“Something must be going on,” he said.
Useon imagined how delighted Hyeong-sik would be. It was as if he were taking someone to see a wonderful new spectacle. He led Hyeong-sik to Gyewolhyang’s house in Dabanggol. From the moment Hyeong-sik turned the corner at Jonggak, he knew Useon was dragging him to Yeongchae’s house. And as Useon pulled him along, seeing how happy Useon looked, Hyeong-sik thought something good must have happened—and that good thing was probably the rescue of Yeongchae. But then he thought, “It’s already too late.” Yeongchae was no longer a virgin. He also recalled the previous evening: Yeongchae and Seon-hyeong, dressed in white, smiling, each extending a hand, saying “Please take my hand. Yes,” and then suddenly Yeongchae’s body transformed. Worse, her face became terrifying like a ghost’s, and blood flowing from her lips splattered onto him. They reached the gate. Useon looked at Hyeong-sik and grinned.
“This bright lantern of Gyewolhyang’s is only good until today,” he said. He struck the lantern a few times with his cane. “Hmph, someone will come looking for Gyewolhyang tonight. They’ll come and find her gone—that’ll be a sight.” He hit the lantern’s roof again, as if to smash it, and laughed heartily. The lantern creaked as if in pain, wobbling like a dance. Hyeong-sik only thought to himself, “What if it breaks?” He said nothing and didn’t smile. Seeing no joy on Hyeong-sik’s face, Useon seemed a little disappointed; he pretended nothing was wrong and called out loudly, “Come here!”
A maidservant came out from the servants’ quarters, adjusting her clothes as if she had been nursing a child. “Sir, you’re here? What’s this ‘come here’? Just go on in!” Hyeong-sik thought, “He’s been here a lot.” He wondered if Useon too was one of the men who had defiled Yeongchae’s chastity, but he quickly dismissed the thought. Useon made as if to strike the maidservant with his cane. “Still calling me ‘Sir’ instead of ‘Master’!” He showed his broad front teeth and cackled.
“Is the young lady in?” Useon asked.
“The young lady took the morning train to Pyongyang!”
Useon was startled. So was Hyeong-sik. Useon shook his head, utterly dejected. “Why? What for?”
“I don’t know. How would I know? She came home after eleven last night… I heard crying for a while… then she fell asleep, so I don’t know what happened… This morning before breakfast, the mistress told me to call a rickshaw. I thought the young lady was going to some party… but it seemed too early for a party… I figured maybe there was a boat outing at Nodeul. But she said she was taking the nine-thirty train to Pyongyang,” the maidservant said very fluently. Hyeong-sik was surprised—‘She’s no innocent’—and looked closely at her face. There was suspicion in her expression. ‘Pyongyang! Why would she go to Pyongyang?’ he thought.
A child cried from inside the room, and as the maidservant turned to go in, Useon lowered his voice. “Did anyone come this morning?”
“No one came. Well,” she pointed to a house two doors away, “the young lady from that house came by to ask her to go bathing together.” Then she went into the room, and they heard her say “Stop crying!” followed by a spank. Hyeong-sik thought: The woman who spoke so politely to them was now being rough with the child.
Useon wrote something on the ground with his cane, then said to Hyeong-sik, “Let’s go in anyway. We can ask the Old Woman.” He took off his horsehair hat and led the way inside. But his voice had lost its earlier cheerfulness. Hyeong-sik followed. He remembered standing in this yard the night before, being snubbed by the Old Woman. He smiled faintly. He was remarkably calm today. In fact, it was Useon who seemed more anxious now.
