WeTried Translations

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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 20

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Dressing the Catch (1)

Beside the campfire, the trousers spread over a sun-warmed rock dried with a faint crackle.

Down at the nearby stream, the badger butchering was in full swing.

Two cubs strangled to death by the snare set at the front burrow, and one male that had died caught in Han San's trap while abandoning the cubs to flee.

'Cleared the threat to the rear, I suppose.'

Turning that pointless thought over, Han San worked his knife.

With father and son combining their strength, the butchering went fast. They stripped the hides clean off, sank the carcasses in the valley water, and Han San tallied things up in his head.

'The oil alone comes to roughly six won?'

Two cubs together at two won's worth, the single male at four won's worth. Enough to fill one full doe bottle of soju, by the look of it.

'The meat we can eat or trade within Sebeom Valley. I can hand it to Mother as household stores. The hides—hmm, if Father and I tan them together... and there's the female hide we caught before, too...'

Still, all four put together wouldn't bring in more than a few won. To sell them, the trouble it took was a waste.

'Just use them at home? Line the insides of the rubber shoes, or the inside of clothing... ah, I could make cushions for Mother and Father. Or shape them like mittens so Mother can grab hot things more easily...'

Sloshing the badger guts he'd pulled out as he washed them, Han San turned the ideas over and soon let out a small laugh.

'Why am I working this out all by myself? I can just talk it over with Father.'

After more than seventy years living alone as an old man, deciding everything by himself had become a habit. But now that he'd been recognized as a worker who pulled his weight, the time had come to shed that widower's habit.

Before Han San could ask his father's opinion, though, someone else spoke up first.

"Ugh, that's disgusting..."

It was Kim Tae-yang, crouched down waiting for his trousers to dry. He'd been watching the gut-washing, and he ventured the words with a hesitant air.

"And you're sticking your hand in guts full of crap like that... hey, doesn't that gross you out?"

Han San couldn't be bothered to answer, but leaving him be meant he'd keep babbling, which was even more bothersome.

"They're dirty, so I'm washing them. Stuff them with food instead of crap and you've got sundae[1]."

"Wait, for real? Sundae's made out of a crap-tube?"

Kim Tae-yang wore a look of total disbelief, then one of dawning understanding. "Ah! That explains it! The name's sundae after all..." he muttered to himself.

Then, with a face that might have meant his revulsion had eased or might have meant it had only gotten worse, he looked down at the guts and said,

"Even washed, the smell's pretty bad... can you really eat this?"

"You can."

Han San didn't explain further. He only planned to rinse them here; back home he'd scrub them down hard with salt.

'Good thing I bought a whole heap of salt.'

The guts of a meat-leaning omnivore like a badger had to be washed especially well. But handle them right and pull off the cooking, and it became a delicacy of its own.

"Hmm..."

For his part, Kim Tae-yang seemed to have been using the guts as a pretext to find an excuse to chat. He scooted his pantless backside closer bit by bit, then tossed out a line.

"Hey, but..."

"What."

"Ah, come on, the way you talk... can't you be a little warmer about it, friend to friend..."

Kim Tae-yang said it with an awkward face, but Han San only stared at him with cold eyes.

'Friend, my foot.'

A flippant mouth that couldn't tell what should and shouldn't be said, a single-celled brute who swung his fists first the moment his blood ran hot. Weak to the strong and strong to the weak, a base piece of trash like something out of a picture.

'And on top of it, he comes barging in like this to ruin the first hunt with my father. Making my father strip those filthy trousers with his own hands...'

What was there to talk about with a fellow like this?

Nothing. Not a single subject they could share. Han San just wanted those trousers dry, and fast. Get them on him and send him down the mountain, and there'd never be one more word exchanged. He was a person who didn't exist in his own life at all.

There was nothing, nothing to share with this brat!

"Your father, you know..."

Nothing...

"What about my father."

"Is his leg, uh, really bad? Watching him just now, that..."

"Watching him just now, what."

"That... I can't explain it well, but..."

Kim Tae-yang hesitated a long while, then glanced at Han Man-seok, standing off at a distance washing the male badger's guts, and let out a long breath—hoooo—before he spoke.

"He's amazing..."

Hm.

"Why do you think that?"

Han San asked as he set the badger guts down.

Kim Tae-yang didn't notice the slight change in Han San's voice and nodded.

"That... first off, his strength, it's just enormous."

"He's strong."

"And it's not just that he's strong, um, he put salve on me... ah, no wonder it works when he puts it on, that whatchamacallit, herbs and all. Honestly, I thought it was completely backward, you know? But it was like it worked better than any Western medicine, even though I'd smacked into the ground that hard just now."

"That's inner force[2]."

"What's inner force mean... no, anyway, and then the trousers too... ah, damn... so embarrassing, really, I..."

Kim Tae-yang buried his face in his hands.

Han San cast a glance at him—only for a moment.

After scrubbing at his face a few times, Kim Tae-yang—whether from the friction or the weather or that "embarrassment"—went on with a flushed face.

"He was a hunter...?"

"Yeah."

"A hunter from where..."

"Hamgyeong Province. Baekdu Mountain."

"Oh, for real? Baekdu Mountain... that's the one, the crazy tall one, right? Wow... no wonder."

Kim Tae-yang clicked his tongue in admiration.

Han San nodded. Well, he supposed he could grant that the kid knew a thing or two.

Maybe there was something worth talking about after all, and at any rate he was seventy-four years old, so being so cold to a young one was a bit much. That was when it came.

