is being dragged around? I’ve got their card right here.”

Why should she doubt them when it was all to get her son home? The two women stood on the stone ledge, peering into the room flooded with electric light. The detectives opened the cabinet first, then the main safe, shutting it securely before coming out to the veranda.

“What are you doing out here? Go inside,” Sang-hun scolded the women.

“What happened?” the daughter-in-law asked, knowing that her mother-in-law wouldn’t want to talk to him.

“Well, he’ll be out by tomorrow, I think. Don’t worry. Go on inside.” As he took his leave, surrounded by the detectives, he told a young servant to secure the gates of the house.

“Master, are you going straight home?”

“Yes. Let’s get a taxi.”

The three flagged down a taxi when they reached Hwanggeumjeong.

“We’ll disappear this evening. You should pay us now.”

“Relax. You’ll get paid when we get there.”

“If things go wrong, we’ll land in prison for three years — maybe even five or six. A thousand is nothing. We should get enough so that our family doesn’t go hungry for however long we’re on the run.”

The other one agreed. “Don’t worry. It’s gone so well that I’m sure the master will give us an ample reward.”

“You won’t be sorry if you give us a big one each.”

“Why are you guys so impatient? Wait a minute — ” Sang-hun was alarmed.

“What?”

“The detective’s card you gave to the keeper. We left it somewhere on the cabinet. What a stupid mistake!”

They had acquired the card from the detective who had taken in Clerk Choe. Sang-hun had insisted that it’d be better if they didn’t use it, unless it were absolutely necessary.

“There’s no need for you to worry. Our necks are on the line here.”

“But that card can cause serious problems. It’s like using a stolen official seal or a forged document.”

“If you’re so worried, we’ll go snatch it back. How much is it worth to you?”

“You sound like a broken record. I’ll give you as much as you want. Just get it back.”

“How much?”

“How will you get it back?”

“Don’t you worry about that. Just tell us how much.”

“I’ll give you a hundred won.”

“That’s it? If something goes wrong, it could cost a person’s life.”

“You’re crazy! I’ll give you a hundred, that’s all.”

“Put it in writing.”

“A note?”

“No, a check.”

“All right. Wait! You took the card back and put it in your pocket, didn’t you?”

“Write the check, then hand over the rest of our money.”

“I can’t. I don’t have that much cash with me.”

Sang-hun wrote a check in the taxi parked in the front of his gate. The older man chuckled as he snapped up the check with one hand and brought out the card from his coat pocket with the other.

There was still no news of Deok-gi, who was supposed to be released the next day. Deok-gi’s mother worried that her husband had been arrested as well. She sent a maidservant to Hwagae-dong to see if he had returned home. The servant reported that they were waiting for news from Deok-gi’s house. Early the previous evening, two detectives had arrived with the master in a car and taken Ui-gyeong away with them.

Deok-gi’s mother wouldn’t have minded if the whore stayed in prison for ten years, but when she imagined her husband in jail, she felt a twinge of pity for him. Her thoughts weren’t as generous, however, when they turned to Ui-gyeong and Gyeong-ae. She entertained all sorts of fantasies as she tried to fall asleep.

There was no one to take care of her husband now that he was in jail. What did he eat and how had he spent the two nights he had been there without anything to cover himself? Perhaps she’d take him a quilt the next day when she delivered her son’s food.

She suddenly felt close to her husband, who had drifted so far away from her. The idea of looking after him while he was in jail wasn’t completely altruistic though, for she was hoping her show of concern might change her husband’s heart.

As soon as day broke, she pulled out her husband’s quilt and assembled a selection of cotton-padded clothes. She made a fuss, telling servants to go buy new towels and to bring soap and tooth-cleaning powder. She packed everything up, then carefully made up her face. Dressing warmly enough to withstand the cold for the entire day, she left in a car with the boy who delivered Deok-gi’s meals. No one in the house laughed at her for having had such a dramatic change of heart. In fact, everyone believed it was the best thing she could have done.

Those remaining at home weren’t sure if the detectives would let her deliver the care package for Sang-hun since they had refused Deok-gi’s quilt at first, relenting only after learning that Deok-gi had recently been seriously ill. Around noon, when they were still waiting for news from the mistress, a car stopped outside the house. Deok-gi stepped out of the car.

The family ran out and embraced him as if he’d risen from the dead while two Western-suited men peered in at them from behind the middle gate.

They’ve come again!

Deok-gi put up his hand and beckoned the strangers inside. As they stepped up to the veranda, he asked his wife to bring out the small safe.

“The safe? Didn’t the police take the keys with them the day before yesterday?”

“What?” Deok-gi grew pale as he turned toward the stunned detectives.

“But isn’t your father at the police station? Mother went some time ago.”

Deok-gi spoke to the detectives in Japanese.

The detectives shook their heads, their faces falling.

“When did they take it? Who did they say they were? They must have shown you some identification,” Deok-gi demanded.

“Didn’t you send the key to the small safe? They might have left their card in the outer quarters.”

“The key to the small safe is right here!”

“So your father was with them?” a detective asked.

“Yes, at first he came and searched for the keys, saying that there was something he needed from the cabinet. Then he returned at dusk with two men, one of whom had the key. He took something out of the safe in the outer quarters.”

“There was nothing your family could have done, but people should know that we don’t search houses after dark.” Resigned to the situation, the detectives moved to the outer quarters. One question remained: Had his father been deceived by the phony detectives, or had he conspired with them? Deok-gi didn’t want to believe that his father could be behind this.