Yom Sang-seop - Three Generations

“A friend of Kim Byeong-hwa. I’m very sorry about all this, and I’ll let you go if you give me a clear answer to one question: Where did Byeong-hwa’s money come from?”

“How would I know? What do you hope to gain, dragging me here to ask such a stupid question?”

“It’s far from stupid. I want to know the truth.”

“I told you — I don’t know.”

“Then tell me this. The man who visited you a while ago — where is he now?”

Gyeong-ae’s heart sank, and she broke out into a sweat. He interrogated her, first coaxing, then threatening. He slapped her several times and acted as if he might kill her on the spot. He shouted, “I’m not going to let a bitch like you seduce and corrupt Kim Byeong-hwa.”

From the passion in his words, he could have been one of Byeong-hwa’s comrades, but who knew whether he was just pretending to be a kindred spirit to get the information he wanted? She made up her mind not to breathe a word even if she were beaten to death.

The man continued to harass her for another hour, until a young man, whom she had not seen previously, looked in. Her interrogator told her to stay put and left the room. A moment later he returned. “I need to leave, but we’ll see each other again soon. Think hard in the meantime. You will tell me the truth then!” He turned and went away, to her astonishment.

Perhaps he had received a message that Byeong-hwa had been brought in, Gyeong-ae wondered in hindsight.

Having listened quietly to Gyeong-ae’s account while on his back, Byeong-hwa uttered quietly, “I’m sorry that you had to go through such a thing.”

But Gyeong-ae’s ordeal wasn’t over — she had been captured by the drunken gang again. “Just as I was leaving, I saw the two guys jump out from nowhere — I couldn’t do a thing. It was useless to provoke them, so I pleaded with them and was able to calm them a bit. Then I offered to pay the bill for their drinks. Only then did they loosen their grip on me.”

“So they pummeled you and you bought them drinks,” Pil-sun’s mother commented, unable to suppress her outrage. She sat massaging her husband’s lower back.

“Never mind about that.” Stroking her swollen cheek, Gyeong-ae asked, “Why couldn’t they agree on what they wanted to know, even among themselves?”

“You mean why were the two guys talking about secret funds while their boss had other ideas?” asked Byeong-hwa, who understood her right away. “Only a couple of people are privy to the whole story. The underlings will say anything that pops into their heads. Besides, those two were no comrades of mine. They’re good-for-nothings who knock around and get themselves involved in a lot of bad business.”

“I suspected as much. I wondered why they looked so uncertain when they badgered me about secret funds. They didn’t know a thing.” Gyeong-ae’s eyes found Byeong-hwa’s.

“How can those guys do anything right?” Deok-gi asked. “There must be professional brokers in their midst.”

“They’re not the brains of the outfit — they’re the muscle,” Byeong-hwa explained. “The bosses need guys like them. Nobody can do it alone. As for what happened today, they needed some young bait, a modern young man, somewhat rough, but with enough experience with women to be able to lure Gyeong-ae to the restaurant. If your goal is to spread the rumor that Kim Byeong-hwa has pocketed secret funds, using these fellows works better than running an ad in the papers. Those idiots have squandered all their family assets — they don’t have enough money to buy a drink, let alone eat in restaurants. They get the cold shoulder at gisaeng houses, and even playing billiards is beyond their means. They can’t stay home all day, so they run around Seoul as if it were their playground, sponging off whatever acquaintances they can. If you whisper something to them, it will spread immediately, faster than the morning headlines. And there’s no better source of information than those guys when you want to gather rumors. I started this grocery business to feed and cultivate such people.”

“I see that you’re a generous Red,” observed Deok-gi. “But there’s a saying that your own trusted ax can chop off your foot. Looks like you’d better grow eyes in the back of your head.”

“I intend to be careful. But if I manage to get through to these bastards, I might even be able to find a real comrade or two among the lot.”

Whenever Pil-sun’s father let out a groan of pain, those sitting around him stopped talking and looked up at the clock, wondering why it was taking so long for the doctor to arrive.

Pil-sun’s father had been taken hostage simply because Byeong-hwa had been late coming home. Unlike Gyeong-ae, he wasn’t harassed at the house where he was held and had been treated as an elder, though he was considered incompetent among activist circles. When asked questions, he told them as much as he knew and defended Byeong-hwa. He told them he was helping the young man, though he was uncertain as to what his plans were. He claimed that he wasn’t keeping an eye on Sanhaejin merely to stave off hunger, though as the saying goes, hunger is as scary as the Police Bureau. Meanwhile, Byeong-hwa had been brought in and had started arguing with the owner of the house. They were eventually released without further incident.

Nothing more would have happened had they taken the main road and made their way past the Government-General building. But since the incident had ended without mishap and night hadn’t yet fallen, they let down their guard. Continuing past the Police Affairs Corps, they were about to climb the stone steps leading to Chuseongmun when Byeong-hwa was confronted by a man stumbling through the street. They bumped into each other, but Byeong-hwa said nothing in consideration of Pil-sun’s father and kept climbing the steps, confident that the drunkard would be no match for him if he tried to pick a fight.

“You rude beggar!” the drunk cried, grabbing Byeong-hwa by the hair, just as he was about to walk past him. With the drunkards’ words as a signal, several men swaggered out silently from the shadows. Byeong-hwa knew instinctively what was about to happen and shoved them away as they charged toward him. Pil-sun’s father, however, was immediately thrown to the ground.

Passersby and people who lived in the area came to their aid. Fortunately, Pil-sun and Deok-gi arrived a few moments later, physically restrained the men, and brought Pil-sun’s father and Byeong-hwa home.

Pil-sun had rushed off to find Byeong-hwa and managed to locate 110 Samcheong-dong, but she was told that the visitors had just left. Relieved but exhausted, she ran into Deok-gi. He had just stepped out of a rickshaw with Won-sam and was searching for the house with the help of the rickshaw driver, who held a lamp out in front of them.

Pil-sun had never felt so grateful for others’ concern, nor had she ever trembled with the emotions that surged through her when she saw Deok-gi.

“Even if they were really drunk,” Deok-gi speculated, “and had planned the whole thing in advance, how could they think they could get away with beating people up on such a busy street? Just across the bridge, neighbors were all around saying that they’d go fetch a policeman. What dimwits!”

When Deok-gi made this comment, Pil-sun looked up at him while kneading her father’s shoulders. Her eyes grew brighter and a smile danced across her lips, but when her eyes found his, they immediately fell to the ground. She somehow knew to keep her emotion to herself.

At last, the doctor arrived. His eyes went first to the man lying in bed and then to Gyeong-ae’s swollen cheek. A crowd had gathered around the store. The doctor tried to size up the situation as he approached the bedridden man: Deok-gi, the millionaire’s grandson, has summoned me. Would he pay for the treatment?