Yom Sang-seop - Three Generations

“Sit down! Why are you acting this way?” His voice soared dangerously high, all the more frustrated by his inability to move his body. The Suwon woman sat far away from him, without speaking.

“Who did you fight with? And look! Even if you did quarrel with someone, even if you did get upset, how can you talk about leaving when I’m lying here like this?” He knew that his wife and daughter-in-law didn’t get along, but he didn’t want to ask whether she had had a fight with her.

“Here I am living like this in your house, and how am I supposed to stay even a minute longer when I keep being insulted by an underling?”

“Who said what to you?”

“Deok-gi’s mother is running off her mouth again. She says it’d be better if you died soon and that I don’t know how bad my own shit smells. Is she the only one who counts in this household?”

“What are you talking about? How is all this possible? She’s not the kind of person who would — ”The old man curbed his anger.

“There you go again. You trust her more than me, right?”

“Enough! We have manners in this household, and we’re her elders. Just because you heard something insulting, does it make any sense for you to leave? Do you think Deok-gi’s mother is the only one who matters in this house and that you’ve got to look up to her? Think about it. Grant me that much!”The old man scolded her in a measured tone of voice.

The Suwon woman hung her head low. But did she think any differently, suddenly moved by her husband’s words? The old man suspected that she simply had wanted to find a reason to stir up trouble.

“And why would she ever say that she hoped I would die soon? Even if she entertained such an evil thought, she’d never say it out loud. Who in her right mind would say such a thing in front of you, knowing that I’d hear about it right away?”

To the Suwon woman, the man sounded as if he were still siding with his daughter-in-law. “She must have said it without thinking, because she’s been thinking about it constantly. She’s a nasty one. When she’s angry, I’m telling you, she’ll say anything.”

It did sound plausible. The old man lay quietly, blinking his eyes.

“So why does she want me to die?”

“Isn’t it obvious? After you die, she’ll kick me out of the house. Then she’ll take over the main room and live happily ever after with her son’s family.”

This seemed to make sense, too. He tried to suppress his rage.

“And what did she say about you smelling?”

She sensed the old man was slowly coming around. The Suwon woman felt better and lifted her face.

“Who knows? She claims she noticed something evil I was doing.” She pursed her lips. “She wants to drive me away. That’s why she’s saying things like that!”

This sounded plausible enough, as well.

“It would have been different if she’d said those things to me in private, but the room was full of guests and even your young granddaughter-in-law was there. I — ” Breaking into sobs, she failed to finish her sentence. The old man felt sorry that his wife had been so harassed.

Deok-gi had to postpone his departure again for another day or two. In good conscience, he couldn’t just go until he was sure that his grandfather was well and could move around a little. It would have been a different story, of course, if Deok-gi’s father were tending him with a bowl of Chinese medicinal brew, but such was not the case, and Deok-gi didn’t have the heart to take off when his grandfather was still confined to bed.

His grandfather told Deok-gi to go if he wanted to, but he seemed to hope that his grandson would stay.

Deok-gi didn’t feel like hanging around the house, though. In the aftermath of the clash between his mother and the Suwon woman, he had no desire to watch them behave like chickens after a fight.

The next day Deok-gi went to visit his father. He wanted to talk about a number of things with him, not the least of which was the matter of Gyeong-ae, and he wanted to express his opinion about his father’s clash with his grandfather two nights before.

Since his father wasn’t up yet, Deok-gi went to the inner quarters. His mother inquired after his grandfather and then asked him what his step-grandmother had said about their fight. Deok-gi said he didn’t know. Although he wasn’t sure about exactly what the Suwon woman had said when she broke down in tears in the outer quarters the day before, he had heard about the way she’d made a nuisance of herself to his wife, pretending to be so hurt that she was going to leave the house so that they could all live happily ever after without her. She had gone so far as to accuse Deok-gi’s family of putting up a united front in an attempt to drive her away. After hearing bits and pieces from his wife of what the Suwon woman had said, Deok-gi was angry but also skeptical, and in the end he decided to ignore all the rumors.

“It sounds like she’s giving your wife a hard time again. Really, who cares what nonsense she whispers into your grandfather’s ear, but why does she have to bully the youngest one in the family?” His mother had now found a new reason to be indignant about the woman.

“If you understand her so well, why do you have to go and provoke her the way you do? Whatever she said yesterday, couldn’t you have just ignored her?”

“How can I simply sit by and let her attack me for no reason? Yesterday morning, she tried to make me look bad because I didn’t scurry out to the outer quarters when your grandfather fell. Then I hear she bad-mouthed me to your wife, claiming that I wouldn’t even bat an eye if my father-in-law were dying. She even said that if he were going to die anytime soon and we inherited everything, we’d all be dancing on his grave! Can you imagine? These must be her own nasty fantasies. I have no doubt she’s counting down the days until your grandfather passes away, so that she can pocket her share and be rid of the Jo family once and for all before she gets too old.” His mother was fuming and made no effort to conceal her bitterness.

“Don’t you realize she makes these sorts of accusations against us because you accuse her of the same thing? Granted, she’s only my grandfather’s second wife, and she’s younger than you, but how do you expect her to behave when you tell her she doesn’t know how bad her own shit smells?” It wasn’t that Deok-gi didn’t want to take his mother’s side — as the saying goes, your arm bends in, not out — but he was still unhappy about her lack of dignity, her inability to keep the Suwon woman in check.

“Do you really think I’d say something like that without good reason? On the day of the rites, for example, she kept conspiring with the maidservant while everyone else was busy working. Then, when your grandfather went out, she said some relative of hers had come to Seoul and fallen sick in an inn. She just rushed out of the house, with the excuse that she had to see how he was doing. Now tell me, how can she just take off while everyone else is so busy? Does that make any sense to you? I don’t care if it was her mother on her deathbed, she just can’t do that. Anyway, the woman ran off and whispered something to Clerk Choe at the gate. Then he goes into the outer quarters, and she runs down the street. I’m telling you, it’s all terribly fishy. They’re all up to no good, I’m sure of it. Granted, she doesn’t have the slightest interest in the rites, and she doesn’t know how to put in a good day’s work, but can you believe she was stuck to that dressing mirror of hers until noon? Then she fumbled with the vegetables as if she didn’t know what to do with them and left the trimming and the rest of the work for us. What kind of behavior is that? The maid, you know, was brought in by Clerk Choe, and it took less than a week for your stepgrandmother to become best buddies with her. And then what do you make of her whispering to Choe just before she ran out? I’m sure they’re conspiring to cheat your grandfather somehow, but does he have even the slightest clue about what’s going on?”