Black Flower Read online

  A few days later, Cabrera’s forces attempted a bolder attack. They set up machine guns on the tops of buildings that were about the same height as Temples I and II and poured bullets into the Koreans’ position. The infantry used ropes to climb up under cover of the machine guns. Ijeong’s men cut the ropes and fired their rifles, but it was not enough. Ijeong decided to retreat to Temple IV, around which there were no other buildings. Ijeong’s troops slid down the western face of the Temples I and II, and the thirty-odd men that remained of New Korea’s fighting force fled toward Temple IV, two hundred yards from their present location. A few of them remained behind in the trees to hinder the pursuers and cover the guerrillas’ escape. Sweat poured into their eyes and soaked their clothes. Some were bleeding from wounds on their arms and legs. They all followed Ijeong’s orders and climbed up the steep face of Temple IV. The older Bak Gwangsu and Kim Okseon fell behind. Their comrades tied ropes around their waists and pulled the two up. Bak Gwangsu put his gun down and sat in front of the small shrine at the top. He looked at the sky and said, “Hey, Mr. Palace Eunuch. Why don’t you play the flute for us?” Sweat fell onto the hot barrels of their rifles and hissed as steam rose up. Kim Okseon laughed and said, “Hold on just a little longer. They said that Cabrera would be overthrown, did they not?” Then he took out his flute. Ijeong listened to the clear sound of the flute on top of Temple IV, some two hundred feet above the jungle floor, as he pulled up a German machine gun they had seized from the government army a few days before. The soldiers, hearing the music, were gripped by nostalgia.

  When the men gazed around them from the summit of the pyramid, the jungle looked like a vast green blanket. From the side, this pyramid, which was said to have been built in 741, looked like a giant, swollen termite mound, and the slope on all four sides was treacherously steep. Unlike the other Mayan pyramids, which had been built on great isolated plains, the pyramids of Tikal, rising from the tangled jungle, felt like a completely different world. Those who had sweated buckets climbing up here desperately prayed that the Guatemalan troops would pass by them and follow the main force of Mayan revolutionaries that had retreated to the north. Ijeong commanded four soldiers to fire their guns into the air as they fled north in order to lure the government army toward the northern ruins.

  But the government troops were not fooled. They also saw that Temple IV was a point of strategic importance. Their main force approached and surrounded the temple and a fierce battle broke out. In accordance with their usual practice of not fighting at night, when the sun set they withdrew while maintaining their perimeter. In the morning, though, they would rush in again and renew the battle. The mercenaries were running out of ammunition. The government troops changed their strategy and settled in for a siege. As darkness fell, Ijeong decided that they would take advantage of the cloudy weather to break through the perimeter. Ammunition was one thing, but there was no water on Temple IV. Dolseok’s squad returned from the north and attacked the army’s rear, and Ijeong’s men rolled down the temple’s steep north face like a slide. The government troops fired at once into the darkness. Ijeong ran as if mad. The sound of flying bullets rang, zing zing, in his ears.

  He finally arrived at their destination, the reservoir. Five men were already there. Dolseok and four of his men, who had helped them on the fringe, were gasping for breath. Bullets flew in every direction. At that moment something cold ran down Ijeong’s chest. And the clamor of gunfire drew closer.

  “It’s the enemy!” They all splashed through water up to their knees and spread out in all directions. As he ran, Ijeong felt his neck and found that blood flowed from where he had been grazed by a bullet. It didn’t appear to be a serious wound. The government troops scattered and chased them. Dolseok, who had gone ahead, screamed to them, “This way!” Where Dolseok pointed was a small hill about three times the height of a man. At the bottom was a small hole, the entrance of another Mayan structure from long ago—it might have been the tomb of a great personage. The surviving eleven men went inside one by one, and the last one in camouflaged the entrance with vines. The stench of blood and sweat mixed powerfully with the smell of mold. They held their breath as they pointed the muzzles of their rifles toward the entrance and waited for the troops to pass by.

  A short while later, Kim Okseon, who had been late in fleeing, appeared before them, gasping and dragging his gun. Dolseok started to bolt out, but Ijeong stopped him. At that moment, a government soldier’s bullet passed through Kim Okseon’s heart. This soldier came up, aimed at Kim Okseon’s head, and calmly fired a few more rounds. Thus ended the life of the last palace eunuch musician of the Korean Empire. The Guatemalans left his body and maintained their formation, continuing forward. As soon as the government troops had gone, three vultures descended on Kim Okseon’s body in a noisy flurry of wings. One of them pecked at the eunuch’s chest. Blood spurted up and soaked its beak.

  Ijeong left one guard behind and commanded the rest of them to head down to the basement of the ruined building. There might be an exit there. When they went down they found an unexpectedly broad space. But it was a dead end. They all relaxed a bit and took some rest in that place, their faces gloomy. “We’re all going to die, aren’t we?” said a young mercenary. Ijeong was bothered by the blood that flowed from his neck. Dolseok tore some cotton cloth that he had and wrapped it around Ijeong’s neck like a bandage. The bleeding stopped but it still hurt terribly. Ijeong found a chair sculpted in the form of a jaguar. The jaguar’s back formed the back of the chair, and the head acted as the legs. The place was filled with intricate stone sculptures and graven hieroglyphs, which were nothing more than meaningless fragments of stone to them. Ijeong thought about the numerous kingdoms that had been founded in Tikal. He grew melancholy. They had all fallen.

