Lost in thought, Lee Hyeong-sik suddenly thought of Yeongchae. It seemed as though she and he had been bound by the same strange fate all along. And he realized that Yeongchae had only become dearer to him. He would make her his wife. They would love each other for the rest of their lives.
But was Yeongchae alive? If she was alive, was she at the police station? Her letter came to mind, and he recalled what he had been thinking when he crossed the Daedong River earlier. He saw the bag containing that letter and the paper written in classical Chinese resting on his knee. He pictured the Pyongyang Police Station building, its gate, and the people sitting inside doing their work. He imagined a room where Yeongchae sat alone, weeping, and the old woman and himself entering that room.
The rickshaw stopped abruptly, and the puller removed the hood. Before Lee Hyeong-sik stood a whitewashed Western-style building. Above the door, large characters read: "Pyongyang Police Station."
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Lee Hyeong-sik's heart pounded as he stepped through the station entrance. He could see desks and chairs, and over by the window on the other side sat a policeman in a white uniform, no sword at his side, a towel over his shoulder, reading a newspaper. Lee Hyeong-sik had never entered a police station in Joseon before. Once in Tokyo, he had been summoned to a station and had tea and cigarettes while talking with the chief, but never as a citizen coming to an official building. He had only imagined what a Russian police station might be like from reading Tolstoy's Resurrection. With a somewhat unpleasant feeling, he took off his hat and said, face flushing, "I have something to ask." The old woman stood beside him, trembling with fear and distress. The policeman didn't seem to hear. Lee Hyeong-sik raised his voice a little.
"I have something to ask."
Only then did the policeman turn his head, newspaper still in hand, and study Lee Hyeong-sik and the old woman's faces and appearance.
"What is it?" he said.
Thinking the chief might not be in yet and that he wouldn't get a clear answer until then, Lee Hyeong-sik said, "Yesterday, a telegram was sent from Seoul to the Pyongyang Police Station requesting protection for a certain lady…" Before he could finish, the policeman said,
"A lady?"
Lee Hyeong-sik and the old woman thought, Right, Yeongchae must be here.
"Yes—a telegram was sent requesting protection for a lady… So I came down on the night train… Is that lady perhaps here at this station now?" Lee Hyeong-sik looked at the policeman's face. Without a word, the policeman read a few more lines of the newspaper, then got up and came over to them.
"A telegram was sent to the Pyongyang Police Station requesting protection for some lady?" he asked loudly, as if he hadn't understood Lee Hyeong-sik's words clearly.
Lee Hyeong-sik felt rather disappointed. If the Pyongyang Police Station had detained Yeongchae, that policeman would certainly know. The old woman's eyes went wide as she said to the policeman,
"Hasn't a young woman come—about eighteen or nineteen, wearing a ramie skirt and jacket, her hair done up in a Western-style chignon?" Tears flowed from her eyes. The policeman seemed to think for a moment, tilted his head this way and that, then stuck one hand in his trouser pocket, walked between the desks and chairs, and disappeared inside. The two were crestfallen. Yeongchae wasn't at the Pyongyang Police Station. If she wasn't here, where could she be? She had arrived in Pyongyang at four o'clock yesterday, visited her father's and Wol-hwa's graves, then gone straight to Cheongnyu Cliff and jumped into the water below Yeongwang Pavilion—wasn't that it? Yes. Yeongchae was dead. The old woman grabbed Lee Hyeong-sik's arm and sobbed, "What's happened?" Lee Hyeong-sik bit his lip to hold back tears.
"She couldn't have died. Surely we'll know when the chief comes," he said, trying to comfort the old woman, though he himself didn't believe Yeongchae was alive. Inside, he thought, Why did she have to die? The elementary lessons and the biographies of virtuous women had killed Yeongchae. If he'd had even an hour to talk with her, she wouldn't have died. This time Lee Hyeong-sik said aloud, "Why did she have to die?" The old woman had been somewhat relieved by his earlier words, "She couldn't have died," but now his sigh of "Why did she have to die?" plunged her back into despair. She gripped Lee Hyeong-sik's hand tightly.