The room was empty. On the veranda, the Old Woman’s so-called “ugly old codger” was snoring, a wooden pillow under his head, having stopped reading some storybook. Useon knew this “old codger” well. He was the son of a rich man from the outer city of Pyongyang. He wrote poetry well, sang well, and thirty or forty years ago, he was a well-known playboy in Pyongyang Castle. But over ten-odd years of debauchery, he had squandered all his considerable wealth, and as the saying goes, all that was left was his “thing.” So, at a loss, for over ten years now he had been living in this Old Woman’s house—the same house where he used to sit her on his knee and sing lullabies—as either a hanger-on or a husband, it was unclear. At first, he would occasionally quarrel with the Old Woman, and when he was really angry, he would yell “You wretched woman!” But in the last two or three years, he couldn’t even do that. Now, whenever the Old Woman told him “Go drop dead” (about three times a week), he would just laugh heartily and say “It’s a sin,” having lost any will to resist. Still, the Old Woman usually treated the “old codger” kindly. What was more remarkable was that every night she would personally lay out his bedding and make him sleep on the warmest spot.
Without hesitation, Useon stepped onto the veranda in his shoes and stomped the floor with his cane, calling out, “Hey! Hey!” as if he didn’t know who to call. Hyeong-sik stood where he had stood the night before and looked at Yeongchae’s room, just as he had done then. Everything in the room seemed the same. But his heart was not as troubled as it had been last night.
When there was no answer, Useon stomped the veranda even harder with both his shoes and cane, raising his voice angrily: “Hey! Old Woman!” The way Useon shouted “Old Woman!” struck Hyeong-sik as funny, and he burst out laughing. Soon the Old Woman appeared from a corner of the yard, adjusting her skirt ties. “Oh, it’s Secretary Shin! I was in the outhouse—what’s all this racket?” She came in, staring at Hyeong-sik for a moment. She recognized him as the one who had come last night asking for “Miss Wolhyang.” So he must be Secretary Shin’s errand boy, she thought. Hyeong-sik thought, ‘She looked down on me.’ The Old Woman acted as if Hyeong-sik were not important. She stepped onto the veranda and spoke to Useon very familiarly: “What brings you here so early?” Then she kicked the “old codger” with her foot and shouted, “Hey, get up! We have guests!” and “If you want to lie down so much, why don’t you go lie in the ground?” She kicked the wooden pillow out from under him. The pillow knocked over a novel that was lying nearby and rolled away, hit the wall, and stood upright. The “old codger,” his bald head with only a few gray hairs left, banged it on the floor as he jumped up, saying, “Huh, what kind of manners is that?” He didn’t even look at Useon as he got up and went into his own room. Watching him, Hyeong-sik thought of his own deceased grandfather. His grandfather, once wealthy, had also sold off all the family heirlooms. His sons had died early, and Hyeong-sik, the grandson, had been in Japan. He remembered being looked down upon by his step-grandmother, a former gisaeng, in a tiny shack. But Hyeong-sik thought his grandfather was a more refined man than that “old codger.”
Useon asked urgently, “So the young lady has gone to Pyongyang?” Without answering, the Old Woman first went into Yeongchae’s room and said to Useon, “Come in here, the house is going to collapse?” Useon said to Hyeong-sik, “Come on in,” and gave him a meaningful smile. He took off his shoes and entered the room. Hyeong-sik took a step toward the room, but then he saw the mother-of-pearl chest, the gayageum in its colorful silk bag, and the pink mosquito net hanging in the warmest spot. A sudden feeling of displeasure rose in him. So he stopped taking off his shoes and smiled, saying, “I’ll just sit here,” and sat down on the veranda. Useon said, “Come in. From today, you’re the master of this room.” He got up and pulled Hyeong-sik’s arm. Hyeong-sik’s face suddenly turned red. Useon thought, ‘He’s still a child,’ and pulled his arm again. The Old Woman was surprised once when she saw Useon treating Hyeong-sik as a friend, and twice when she heard “you’re the master from today.” Her eyes widened, but she was an old hand. She put on a forced smile and stood up. “Please come in, sir. I didn’t know who you were… I was rude last night… You were dressed too plainly.” Hyeong-sik felt embarrassed and flustered, but thought, ‘Hmph, now you know who I am?’ and went into the room as urged.