  Dawn broke and the sun rose above the trees. Ijeong and his men waited there for night to fall. When darkness came he went outside and looked around. His throat was so dry. He didn’t sense any sign of the government troops, only the thick jungle undergrowth. Ambush was not the enemy’s specialty, so he eliminated that possibility. They headed east first, quietly advancing step by step. After they had walked about half a mile in this way, they gradually began to relax. They concluded that the army had withdrawn to its quarters. Ijeong warned them several times to stay alert, but he could not completely stem the excitement of the young people who had escaped death. Suddenly, several monkeys screeched and swung from tree to tree. Something was out there. The monkeys fled from Ijeong’s right to his left. His men, who were as used to life in the jungle as anyone, ran in the direction the monkeys were fleeing. Pow, pow. The bullets flew faster than sound and brought down the soldiers. The sound of gunfire was like popping corn. Ijeong blamed himself for leaving their hiding place after only a day. Vines ruthlessly scratched at his face as he ran. He cast off the bandage that had been wrapped around his neck. There was no end to the sound of bullets zipping past his ears. When he reached the two low, twin pyramids to the north, there were only three men beside him. Ijeong caught his breath and reloaded his rifle. But before they could regroup, they were completely surrounded by soldiers who had come down from the twin pyramids.

  Ijeong threw aside his gun and raised his hands. An army officer ordered his soldiers to bind the four of them. Then he walked ahead of them. When they reached the swamp he told them to stop. The government soldiers fired their guns one after the other from behind, enjoying it. Ijeong was the last to fall. His knees, face, and stomach were driven into the swamp.

  Bak Gwangsu never escaped from Temple IV. He had always liked that place. He watched the sun set from the top. When the popcorn sound of gunfire from the north face and over by the reservoir stopped and the government troops confirmed the results of the battle, a few soldiers tied ropes and climbed up to the summit of Temple IV. They were startled to see Bak Gwangsu sitting there, free from harm. He sat as quietly as a corpse. When they realized he had no intention of attacking them, they prodded hi
s body with their military boots. Bak Gwangsu held out both hands and stood up like a tumbling doll in an attempt to not fall over, and he smiled brightly. The soldiers smiled too, and then aimed at his head and pulled their triggers. His body fell into the shrine. The soldiers searched the dead man’s clothing. In his chest pocket they discovered an old and faded certificate that looked as if it might rip at the slightest touch. On this document, Chinese characters reading “Born on Wi Island, Jeolla province, 28 years old, Bak Gwangsu,” and the official seal of the Korean Empire glimmered faintly. Yet there was no one who could decipher these characters.

  Epilogue

  A dozen of the mercenaries barely succeeded in escaping from Tikal. They first made their way to Mérida, then scattered throughout Mexico.

  Jo Jangyun and Kim Seokcheol returned to Mérida and reported the results of the Korean expedition to Guatemala. They claimed that the Mayans had deceived them. Jo Jangyun remained in Mérida and resumed serving as the leader of the Koreans. Kim Seokcheol participated in the excavation and restoration of Mayan ruins at Chichén Itzá, near Cancún.

  Gwon Yongjun stayed in the San Francisco area and became an opium addict. After his money ran out, he was reduced to working as a day laborer. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, he was mistaken for a Japanese and arrested. He died of lung cancer in an internment camp.

  Don Carlos Menem lost much of his fortune, including his henequen hacienda, during the turmoil of the revolution. He ran for governor of the Yucatán several times, but lost to Governor Salvador Alvarado. In his final years he entered a local monastery and donated what little remained of his estate to the Church.

  In Mérida, Yi Jongdo heard that a massive anti-Japanese demonstration had taken place in Korea shortly after Gojong died, in 1919. Erroneously believing that the Japanese would leave and the dynasty would be restored, Yi Jongdo refused to sleep and gave himself over to writing a memorial to the throne, hoping to offer political advice to the new emperor. Before completing his work, he suffered a fatal stroke. Upon his death, Yi Jinu burned all of his father’s belongings.

  Yi Jinu worked as a manager and interpreter on haciendas in the Yucatán until the 1920s. He married and had two children. When the henequen trade withered, he crossed over to Cuba and earned a lot of money doing similar work on the sugar plantations there. Later he entered the clothing business. He had a large house in Havana and headed several firms, but when the Batista government fell and Castro came to power, he fled to Florida without so much as a handkerchief to his name, and died there.

  The Guatemalan dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera was overthrown during the revolution of 1920 and fled abroad. Just before that, Mario, the guerrilla leader, was killed in the jungle by a bullet from another guerrilla’s gun.

  In the autumn of 1917, Bak Jeonghun received a letter addressed to him from the state of Campeche. It was Ijeong’s letter, which had been sent a year earlier. At nearly the same time, Kim Jeongseon, a Baptist evangelist in Guatemala City, visited him. Kim Jeongseon told him the news of Ijeong and the others. When he left, Bak Jeonghun asked his wife to go with him down to the piers. He straddled a log bench and spoke.