"Oh, what are we going to do?" she cried. The thought that Yeongchae had died because of her stabbed the old woman's heart even more keenly. She recalled her dream: My dream this morning was ominous—she had dreamed of a woman in white standing on the water, saying, "Heh, when I think about it, it's funny," then suddenly her face twisted into something terrifying, and she bit her own lip, spattering hot blood across her face. Wasn't that Yeongchae's spirit? Hadn't the ghost of Yeongchae, who had drowned in the Daedong River at sunset the day before, entered her dream? She covered her face with both hands. Ah, she thought: would Yeongchae's vengeful spirit cling to her body day and night, becoming sickness by day and nightmares by night, tormenting her? Would she fall ill from today, suffer for a while, and finally be dragged away by Yeongchae? Or on the way back up to Seoul, would Yeongchae's spirit bite through the Taedong River Bridge the way she had bitten through her own lips, causing the train she was riding to plunge into the river? The terrifying transformation of Yeongchae seemed to stand before the old woman at that very moment. Finally, sobbing, she pressed her face against Lee Hyeong-sik's shoulder. Lee Hyeong-sik, holding back his own tears, patted the old woman on the back as she choked with sobs.
"Don't cry. We'll know when the chief comes out."
Soon another policeman emerged from the same doorway the first one had entered. He too studied the two of them closely, then pulled a telegram from a desk drawer and looked at Lee Hyeong-sik.
"Are you Lee Hyeong-sik?" he asked, eyeing him.
Lee Hyeong-sik glanced at the telegram in the policeman's hand.
"Yes, I'm Lee Hyeong-sik."
The old woman asked tearfully, "Sir, have you seen such a woman?"
Without answering her, the policeman said, "We received this telegram. So we went to the station to meet her, but how are we supposed to know what she looks like, what she was wearing?" He set the telegram on the desk. "What? Is she a runaway?"
Lee Hyeong-sik was completely disappointed. Yeongchae was surely dead. "No, there's a risk she might kill herself," he said, regretting that he hadn't described her appearance in detail when he sent the telegram. The first policeman came back out, looked at the telegram on the desk, and said, "Do you know how many people get off in Pyongyang? With all those people, how am I supposed to know who's who?"
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Utterly disheartened, Lee Hyeong-sik and the old woman left the police station. A drizzling rain had left the road damp. There were more people and carts moving about than before. Shops were opening their wooden shutters; some people sat on the roadside washing their faces, others sat inside reading newspapers aloud. Water carriers, their yokes creaking, turned sideways into narrow alleys. A mail carrier with a black leather bag slung over his shoulder and a bunch of keys in his hand came hopping along. The old woman clung to Lee Hyeong-sik's hand, barely able to walk. Lee Hyeong-sik felt hungry. He said to the old woman,
"Let's go somewhere for breakfast and then look for her. She couldn't have died." The old woman looked at him.
"Oh, I wish I could just go and jump into the Daedong River too," she said, wiping her tears. Lee Hyeong-sik remembered how, when he had gone to her house with U Seon the day before, she had been fixing her skirt string, saying, "I'm in the outhouse, and you're making such a fuss." He said,
"Don't be so sad. Who knows? She might still be alive somewhere. Come on, let's go get some breakfast." Then, as if to himself, "I wonder if they have soup with rice?" He looked around.
The old woman took some comfort from the words alive somewhere. "How can we just walk into a soup house? Let's go to a place I know," she said. Lee Hyeong-sik thought the place she knew must be a courtesan house. The image of young, pretty courtesans flashed before his eyes. He felt like going with the old woman. What harm is there in just looking at pretty women? Like admiring a beautiful view or beholding a lovely flower, he thought. Then he reconsidered: But it could easily become an excuse. He examined his own heart. My heart is pure, he told himself. "Where is it? Then let's go there," he said. But still, he felt it looked bad to follow the old woman into a courtesan house, so he decided to drop her off there and go somewhere else himself.
Lee Hyeong-sik followed the old woman to the gate of a clean tiled-roof house. The gate, which had the phrase "May the Country Be at Peace and the People Prosper" written on it, was not yet open. The old woman knocked on the gate three or four times, calling out as if she were summoning a family member, "Hey, girls! Are you still asleep? Open the gate!" Then she turned to Lee Hyeong-sik. "Wouldn't it be terrible if Yeongchae were in here?" she said with a meaningless laugh. Lee Hyeong-sik thought to himself, Yeongchae is already dead, and said nothing. Soon the sound of a door sliding open came from inside, and someone shuffled out in slippers.
