Yom Sang-seop - Three Generations

Secretary Ji sat quietly with his young master for some time. He must have been mulling something over because he finally ventured, “It’s a good thing that you’re here. But be careful. There’s no one you can trust.”

“What are they up to? The telegrams they claim to have sent didn’t reach me.”

“What do you think? Their mind is on one thing,” said Secretary Ji, looking up toward the loft. “But what can they do? Their greed is futile, but they must have come here and concocted some scheme among themselves.”

“Who do you mean by ‘they’?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Choe, Chang-hun, the Suwon woman, and the husband and wife in the servants’ quarters. I’m a thorn in their side — they’d shoot me dead if they had a gun. I may be old, but I’m no fool.” Secretary Ji sounded proud.

“Uncle Chang-hun, too?” Deok-gi feigned surprise to see how the secretary would react.

“His motive must be different from Choe’s or the Suwon woman’s. I hate to say it, but the most dangerous one of them all is the Suwon woman. Be careful.”

“What do they intend to do?”

“If your grandfather had died before your arrival, they could have tampered with some document, though they couldn’t switch everything in the safe or steal everything. It could have been disastrous. Your father seemed to be on to something, but who was there to help him? I was very worried.”

“You’ve been through a lot.”

“You know, before I went to the market, I came here to take the servant with me. The gate to the outer quarters was locked, and when I was trying to come in, the servant said there was no need for me to do so, that he’d be right out. I thought that was rather odd. I peeked in through a gap in the gate, and it looked as though someone were moving around in the room.”

“Really? Were there shoes outside?”

“No, actually. There was no sound, but through the tiny windowpane I saw a shadow flitting near the loft. I thought it could be a burglar. The more I thought about it, the more anxious I felt. Anyway, when I returned, I found the scarf on the threshold. It’s even more distasteful that Chang-hun is a part of the gang than Clerk Choe, isn’t it?”

“I agree, but on the other hand, had there been a womanizer in the family, who knows what could have happened?” Deok-gi laughed.

Secretary Ji studied Deok-gi. “Well, well, I see now that I don’t have to worry about the Jo family. I didn’t know your potential!”

“Not at all — I’m confused about running this big household. Please help me as much as you can.” To this old man, Deok-gi expressed all the loneliness and anxiety that he couldn’t reveal to his own father.

“What more can I say when I owe your family so much?” Secretary Ji said with great modesty. “I’m ignorant, and I don’t have enough energy left.” He felt moved and was proud to have had a frank talk with the young master, with whom he would play a role in holding the household together — a household whose foundations were crumbling and whose divisions were growing deeper.

“What else have you heard?”

“All I know is that behind everything is a lousy woman who runs a place called Maedang House. Your father goes there for drinks, and once he ran into the Suwon woman there. Anyway, that louse’s place seems to be the den where the scoundrels gather. When they aren’t conspiring here, they go there whenever they can with their dirty schemes.”

“Where is Maedang House? Does my father spend time with this group?” It made Deok-gi feel guilty to suspect his father, but he couldn’t trust him.

“I don’t think so. I’m not sure of the details, since I haven’t seen the Maedang woman, but she’s notorious for blackmailing people, and she rules with an iron fist the women who sell their bodies in secret. Looks like she’s manipulating both your father and the Suwon woman. It may be that she hopes to squeeze something out of them — or, at least, from one of them.”

This shocking news displaced all of Deok-gi’s other preoccupations.

“Please keep it to yourself, but from the beginning, Clerk Choe cooked up a scheme to make the Suwon woman your grandfather’s concubine, with the understanding that she would split the inheritance with him. Then Chang-hun got involved. One of these days those bastards will receive a blow when they least expect it and fall pretty hard.” Secretary Ji, a man of principle, ground his teeth.

“If they were the ones who brewed my grandfather’s medicine, how could he have gotten better?”

“Exactly!”

When Deok-gi heard that the medicine itself could have been tainted, he reeled. Although Secretary Ji was reluctant to go into details, Deok-gi remembered what his wife told him the day before, though he hadn’t paid much attention to her words at the time. She complained that no one was allowed to touch the medicine other than the maidservant. Deok-gi’s wife was always entrusted with taking it to the main room. The Suwon woman would nag her about how she didn’t brew the medicine herself or how she didn’t pay enough attention to the old man’s illness, but she wasn’t allowed to touch the medicine in the first place. Deok-gi’s suspicions mounted.

Then there was the maidservant. At first, everyone liked her because she was friendly and accommodating and handled her duties promptly and expertly, but it became apparent that she was crafty and talkative, like the madam of a gisaeng establishment. Deok-gi’s heart sank to think that this maidservant had been in charge of brewing his grandfather’s medicine.

We’ll know soon enough! However depressed he felt over his grandfather’s hospitalization, Deok-gi resolved to get to the bottom of the matter.

The men gathered at the hospital to perform the New Year’s ancestral ceremony. The patient was well enough during the day, but toward evening he lapsed into a coma and regained consciousness only at dawn.

The doctor felt that it would be better to put off the operation for several days to give the patient time to regain some strength. An operation in name only, the procedure amounted to draining liquid from both sides of the rib cage. The doctor explained that it would nevertheless be difficult to perform, given the patient’s weakened state. He couldn’t understand how the patient had become so enervated. He assumed that the old man had taken considerable amounts of invigorating medicine — he could certainly afford it.

The next three or four days passed without incident. Still, the doctor couldn’t attempt the operation because the patient remained lethargic for no discernable reason. To make matters worse, the old man couldn’t keep down solid food.

“This doesn’t make sense. It looks like a toxic syndrome,” speculated the doctor.

“What toxin would you say?” Deok-gi prompted.

“We’d better wait and see what symptoms he shows.” That was all the doctor would say for the time being. Several times a day, injections were administered into the old man’s hardened veins. Thanks to these injections, his only source of nourishment, he hung on to life.

The Jo family doctor came to the hospital when he learned that the old man’s condition was critical. Deok-gi arranged a meeting between him and the hospital doctor in the hope that together they could reach a diagnosis.

The two discussed the patient’s condition, the care given him, and examined each other’s prescriptions. The diagnosis could have been wrong, but there was no possibility that their own prescriptions could have been toxic. However, when the results of the stool analysis were brought to the family doctor, he gasped.