  “News has come. They say your friend died in Guatemala.”

  Yeonsu showed no emotion when he told her this. Then Bak Jeonghun gave her the letter. When she had read it, she wept.

  “So he came here.”

  Bak Jeonghun nodded.

  “I cut his hair and shaved him.”

  Yeonsu nibbled at her fingernails. And she did not cry again. Three years later, Bak Jeonghun had a sudden heart attack while cutting hair, and he died. Yi Yeonsu began a lending business with Bak Jeonghun’s money. In only a few years she became so rich that no one in Veracruz could look down on her. She then went up to Mexico City and bought a few bars that also served as theaters and hired dancers. She grew to be a prominent figure of the amusement district, doing no work for charity, relying on no religion at all, and devoting herself only to raking in money. The police and the civil authorities tried a number of times to bring her up on charges of promoting prostitution, but they failed. She died in Mexico City at the age of seventy-five. All her property was inherited by her son, Bak Seop.

  The main industry of the Yucatán Peninsula today is tourism. Millions of visitors swarm to the Mayan ruins every year. The henequen haciendas have almost all disappeared, turned into wasteland, but a few of them have been transformed into museums that welcome tourists.

  Only in 1956 did research and exploration of the jungle-covered Mayan ruins of Tikal begin in earnest. The University of Pennsylvania and the Guatemalan government undertook research and restoration projects. In 1991, the Guatemalan and Spanish governments decided to restore Temple I and Temple IV, which were covered by earth and trees, to their original forms. Research teams found a few skeletons at the summits of the temples and nearby, and these were sent to museums. But no traces were unearthed of the group of mercenaries who had passed through that place, or of the small, insignificant country they had founded.

  Author’s Note

  This novel began with a conversation between two passengers on a flight from Los Angeles to Seoul: a researcher on the history of Korean emigration and a Korean-American film director. The researcher had only just met the film director on that flight, yet he told him a story that was a little hard to believe. He said that at the turn of the twentieth century, more than a thousand Koreans boarded a ship, crossed the Atlantic, and arrived in Mexico, and some of them formed a small nation in the jungles of Central America. I heard this story later, from the film director. At the time I paid little attention to it, but the story stayed with me, buried in a corner of my mind. It sounded too strange to have been made up, and for this reason I suspected there might be some truth to it. Still uncertain, I went to the library to look for historical materials. I stumbled upon an article from 1916 in the New Korea in San Francisco. This newspaper, published by Korean immigrants living in the Bay Area, reported that some of the Koreans who had been “sold” to the Mexican henequen haciendas had fought as mercenaries in the Guatemalan civil war, and that they had founded a nation in the jungle but were soon wiped out. My curiosity was piqued.

  I made up my mind to write this novel and began to research the story in earnest. It was not easy. Sources were scarce, and those that I could find were vague. To add to the difficulty, as soon as the emigrants left Jemulpo, Korea was reduced to a colony of Japan. They were completely forgotten. Only a few brief newspaper articles depicted the emigrant laborers who were leaving for the unknown land of Mexico. The Koreans on the British ship Ilford were a varied group. According to the records, discharged soldiers, members of the royal family, Catholic priests, palace eunuchs, shamans, and women and children of all ages boarded the ship. Aristocrats, commoners, even freed slaves were thrown together. Some of the passengers kept journals. Through these journals I discovered that there were two deaths and one birth during the voyage, and that when the emigrants arrived in Mexico they were scattered among various haciendas, and almost none of them succeeded in ever returning home.

  In the spring of 2003, I traveled to Mérida, in the Yucatan, and began gathering information. I found a handful of descendants of the immigrants, but none of them spoke Korean. Yet they did know the word “kimchi” and ate something similar to it. I crossed the border into Guatemala and, after visiting Tikal and the surrounding area, settled in the city of Antigua to write my novel. Later, I returned to Seoul and finished the writing there.

  Why did I call the novel Black Flower? Black is a color created by combining all the other colors. Similarly, everything is mixed together in this novel—religion, race, status, and gender—and what emerges is something completely different. The feudal order of Korea collapses in an instant. But there is no such thing as a black flower; it exists only in the imagination. In the same way, the place that the characters in the novel hoped to go to is a utopia that does not exist in reality. They arrive in the wrong pl
ace and live out their lives there.

  While I was writing, I thought of myself as a sort of shaman. The desires of those who had left for a distant place and been completely forgotten came to me like letters in bottles cast into the sea, and I believed that the emigrants directed me to write their stories. It was only when I finally believed this that I was able to begin—and finish—the work. So it is only fitting that I dedicate Black Flower to the 1,033 people who left Jemulpo Harbor in 1905.

  About the Author

  YOUNG-HA KIM’s Black Flower won Korea’s Dong-in Prize; his first novel, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself was highly acclaimed upon publication in the United States. He has earned a reputation as the most talented and prolific Korean writer of his generation, publishing five novels and three collections of short stories.