"Who is it?" a voice asked, and the gate opened. Lee Hyeong-sik stepped aside. A girl of about thirteen or fourteen, with traces of white powder on her face, clung to the old woman joyfully.
"Oh, Mother, you've come!" she said, drawing out the final syllable. She must have just gotten out of bed—her hair and clothes show it, Lee Hyeong-sik thought as he watched their happy reunion. What a pretty girl. She seemed clever and affectionate. But she too was a courtesan, and Lee Hyeong-sik felt a pang of pity. Though she was still dressed like a maiden, she probably wasn't a virgin anymore. He wondered if she had been toyed with by some man the night before. The old woman stepped just inside the gate and craned her neck.
"Please come in. This is just like my own house," she said. Only then did the young courtesan notice someone outside and tilt her head to look at Lee Hyeong-sik. He thought her somewhat thick eyelids were lovely.
"I think I'll go see a friend. Come here after you've had breakfast," he said, taking off his hat.
The old woman came back outside. "Why would you do that? Come on in. This is my younger sister's house," she said, tugging at Lee Hyeong-sik's sleeve. He insisted on going, but this time the young courtesan came out, pushed his back with her pretty hand, and coaxed,
"Come in!" Lee Hyeong-sik thought that no matter how he looked at her, there wasn't a speck of impurity in the young courtesan's heart. She was as pure a girl as Yeongchae or Seon-hyeong. And from that soft hand that lightly touched his back, it felt as if something warm flowed into him. Lee Hyeong-sik had a habit, when looking at other girls, of thinking of them as his own sister. So he declined a few more times, but finally, as if reluctantly, he entered the house. Still, he had to admit that the feeling of being led in with one arm held by the old woman and the other by the pretty courtesan was pleasant. The room he was led into was not much different from Yeongchae's room. The young courtesan quickly ran in ahead and began folding the bedding. Lee Hyeong-sik saw from outside the door a red silk quilt with trimmings flash in her hands. The old woman and Lee Hyeong-sik sat down. From the other room, they heard the courtesan's cheerful voice:
"Mother, the Mother from Seoul has come!" Lee Hyeong-sik thought he smelled a fragrance in the room. The hand he placed on the warm floor felt a lingering warmth—the warmth that had seeped from the courtesan's body, he thought. Soon the courtesan came bouncing back in like a child.
"My mother will be right over. Did you come on the morning train?" she asked, unable to hide the joy in her voice and face. Lee Hyeong-sik thought, She's just like anyone else. Warm human feeling was everywhere people were. He took out a cigarette and was about to look for a match in his vest pocket when the courtesan quickly picked up a match, lit it, and pressed one hand on his knee.
"Here, light it!" she said. He thought she seemed like a pure child.
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Lee Hyeong-sik felt a bit embarrassed and shy about having a woman light his cigarette.
"Give it here," he said. When she heard "give it here," the courtesan laughed softly. As she laughed, a large gold tooth glinted at the front of her upper jaw. She pressed the hand on his knee firmly, made a playful gesture, and said,
"Come on, light it like this," stressing the final syllable. The old woman recalled how Lee Hyeong-sik had politely addressed Wolhyang as "Miss Wolhyang" the day before, and she smiled. While Lee Hyeong-sik was hesitating, the match in the courtesan's hand burned down completely.
"Oh, it's hot!" she said, dropping it on the floor. She bent over slightly, blew on her fingers, and then touched them to her ear. Lee Hyeong-sik felt apologetic and blushed. He wanted to take those fingers in his mouth and blow on them to cool them.