As he sat down, he looked around the room again, as if avoiding the Old Woman’s gaze. The folds of the mosquito net were the same as yesterday, so Yeongchae must have slept without it last night. He wondered if she had leaned against the wall, unable to sleep, suffering. A natural sadness filled his heart. Hyeong-sik’s eyes moved from the mosquito net to the wall with the door. He stopped short. On that wall hung a torn skirt. Scenes from Cheongnyangni swirled in his mind. There was blood on the front panel of the skirt. Hyeong-sik suppressed his trembling breath and bit his lip. He thought, ‘I’m biting my lip like Yeongchae did.’ He couldn’t bear to look anymore, so he tore his eyes away from the torn skirt. He remembered seeing Yeongchae hide the torn part of her skirt on the streetcar coming from Dongdaemun, and he thought how a woman minds her appearance even at such times. Right under the skirt, a piece of bloodstained silk handkerchief caught his eye, but he didn’t know what it was.
Until now, Hyeong-sik’s calm heart had begun to stir with hot turbulence. The thought ‘Why did she go to Pyongyang?’ tormented him as if it held some terrible meaning. Hyeong-sik wished that Useon would quickly ask the Old Woman why Yeongchae had gone to Pyongyang. Useon lit a cigarette and asked, “So where exactly did the young lady go?” He found it awkward to call her Wolhyang, but if he said “Miss Yeongchae,” the Old Woman might not understand, so he settled on “young lady.” The Old Woman knew he was being playful, so she didn’t smile.
“She left suddenly this morning, said she was going to Pyongyang for a while. She said it had been a long time since she’d visited her father’s grave, so she wanted to go pay respects,” the Old Woman said. She assumed the two men knew nothing about last night’s incident. She thought Useon had brought his friend along for a visit. The new friend had probably heard of Wolhyang’s fame and come to see her last night, only to be disappointed. Seeing how shabbily he was dressed, she figured the friend might have thought she was hiding Wolhyang, so today he brought Useon, who was close to Wolhyang. And she thought, ‘For a man who looks like that, why would he want to visit a gisaeng?’
When Hyeong-sik heard that Yeongchae had gone to Pyongyang to visit a grave, he thought of Mr. Park, who had died in prison. But before he could fully picture Mr. Park’s face, the word “ancestral grave” struck his chest with indescribable terror. Hyeong-sik blurted out, “Ancestral grave!” At that cry, Useon and the Old Woman both looked at him. Fear and surprise were clearly visible in his eyes. The Old Woman seemed to think of something and got up, going to the other room.
Useon also found meaning in the suddenness of Yeongchae’s departure to Pyongyang. He glanced at the Old Woman as she rose and went to her room. The Old Woman was the one who could explain this unfathomable secret of the “ancestral grave visit.” And her sudden departure to her room seemed the most significant event in unraveling that secret. Both Hyeong-sik and Useon fixed their eyes on the door through which the Old Woman had disappeared. They held their breath, as if waiting for some major event. The summer sun poured down like a bonfire on the yard, as if flames would burst from the ground at any moment. Heat shimmered off the roof tiles and poured down from the ceiling. Sweat stains appeared in several places on Hyeong-sik’s newly worn ramie overcoat. Beads of sweat rose on Useon’s forehead too, but he neither wiped them nor fanned himself with his horsehair hat. Under the chest, a glass flytrap held four or five flies that kept trying to climb out, only to fall back in. A spotted cat, roused from its nap somewhere, came to the front of Yeongchae’s room, yawned, stretched, and looked at Hyeong-sik and Useon.
After a while, the Old Woman came out holding a letter in an envelope. She said to Useon, “Wolhyang gave me this at the station just as the train was about to leave. She said to give it to someone named Lee Hyeong-sik if he comes.” She handed the letter to Useon and quickly glanced at Hyeong-sik’s face. When the Old Woman received the letter at the station, she assumed Lee Hyeong-sik was some man who visited Wolhyang, and she wondered: if he was close enough for Wolhyang to write a special letter, how could she not know him? But the train was leaving quickly, so she couldn’t ask in detail. She figured she’d ask someone later. Then, seeing how Useon and Hyeong-sik seemed to be worrying about Yeongchae’s affairs, and especially noticing Hyeong-sik’s strangely troubled expression and his startled cry of “Ancestral grave!”, she wondered if this man was “Lee Hyeong-sik,” so she brought out the letter. And as she gave it to Useon, she quickly studied Hyeong-sik’s face.
