Yom Sang-seop - Three Generations

“It’s like the inside of a chimney in here. Why do the young ones smoke so much? And what’s this childish babble about?” The old man started scolding them as soon as he entered the room. He then sat down on the warmest part of the floor and continued in a hushed voice.

“Everyone sit down.” He seemed to be preparing for a major scene. He had just finished setting up the ceremonial table display and had gone to the outer quarters to kill time. Having overheard the quarrel between the cousins, he rushed in to intervene because he couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Why are you here? Isn’t today a church day?” His face flushed with anger, the old man glared at his son, who was standing on the other side of the room.

“Get out of here! You can’t just come in anytime you feel like it. You idiot! You’re almost fifty years old, and what did you just blurt out in front of your young cousins? We borrowed our ancestors? Borrowed ancestors only help their natural descendants? What a fool!” The blue veins on the old man’s flushed neck were throbbing, and it looked as if he were about to collapse.

Sang-hun stood in the corner, his head bowed.

“You’re my own son, so you must be a human being! You should know about your ancestors. You inherited your parents’ own flesh and blood! When your young cousins start babbling nonsense, it’s your job to teach them a thing or two. Just think what will become of our family if you keep spouting things that even children wouldn’t dare say.” The old man took a deep breath before raising his voice again. “After I die, what’s going to happen to this family? What’ll ever become of it? Get out! Get out of here, I said! You say we borrowed our ancestors. Well, then you must have borrowed your father, too! And a borrowed father won’t be of any help to you. So don’t even think of coming to see me again!”

In blind fury, the old man picked up his long smoking pipe, slammed it down, picked it up again, then brandished it like a long sword.

Inwardly he was resenting the fact that four thousand won had been sucked out of him little by little, and he was worried about the future. When he heard his son making light of the project that meant so much to him, he was all the more incensed. The son had, of course, fallen out of his father’s graces long ago. Everyone expected that a row would erupt even if the young man kept his opinions to himself, if only for the reason that he — the living opposition to ancestral rites — had dared to show his face on this particular day. It was too good an opportunity. The son naturally became the target of the old man’s temper.

Chang-hun intervened for the sake of appearances, although he was happy with the turn of events. “He didn’t mean anything like that. Uncle must have misheard what Sang-hun said.”

“Misheard? Are you calling me deaf now?”

“Hold on a minute. Sang-hun must have a good reason for saying what he did. He must be worried about all the money you’ve had to spend in these confusing times.” Chang-hun tried to make excuses. But Sang-hun hated Chang-hun more for trying to calm his father down than he hated his father for lashing out.

“Who gave you the right to worry about my money? It’s not yours to spend. And what business do you have telling me how I should spend it?”

“What you’re doing, Father. ” began Sang-hun while his father, having calmed down somewhat, opened his tobacco pouch to restuff his pipe. “I don’t mean to find fault with the fact that you’re spending money. I’m just saying that it’s wrong for people to even come up with such big unnecessary projects.”

“Unnecessary?”The father’s voice simmered now.

“Well, take the genealogy book, for example. I heard it cost fifty won to bind each volume. If you actually collected fifty for each copy, why did you need an extra three or four thousand?”

“Who says I spent that much?”

The old man knew his son was right, but the additional money hadn’t been used for printing the genealogy books. It was used to silence those who had objected to the old man’s worming his way into the registry of a sonless family, those who had worried that the increase in number would dilute the true yangban stock. The old man claimed that he had spent only a thousand, much like a prodigal son quoting a figure lower than what he has actually squandered. It was by exploiting this weakness that tricksters normally chiseled some money for themselves, but it was the first time the old man had played the fool over money.

An old saying tells us that the young are not supposed to offer advice to their elders. The time for such niceties was long past, but the son, though fuming, tried to treat his father with respect.

“It’s not a matter of how much you spent. It’s just that if you had only been using your money for a good cause. ”

“What the hell do you mean if I used my money for a good cause? Was it for a good cause that you spent five or six thousand on a school where you went and seduced somebody’s daughter, your own student?”

Everyone in the room knew that Sang-hun had been prodding his father with a hot poker.

Sang-hun was caught completely off guard and turned crimson.

By coincidence, the Suwon woman came from the same town as Gyeong-ae and her mother. Sang-hun had kept his family in the dark about the affair, but the Suwon woman had heard rumors of it from acquaintances, even though she had never laid eyes on the two of them. After Gyeong-ae had the baby, Sang-hun’s entire family learned of it, including Deok-gi, who was able to piece together the gist of the story from the Suwon woman. The old man turned a blind eye while Sang-hun had several rows with his wife and never forced his son to evict Gyeong-ae and her mother from his house in Bungmi Changjeong. But now, his father, infuriated, had just announced to a crowded room that Sang-hun had wasted money on school and seduced one of his students. Mortified, the son felt his father had now gone too far.

“You’re being too harsh, Father. What I mean is that there’re so many things to do in the world, don’t you think? Education projects, library work, and now they’re even putting together a Korean language dictionary. ” Sang-hun methodically continued his argument, carefully and calmly.

“I don’t want to hear about it! Who wants to listen to a sermon from you? Now get out of here!”

“Whatever happened in the past, what sense does it make to landscape the grave site at this point? If it were just a little bit of tidying up, it would be another matter, but I really don’t understand how you can seriously plan to build a Confucian academy and expect Confucianists to flock there in droves. Money aside, does it make any sense nowadays?”

“Enough! I told you to get out, but here you are still — going on and on. Why do you care what I do? Are you my supervisor? Don’t you worry. I’ll make sure not to leave you a penny when I die. Go ahead and starve to death. I won’t give you a thing. To my mind, you don’t exist any more. All of you, pay attention, too.” He looked around at the others. “I don’t have many assets, but I plan to leave half of what I do have to Deok-gi and use the rest for whatever I want to spend it on while I’m alive. If there’s anything left over, I’ll distribute it fairly before I die. I’ll settle everything before I go, even if it means hiring a public notary or a lawyer.

“And as for you, consider yourself a stranger to me. Don’t tell me that when I die you’re actually going to wear hemp or let down your hair in mourning!”

The old man had been gradually transferring his land deeds to Deok-gi, and he intended to use up the rest while he was alive and leave the remainder to the Suwon woman and their daughter.