"Oh, it must have hurt—I mean, burned," he said. The courtesan put her fingers to her ear and looked at Lee Hyeong-sik for a moment, then lit another match, placed her hand on his knee again as before, and said breathlessly,
"Come on, quick, light it this time." Seeing the match burning halfway down, she wiggled her body impatiently. "Quick, quick!" Lee Hyeong-sik lowered his head, lit the cigarette, and blew the first puff of smoke to the side so it wouldn't go into her face. Even after Lee Hyeong-sik had lit his cigarette, the courtesan kept looking up at his face. Lee Hyeong-sik felt dazzled and raised his head to look out at the courtyard, thinking, Her eyes seem as if she's dreaming. The courtesan waited as if for the match to burn out completely, twisting it between two fingers. Lee Hyeong-sik looked at her head and back. Her jet-black hair was braided loosely, and at the end hung a bright red Japanese-style ribbon. The braid curved down, and the folded triangular tip of the ribbon lay horizontally at about the level of her skirt waist. Lee Hyeong-sik thought the color of the ribbon was like blood. The courtesan spun the match around and around, then accidentally dropped it on Lee Hyeong-sik's leg.
"Oh, my!" she said, slapping his thigh with both hands. But the spark had lodged in the fold of his cotton underpants, burning a hole through them and stinging his thigh. Afraid the courtesan might feel sorry, Lee Hyeong-sik quickly covered the spot with his overcoat.
"The fire's out," he said. The courtesan took her hands off his knee and shifted her body awkwardly.
"Oh, did your underpants burn? That must have hurt," she said, turning her head to look at the old woman. The old woman smiled.
"Gyehyang, you're still just a child!" She clearly saw the invisible, pure spirit within this courtesan. And she saw that there was not a trace of dirty desire in Lee Hyeong-sik's eyes as he looked at the young girl. Lee Hyeong-sik seemed to be a kind of person she had rarely encountered. The way he used formal, polite speech when addressing this young courtesan had at first seemed rustic and ignorant, but now it struck her as dignified and even holy.
Watching the young courtesan's words and manner, Lee Hyeong-sik felt a pleasure akin to being half-drunk on some delicious, exquisite liquor. It was as if his body were tingling. Especially when she pressed her hand on his knee, and when she dropped the match and patted his thigh gently with those tiny hands, he felt a sensation like an electric current flowing through his entire body, leaving it buzzing. He thought he had never in his life experienced such a subtle, tingling pleasure. It was as if her eyes emitted an unknown radiance that dazzled the spirit, and from her skin leaped mysterious, subtle particles that made the muscles tingle.
Lee Hyeong-sik thought of Seon-hyeong, and of the joy he had felt sitting across from her the other day. He recalled the sweet taste he always savored when with Huigyeong, and the pleasure he had felt with other close friends. He remembered that among strangers he met in trains, boats, or on the street, some gave him an indescribable pleasure. But of all those pleasures, the one this young courtesan gave him now was unique. And the reason, he thought, lay in the beauty of her face, manner, and heart, and in the fact that between them there was no greed, no artifice, no suspicion—their souls, stripped of all artificial shells, had fused together in naked purity. This pleasure, he felt, was the holiest pleasure heaven had granted to humans. Within each person, there is usually something that, when seen, can bring joy. But people wrap it in layer after layer of shells, preventing it from flowing out, and thus a world that should be joyful becomes cold and desolate. Among such people, those with beautiful faces and hearts, or those who paint beautiful pictures, create sculptures, or write poetry, possess the sacred calling to make life joyful.
Soon, the "madam" came out.
"Oh, Sister, you've come!" she said, unable to contain her delight. Lee Hyeong-sik thought, They too are human. Within them, too, there was a "true person." Within them flowed red blood and warm human feeling. The madam quickly greeted Lee Hyeong-sik, then sat beside the old woman.
"So, is Wolhyang well?"
"Oh my, I forgot to ask after you too, Sister," the old woman said, shifting her heavy-lidded eyes briefly toward Lee Hyeong-sik. He thought, It's not that she forgot—the forgetfulness itself is more affectionate.
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The old woman began to weep again as she told the story of Yeongchae. She told how Yeongchae had almost been raped by someone at Cheongnyangsa, how she had come home that evening biting her lips and crying, how the next morning she had come to the old woman's room while she was sleeping and said she was going to Pyongyang, how she had handed the old woman a letter as she got on the train, and what that letter had said, how they had come to the Pyongyang Police Station that morning and asked. Finally, she pointed at Lee Hyeong-sik.