When Hyeong-sik saw on the envelope that Useon was holding the familiar handwriting: “To Mr. Lee Hyeong-sik,” he let out a startled “Ah!” and snatched the letter from Useon’s hand, looking at the back of the envelope. But on the back, there was only the date: “Morning of June 29th.” Nothing else. Hyeong-sik’s hand shook as he held the letter. Useon, too, held his breath, thinking, ‘There must be something to this.’ The Old Woman saw their startled faces and became alarmed herself, wondering what was going on. She felt that Wolhyang’s departure to Pyongyang must have some deeper meaning.
That morning, Wolhyang had seemed free of the previous evening’s sorrow. She got up early, washed her face, applied powder and perfume, dressed in a ramie skirt and jacket like a schoolgirl, and came to the Old Woman’s room while the latter was still in bed. Smiling brightly, she said, “Mother, I was wrong last night. After sleeping on it, I realized there’s nothing so ridiculous.” The Old Woman, who had gone to bed worried, was so delighted that she took Wolhyang’s hand. “That’s right. You thought well. I’m glad.” She was reassured. Now she thought Wolhyang would start receiving guests again at night, and was doubly pleased. Then Yeongchae hesitated for a long time, as if embarrassed to speak. “Mother, I’d like to go to Pyongyang for a while. I’ll visit Father’s grave after such a long time, and get some fresh air…” The Old Woman was glad that Yeongchae had changed her stubborn, sorrowful mind. She had also grown somewhat fond of her from crying while holding her the night before (though by morning, three-quarters of that affection had cooled). And she thought that for a small matter, it would be better to let her have her wish. “Go ahead. It’s been over three months, so of course you’d want to go. Go see your friends to your heart’s content and play for three or four days before coming back.” She personally went to the station, bought a second-class ticket, lunch, and even plenty of Kappō cigarettes. She told her, “When you get there, give my regards to so-and-so. Say I was too busy to write.” So she fully believed Wolhyang would come back smiling in two or three days. But now, seeing Useon and Hyeong-sik’s extreme surprise at the letter, she felt a pang in her heart, as if Wolhyang’s trip to Pyongyang involved some deep, terrible circumstances.
Suddenly the Old Woman thought of Wolhwa from five years ago. She remembered how Wolhyang always wore the yellow jade ring that Wolhwa had given her. She thought of last night’s events at Cheongnyangni. Her eyes widened. “Why would Wolhyang go to Pyongyang?” she asked—the very question the two men had meant to ask her.
Seeing Hyeong-sik sitting blankly with the letter, Useon couldn’t contain his anxiety. “Come on, open it,” he said.
Hyeong-sik took one corner of the envelope with trembling hands. But he couldn’t bring himself to tear it. His hands trembled more and more; the muscles in his face grew increasingly tense. “Hurry, hurry!” Useon urged him to open it. The Old Woman wondered what words would come out of it, her eyes fixed on Hyeong-sik’s hand gripping the corner of the envelope. All three hearts heaved beneath their thin summer clothes; sweat soaked their backs. The cat that had been peering into the room from the doorway saw a sparrow on the roof and dashed off with a “meow.” Hyeong-sik’s trembling hand finally tore the corner of the envelope. The sound of the tear echoed in all three hearts like a cannon shot.
In Hyeong-sik’s shaking hand, the letter was now visible. The torn corner of the envelope fell onto his lap. The Old Woman shifted closer to Hyeong-sik without getting up, and Useon leaned his body and head over Hyeong-sik’s shoulder. Hyeong-sik’s heart pounded; the eyes of Useon and the Old Woman were fixed like glass on the letters of the letter as Hyeong-sik’s fingers slowly unfolded it, one fold at a time. Hyeong-sik shrugged his shoulders a couple of times, as if suppressing sorrow, then read the letter. It was written in a flowing court lady’s script in Hangul. All the nerves of Useon and the Old Woman were concentrated in their ears and eyes. Hyeong-sik skipped the salutation “To Mr. Lee Hyeong-sik” and started from the body.