Black Flower Page 5

  When he had finished, Ijeong left the hold and went up on deck. For the first time in a long time, a gentle breeze was blowing. The Koreans, who tired of life in the cabin, filled the deck, basking in the sun and breathing the fresh air deep into their lungs. Someone tapped Ijeong. He turned around to find Jo Jangyun, the one who had given him his name. “Isn’t it rough?” He was talking about life in the galley. Ijeong shook his head. He said that he was able to move around, so it was better because he wasn’t as bored. Jo Jangyun agreed. “And there’s probably a lot to eat, too.” Ijeong only smiled broadly. “Being shut up in the belly of the ship like this, the aching in my legs is almost too much to bear.” Jo Jangyun stretched himself. “What I wouldn’t give to take just a few steps on solid ground, even if it were in hell!” He tapped the metal railing. “Who knew there was such a big ocean? My goodness, no matter how far we go there is no end. They say we still have a month to go . . . It’s enough to drive you crazy.” He seemed to be expecting some hopeful words from Ijeong, who spent his time with the crew. But Ijeong knew nothing more either. The ocean was vast, and at the end of that vast ocean was their destination. He had glanced at the world map on the wall when he brought breakfast to the captain, but he had no way of knowing where they were at that moment. They could do nothing but wait.

  When Jo Jangyun’s comrades from his military days came up, they stuffed tobacco into their pipes and lit them. The massive steel ship and their pipes seemed out of place on the tropical ocean. None of them spoke of the past. The only topic of conversation was the uncertain future. “When we arrive, let’s not separate,” someone suggested. “Of course, of course.” Everyone agreed. “We can just ask them to keep us in one place.” “Who will ask?” “The interpreter, of course.” “He looks like a shameless fellow—I don’t think we can trust him.” “Still, it’s his job to tell them what we say.” “He’ll do it, won’t he?” They all nodded their heads uneasily. Ijeong walked away from them and went back down to the galley. It was already time to prepare for lunch. Yoshida was still silent. “Today’s lunch is miso soup!” someone shouted. A large chunk of miso was thrown into the soup pot. The savory aroma filled the galley. The bearded cook who had first yelled at Ijeong clapped him on the back of the head. Ijeong hauled up a sack of onions. Sweat poured ceaselessly from the cooks’ bodies because of the intense heat. Someone chugged Japanese liquor that they had stashed away, and someone else sang a plaintive Japanese melody at the top of his lungs. They could not all have been deserters, and if that was so, how did they all come to be here? Ijeong wondered. But he did not ask anyone. When he brought the wrong ingredient, Yoshida quietly cursed him—“Bakayarou!”—but his voice was weak. He may even have been cursing himself. Ijeong did not know much about men loving other men, but he sensed only that Yoshida’s actions were born of affection. This sort of thing happened often enough among peddlers who lived long on the road, but Ijeong had left that world before he learned much of that side of it.

  Ijeong thought that perhaps it might be best if he simply went down to the cabin and didn’t hang around the galley anymore, but he couldn’t do that. This lively hell was far better than being stuck in the foul-smelling cabin all day. He felt an attraction to this world where only men worked side by side in the narrow space. They cursed each other and slapped each other on the cheeks, but that was a normal part of life. So every time they struck Ijeong on the head, he felt that he was being accepted just a little more into their world. To Ijeong, who had lived as a wanderer, the galley of the Ilford seemed like a cozy family. Even though he was being carried to a place farther than he had ever gone, it did not feel that way to Ijeong.

  Yoshida continued to keep his distance from Ijeong, but at every opportunity, as if it were somehow his noble duty, Yoshida with his gloomy countenance would solemnly teach him Japanese and, when the morning chores were finished, take him down to the hold and give him an apple. This secret pleasure in the dark hold slowly brought back together these two who had been torn apart by Yoshida’s unexpected actions. Ijeong smelled the sweet fragrance that wafted from the flesh of the apple. Then he polished it on his sleeve and bit into it. Yoshida gazed hungrily at Ijeong’s mouth as he ate. That was all. When Ijeong had eaten the red apple down to its seeds, only then did Yoshida turn to his chores. He organized the hold and selected the ingredients necessary for preparing lunch, putting them into a sack. He did not ask Ijeong to do anything. Ijeong went up on deck and savored the sour taste that lingered on the tip of his tongue. In the following weeks, without a word from Yoshida, he would go down to the hold and wait. A few minutes later Yoshida would appear and silently hand him an apple. Ijeong also ate other fruit that he had never seen or heard of. Whatever they were, Ijeong enjoyed them. He gradually began to wonder if he should do something for Yoshida. And though the thought did occur to him, he did not know what it was he should do, so he shook his head violently, went up on deck, and abandoned himself to the strong winds.