"And this gentleman is that Lee Hyeong-sik," she said, then collapsed onto the madam's shoulder, crying. The madam and Gyehyang, who had begun to well up as they listened, now let their tears flow freely. Through eyes blurred with tears, they stared at Lee Hyeong-sik. Lee Hyeong-sik was surprised. He had expected that the madam, even if not Gyehyang, would fly into a rage upon hearing about Yeongchae and say, "That crazy girl! Why would she kill herself!" But instead, seeing how she wept sorrowfully at the news of Yeongchae's death, he realized that her warm human feeling was no different from his own. He felt ashamed that he had always thought of courtesans as beings with an entirely different mental state from his own—a lower species like animals. The madam cried for a while, then blew her nose.
"Wolhyang always had a strong will. And she was close to Wol-hwa from the beginning, only ever listening to her, so her heart became just like Wol-hwa's. But Sister, the mistake was that you didn't realize that and told Wolhyang to see your hand," she said, then looked at Lee Hyeong-sik. "But what's done is done. Don't cry." Lee Hyeong-sik turned his head away to hide his tears and lit another cigarette.
The old woman also blew her nose. "Would I have done it out of spite? I raised her like my own daughter for ten years. I'm getting older myself… And she couldn't be a courtesan forever. I thought I'd find her a good place, somewhere she could live comfortably for the rest of her life. Kim Hyeonsu is rich, the son of a baron—I thought if I sent her there, she'd have the best fate." She wiped her tears. Lee Hyeong-sik was startled. Hearing the old woman say "she couldn't be a courtesan forever," he wondered: had she tried to force Yeongchae into marrying Kim Hyeonsu out of concern for her future? Was it not merely for the thousand won, but an act of goodwill? Then perhaps the old woman's heart that had killed Yeongchae and his own heart that had tried to save Yeongchae were, in the end, the same? Then perhaps these events arose only because their standards and ideas about the world and life differed. At that moment, the madam spoke to Lee Hyeong-sik with great warmth.
"You must be so sad, Mr. Lee. But it was all destined from a previous life. What can we do with our own strength? That's how the world is." She turned to the old woman. "Come on, don't cry. It's all fate from a former life. What can human effort do? You must be hungry. Let's have breakfast." She stood up abruptly and muttered to herself, "What should I do? Shall I order soup and rice, or cook at home?" She hesitated for a moment, then hurried outside.
Lee Hyeong-sik thought, So this is their view of life. Every sad thing that happens in human society is attributed to karma from a previous life, something beyond human power. They weep for a while, then quickly wipe away their tears and resign themselves. In their view, to weep for a long time is the act of a fool; it is better to cry briefly and then quickly stop. Therefore, they place all responsibility on "karma and fate," never on people. That Yeongchae had become a courtesan, that she had been raped by Kim Hyeonsu, that she had drowned in the Daedong River—all of it was due to karma, not to the old woman, not to Yeongchae herself, and not to Kim Hyeonsu. Thus, Yeongchae's preservation of her chastity was not because she was exceptionally good, but because her karma made her do so naturally, inevitably. From their perspective, there are no especially good people and no especially bad people—everyone simply lives according to their karma and fate. In this way, their worldview might seem somewhat consistent with Lee Hyeong-sik's. But the fundamental difference between the two outlooks was this: Lee Hyeong-sik believed that even though all people are the same, individuals and societies can improve and progress through effort. They believed that responsibility for everything lies entirely outside human control, that one simply lives as things come, and that human will can neither improve nor worsen anything. As Lee Hyeong-sik thought this, he murmured to himself,
"Right! This is the Joseon person's view of life."
But the old woman did not weep briefly and stop quickly like the madam. Besides seeing "the world," she had also seen "people." When the warm blood from Yeongchae's bitten lip had fallen on the back of her hand, the old woman had seen "people." She could not entirely shift the blame for this incident onto karma and fate. She knew that the responsibility for Yeongchae's death lay with herself and Kim Hyeonsu, and that Yeongchae's steadfast chastity came from the power of the "true person" within her. The old woman had now realized that responsibility for all things lies with people. Therefore, she could not "cry for a moment and then quickly stop." These tears would flow for the rest of her life.
Gyehyang leaned her body against Lee Hyeong-sik's knee and looked at him with eyes red from crying.
"Do you think Sister is dead?" she asked.