Yom Sang-seop - Three Generations

“What was she doing there?” he asked after a while.

“Selling liquor.”

“Does she manage the place?”

“No, I think she just works there.” Deok-gi didn’t want to tell his father that Gyeong-ae was doing it to pass the time as a friend of the proprietor. He wanted to paint a wretched picture, an image of a fallen woman.

It’s not that he wanted to elicit his father’s sympathy for Gyeong-ae. Rather, he simply wanted to make it clear that his father was responsible for her current situation.

“How did she look?”

“Not great but not terrible, either. She was wearing this Japanese gown that — ” Deok-gi suddenly brought the conversation to a halt.

“Who told you I saw her?” Deok-gi asked, after a moment’s pause.

“I just heard about it from someone,” his father said, smiling.

Deok-gi couldn’t press the issue any further, but he grew more and more curious. “Kim Byeong-hwa?”

“Where in the world would I meet Kim Byeong-hwa?” Then his father added, “I don’t think you should be going out to places like that any more. What’ll happen to you if you start drinking like a fish at your age?” His father admonished him gently.

Although the father was right to disapprove of his son’s behavior, his words had the effect of sparking Deok-gi’s rebellious urges. He wondered whether perhaps he had said something indiscreet when he was drunk that reached his father’s ears. But who would have spoken to his father? He didn’t have a clue.

Had he told his wife, when he came home drunk that day, that he had met Gyeong-ae? If his wife then told his mother, word might indeed have reached his father. Deok-gi was puzzled.

This was, in fact, precisely what happened.

When his mother heard her daughter-in-law mention that Deok-gi had run into someone called Hong Gyeong-ae at a Japanese bar the previous night, she felt a memory she thought had been long forgotten grip and start to shake her. Wasn’t she unhappy enough as it was? Instantly, she assumed that her husband was hiding Gyeong-ae away and had given her enough seed money to manage a high-collar bar.

The mother had wanted to ask her son whether it was true that he was sympathetic to Gyeong-ae. But she hadn’t found the opportunity to bring up the matter at her father-in-law’s house, and she had forgotten to mention it to him later on in her room because she was wrapped up in criticizing the Suwon woman. It wasn’t until the other night, when her husband had — for the first time in quite a while — entered the inner quarters to scold her for fighting with the Suwon woman, that she’d been able to bring up the topic of Hong Gyeong-ae.

The wife went on and on about how he and Gyeong-ae would never sever ties because they had a four- or five-year-old child between them. The husband didn’t quite grasp why she cared so much whether he parted with Gyeong-ae or not, but assured her that he’d be glad to grant her a divorce.

Deok-gi found it difficult to approach the subject now, as he faced his father, but he forced himself to say what was on his mind. “I don’t know exactly what happened between the two of you, but how can you just abandon her in light of what’s happened?”

“What else can I do except leave her alone? I have to think about my own position, you know. And, besides, she’s the one who made such a fuss and broke things off with me.”

“That’s not what she implied. Even though you’re my father, I’ve got to say that what you’ve done — sacrificing others for the sole purpose of saving your own skin — is just plain wrong.”

“That’s none of your business!” the father shouted.

“You’re right! It is none of my business. It’s your responsibility, from beginning to end. And I want to know what you’re going to do about it.”

“Responsibility? What are you talking about? I told you — you shouldn’t go poking your nose into things you know nothing about.” The father’s resolve to speak to his son with tact had completely disappeared.

“I’m sure that she neither initiated the affair nor ended it. It’s only because word got out that — ” Deok-gi said.

“Stop this nonsense! To talk to your father this way! How can someone your age be so impudent?” The father had no intention of hearing his son out and wanted him to know who was in charge.

Deok-gi felt compelled, however, to finish what he had started to say. “Don’t you feel sorry for the child? Why should she be your sacrificial lamb? I won’t pass judgment on you, Father, but don’t you think you should finish what you’ve started?”

“What do you mean, what I started? That child isn’t mine.”

“What do you mean? I saw her two nights ago. How can you say such a thing? I’m afraid to even ask you this question, but do you really intend to avoid your responsibility? Are you going to try to shift the blame onto Gyeong-ae?” Deok-gi was incensed.

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” The father then tried to temper his rage, managing to lower his voice to add, “Now, get out of here! Get out!” He turned his back on Deok-gi, repeating what his own father had said to him on the day of the ancestral rites, as if he were passing down the command from one generation to the next.

Deok-gi’s father was furious to learn that his son had gone to see the child, but he was nevertheless curious about the visit. He was in no position to ask for details, though.

Was he simply repeating what he used to say to the members of the church and to the outside world in order to deny the truth? He had never denied it to himself. Actually, it was Gyeong-ae, more than the child, whom he couldn’t entirely forget even now, several years later. He had convinced himself that there was no need to pick at an old sore, since he didn’t have the nerve to get in touch with her.

If Sang-hun could do it all over again, he would surely find a way to keep her instead of tossing her away so heartlessly. At the time, though, he hadn’t had the courage. He had trembled with fear that rumors might spread all over town — throughout the church at the very least — and since he didn’t know how to take responsibility for his actions, he just walked away. If only he’d had a thousand won at the time to send her away to the countryside! But it had been impossible to make his father cough up such a hefty sum without saying why he needed it, and he couldn’t have raised that kind of money quickly because his father held on to the deeds of the Hwagae-dong house. While she was in Tokyo, Gyeong-ae wanted desperately to come home, and he really couldn’t leave her there with her swelling stomach, so he brought her back and in a frenzy hid her at the Bungmi Changjeong house, fearing the scrutiny of women in the church who often visited Gyeong-ae’s house in Dangju-dong.

Gyeong-ae’s mother also feared there’d be rumors at church. She told everyone that she was moving back to Suwon, using the excuse that her daughter was still studying in Tokyo and that it was difficult for her to live in Seoul all alone. She did actually go to Suwon for a while, but she soon returned to Seoul and set up house in anticipation of Gyeong-ae’s return. No one guessed that the sudden disappearance of the mother and daughter meant they had been admitted early to Heaven. A secret like Gyeong-ae’s couldn’t be kept for long. And Seoul was a small world. When the mother ran into friends from church on the street, her excuse that she’d come to Seoul for a short visit grew stale. The rumors began as far-flung stories but soon gravitated toward the truth. Gyeong-ae’s mother felt harassed and caught in the middle, while Sang-hun went around looking gaunt and unwell. Had he openly renounced the church and its doctrines, having a concubine would no longer have seemed a sin, and he might have felt it was nothing to be ashamed of. But he couldn’t find the courage to sacrifice his place in society however much he didn’t want to banish Gyeong-ae or abandon her. In the midst of all this, she had the baby.