  14

  YI YEONSU HADN’T worried about her body in their house in Sagan-dong, in the heart of Seoul. There had been no need to. Her body was simply there, and she just used it. She was more interested in ideological and abstract things. Where did I come from, what do I live for, and what happens when I die? Her parents had taught her that she came from her ancestors, that she should live for her father and her future husband, and at the moment her life ended she would become a spirit. But she could not easily accept what the women in literati households were taught and convinced of. She did not deny that she came from the flesh and bone of her ancestors. Yet she had a different idea about what she was to live for. Deep in her heart, the idea that was too dangerous for her to dare to say out loud was: I live for myself. Gone were the days when women were forced to commit suicide when their husbands died, to be rewarded with gates erected by the king to commemorate their faithfulness, but that didn’t mean that anyone believed a woman could live for herself. What’s wrong with that? Is the joy of learning different for men than for women? Though she sat quietly and embroidered an image of the ten symbols of longevity, dangerous thoughts that the times could not accept grew in the mind of this sixteen-year-old girl. She had no concrete way to make these thoughts a reality, and that just made her even stronger-willed, and thus she struggled to turn a relatively blind eye to the changes taking place in her body. She had her first period, her breasts swelled, and the baby fat began disappearing from her face. Yet the more she changed, the more she clung to ideological issues.

  But she could not do so on the ship. Her flesh did not leave her mind for even one instant. The problems of eating and drinking and defecating harassed the women in the cabin at every turn. There was a separate toilet for the women, but it was a shameful thing to weave their way among the men to get there. The men snickered openly. When she had to go with her mother, her demeanor was more imposing. In Sagan-dong there had been a convenient item called a brass bedpan, and the servants emptied it in the morning, but she could not expect such luxury here. So she ate and drank as little as possible, reducing the number of times she would have to go to the toilet. The rocking of the ship was as severe a burden. She vomited three times not long after the ship had set sail. Each time, she could not help but think of the obvious animal nature of her flesh. She was a creature plagued by hunger and nausea and the unbearable need to urinate. Most painful of all was the fact that her flesh was exposed to the eyes of all, with no walls between them. These eyes did not talk to her, nor did they laugh kindly. In fact, laughter was what she feared most of all. Every time those countless looks came and pierced her body, she realized anew that she was a weak and powerless creature trapped inside a prison called flesh. People watched everything as she woke and defecated and slept and ate. After a week passed like this, her agony gradually diminished. She was now able to withstand the furtive glances of the men and the jealous eyes of the women with some composure. For the first time in her life, she looked straight into the eyes of a man
who gazed up and down her body. The experience made her heart sink, but she also felt as if she were opening a door that led to a new world. Before long, she decided she would not hide her face with her cloak when she was seated, and she expressed stubborn defiance when her mother rushed over to lecture her with a look of shock on her face. It was already far too late to be covering anything with a cloak. And she had also come face to face with a boy early one morning and been unable to move. Nothing happened between the two of them, but Yeonsu could not shake off the obvious eroticism that had been present in that brief moment. She, like other girls her age, cherished a sweet vision of romance that she had learned from classical novels. The idea that she herself could fall into a forbidden love, like Unyeong in The Story of Unyeong, was no longer strange. This boy was not from an aristocratic family, like the young Esquire Kim in the novel, so he was not the type of person who would understand poetry and be able to express his love through it, but there was a gentle and impressive intensity in his face that would make anyone stare long at him. She sometimes looked for him even when she was seated. Yet she rarely saw him.

  As the voyage went on, the stench on the ship grew fouler and did not distinguish between aristocrat and commoner. In the cabin, where there were no wells or modern sanitary facilities, the horrible stink was only natural. People expressed their humanity through every hole and every pore in their bodies. Women smelled of women’s odors and men smelled of men’s odors. The distinction between the sexes became clearer than the distinction between classes, and that was wholly because of smell. Even when the men were trying to sleep, their eyes shot open if a woman passed by. A woman could smell a man coming up behind her. As more time passed without their being able to wash their bodies or clothes, the inside of the dark cabin became no different from a poultry coop. Even in that chaos, there were those who had peculiarly strong odors. These intense yet attractive odors spread far from their owners, and those who smelled them once could not easily forget them. The odor had nothing to do with the character or personality of its owner. Thus when people turned their heads toward the source of an approaching smell, they were often surprised at the unexpected conclusion.

  Yi Yeonsu was one of these. After ten days aboard the ship, when the moon was full, there emanated from the girl an odor that everyone recognized. When she walked by, those who were sleeping awoke, and children stopped crying. Men who had not had an erection for years ejaculated in their sleep; young boys were roused from slumber. Women chattered and men turned their heads painfully. Her family knew as well, of course. Yi Jongdo often went up on deck. Yeonsu’s mother, Lady Yun, changed her daughter’s clothes behind the curtain put up for the women and sighed that she should have married her daughter off before leaving. Yeonsu’s younger brother, Jinu, woke up early each morning and, the blood having rushed to his crotch, rubbed himself against the straw mat on the floor of the cabin. Only she herself was unaware. It wasn’t only the smell. Her face began to shine as well. Her naturally noble manner and uncommon arrogance shone more brightly amid the filth. The men’s lust and the women’s jealousy were boiling over.

  15

  CHOE SEONGIL, THE THIEF of Jemulpo, was plagued by nightmares all that night. While he was caught between dreaming and waking, the boy lying next to him, Kim Ijeong, raised himself up. It was time to go to the galley, as always. Choe Seongil tried to say something to him, but no sound came out of his mouth, and suddenly Choe Seongil understood that his body would not move as he willed. His body shuddered involuntarily, and his legs were as heavy as if they were paralyzed. He wanted to lift his hand and grab Ijeong, but the boy, unaware of all of this, simply rose and left. After a long while had passed like this, Choe Seongil was seized by the fear of death. He could not die on this vast ocean with no family and no friends. The moment this thought entered his mind, his father’s face appeared in midair. His father looked at ease, sitting beside a long, thin waterfall and enjoying something to drink. “Ah, that’s delicious!” he said. Then, “The hardships of the world are ended, and this is paradise! Come quickly, son.” Somewhere behind his father, someone was singing a song: “White dog, black dog, don’t bark. White dog, black dog, don’t bark.” Sure enough, just then a white dog and a black dog appeared before his eyes and greeted him. In order to reach his father, he had to cross a river on a ferry that was tied up at the water’s edge. The white dog and the black dog were happily wagging their tails on the boat. He had never in his life liked his father, but the vista there was so beautiful that all he could think of was going to him. It was a place of delicious food and drink and cool waters. As he approached the ferry, the white dog leaped down from the boat and walked along the riverside, while the black dog stayed on the boat with his tongue lolling from his mouth.

  16

  BY AFTERNOON, THE wailing that seeped out from between her clenched teeth became a scream like the tearing of a thousand yards of cloth at once. No one could be free from the sound. It was a woman from Seoul whose husband had pleaded and pleaded with his wife, who was nearing childbirth, to leave Korea. They had wanted to emigrate to Hawaii, but the Continental Colonization Company had urged them to go to Mexico instead. The company men claimed that Hawaii was already full. And Mexico was in no way inferior to Hawaii. And once someone makes up his mind to leave, he will find a way to leave. His heart already across the ocean, her husband went to her parents to help convince his wife. Her belly bulging, she protested. “I can’t go. Father, Mother, please stop him.” But in the end they could not overcome her husband’s stubbornness. She had boarded the ship thinking it would be better than becoming a widow, and now her water had finally broken. Her husband just puffed away at his long pipe; there was nothing he could do. The interpreter went up and told Meyers’s party that a woman was about to give birth. They called the Japanese doctor, but he had never delivered a child. Even more unfortunately, this young Japanese from Sizuoka was not really a doctor. He had merely studied veterinary medicine at an agricultural school, but he had been captivated by the company’s attractive advertisement, so he lied and boarded the ship. All he had to do was accompany them on the comfortable British ship for its one-month journey to Mexico. Furthermore, they would give him two times the salary of a Tokyo doctor. He had thought he would encounter nothing more serious than seasickness, but as soon as he boarded the ship he realized his error. On a ship that was carrying three times its capacity, it would have been strange had there been no illness. Every night he opened his medical dictionary and studied the diseases that might occur at sea. Perhaps it was fortunate that his first task was to deliver a child. The most basic skill in veterinary medicine was delivering animal offspring.

  He went down to the cabin. The horrid stench assaulted his nose. Despite her extreme pain, the pregnant woman expressed hostility toward the man who approached her open legs. The women gathered around her did not make way for him. And when he opened his mouth and Japanese came out, their anger increased. He told them he was a doctor, but it was no use. The woman’s pain continued. The already filthy floor grew slippery with the amniotic fluid and sweat and blood that poured out of the woman’s body. “Aaaahh!” The woman’s screaming did not stop, and the old women who fancied themselves midwives began to cry out in unison. Children poked their heads through the gaps in the curtain to watch, and the veterinarian from Sizuoka waited nervously outside the curtain for the baby to come out. The midwives and the pregnant woman cried out as if they were fighting with each other, but the baby did not emerge. A sweaty midwife emerged from behind the curtain with a tearful face and pulled the Sizuoka veterinarian inside. The baby’s foot was sticking out of the woman’s vagina. He knelt down. It’s a foal, it’s a calf—he repeated these words to himself like some incantation and wiped the sweat from his face. Later, he would not remember exactly what had happened after that. Whatever the case, the baby’s foot went back inside, the mother-to-be screamed in pain, and some time after that the baby’s head appeared. He quickly grabbed the
blue child. A woman brought a jar to hold the placenta and umbilical cord, and she took them outside. The child that had just come into the world did not breathe for several seconds, but with a slap to its buttocks it cried fiercely. The mother was spent and collapsed, and the women hustled the Sizuoka veterinarian back outside. “You did an excellent job, Dr. Tanabe,” someone said to him. A number of baby names were discussed, but the father, Im Minsu, gave his son the name Taepyeong. It was the name of the ocean on which they were afloat and it was also an expression of hope. Im Taepyeong, who would have been thrown into the sea by his own father had he been born a girl, was thus born with the blessings of all the passengers.