"But hey, San, why'd you do it?"

?

"Do what?"

"Why'd you talk such trash about your father?"

Ah.

Han San—well.

Han San glanced back at his father. His father was quietly washing the badger guts, and with the sound of the water and the distance it probably wouldn't carry, it had better not carry, which was to say...

"When did I ever say anything bad about my father..."

Han San mumbled and let his gaze slide away.

Kim Tae-yang's eyes went round.

"Ah, what are you on about. Just last month, going on about how he's a hardheaded mule who won't understand you at all, how if he's going to limp he should limp on his own time, why's he limping in front of his able-bodied son and blocking your road ahead like a broken-down cart—when it was just us, the second you opened your mouth out it'd—"

"AH!! Hey! Hey, you, shut that—hey, Kim Tae-yang!!"

Han San shouted, flushing red. It was a rare thing since his return. No—it had already happened a few times.

He'd prided himself that the bones of his heart had hardened like iron, yet before his own past self he could find no way to keep his composure!

Han San buried his face in his hands. The triangles of all kinds of wretched memories, set off by Kim Tae-yang's words, jabbed and jabbed at his heart.

They say a triangle's corners wear away if you let it roll long enough, but thanks to the needlessly sharp memory he'd gained after his return, these triangles had completed their evolution into iron set squares. Hajama the surveyor, were he here, would even declare, 'That is no simple set square. It is an instrument of torture for an old soul.'

'I want to bite off my tongue this instant!'

But would biting off your tongue kill a man? Why is the process of a person dying so complicated? Can't a man just say "ah, I want to die" and have King Yama[3] stamp the approval—"yes, go ahead and die"?

'No, I mustn't die... I went to all the trouble of getting another chance to live...'

If you have regrets, you fix them. If you lived wrong, well, you live right the second time around.

'I was no great man to begin with anyway.'

Take it easy on yourself, just fix what you got wrong, and that's that.

That's all it takes...

"No, why are you suddenly yelling... damn, really, you scared me..."

As he steadied his breathing, his eye caught Kim Tae-yang, neck pulled in tight, gaze lowered to the ground.

Han San let out a sigh.

"Hey."

"Huh?"

Han San glanced at the badgers he'd finished dressing. One male, two cubs.

Most of the oil would come from the male. The cubs' meat was tender and had less gaminess, so it was easier to eat. There were pros and cons.

As for the hides, the cub hides were a bit softer even without tanning. For making gloves or socks, the cub side might be a touch better.

Han San laid out just the gist of all that, then asked,

"Anything here you're interested in?"

"Huh?"

Kim Tae-yang's head snapped up.

"Whoa, for real? You're giving it to me?"

Han San scowled hard.

"Are you nuts? Who said anything about giving. I'm asking if there's anything you'll buy off me here."

Kim Tae-yang's eyebrows bent into a frown.

"Ah, what... I don't have any money! I came up the mountain to make money in the first place..."

He'd guessed as much, but hearing it out loud left Han San dumbfounded all over again. A greenhorn out to make money on the mountain—what a fine, fat dream.

"Does it have to be money? Your uncle runs a loan business, doesn't he."

Han San thought of Pi Sun-dae.

The reason the man had coiled up in the out-of-the-way Lower Hamlet instead of the respectable town center was simple. He was running the kind of deals you can't do out in the open.

He went past sucking blood with interest rates and stripped men down to the bone with gambling. It was no coincidence that several of the card sharps who made names for themselves after liberation hailed from Seorak.

Thanks to that, the man's storehouse was practically bursting with goods that carried all sorts of stories.

'That's exactly the point.'

House deeds, land deeds, IOUs—those weren't the only things put up as collateral. People driven to the edge scraped together whatever was in the house, anything at all, and handed it over to Pi Sun-dae.

That was what Han San had his eye on.

"There's bound to be collateral whose term's run out. Trade me that and take my badgers."

"Like those collateral pieces are mine... and on top of it, last time we went down to town I got caught siphoning off a box of aspirin and got chewed out something fierce..."

At Kim Tae-yang's grumbling, Han San knit his brow.

"A guy who can tell his stuff from other people's that well was going to make my wire his own?"

"Ah, that's different! We're friends. Friends can mess around with each other..." Tae-yang hurried to add as Han San's expression soured, "A-and last time we went to town, I paid for all the food..."

Han San pressed a hand to his forehead. He wanted to say he had no interest in a gangster family's youngest son's bizarre arithmetic, but what he was about to do was use that very arithmetic.

"Anyway, there's bound to be stuff you can swipe that your uncle won't care about. For instance..."

Han San rattled off a few items, ones you'd have to go nearly to Chuncheon to get or else bring in by the lot.

Kim Tae-yang's face brightened at one of them.

"Oh, for real? That's worth money?"

Han San's eyes lit up too.

"You've got it?"

"I've got it. Those pawnshop bastards in town said it was just garbage..."

"You've got the order backwards. It's worth money to you because I need it."

"Ah, right... Got it. I'll bring it next time."

His mood must have lifted considerably, because a strange swagger crept into Kim Tae-yang's voice. He squared his shoulders as though showing off and added,

"Hey, besides the stuff you just named, there might be some other things my uncle doesn't care about, you know? Want me to scrape it all together for you? It's just gathering dust anyway."

A line worthy of a born gangster brat, all said and done. The way he played the big man with other people's things.

But it wasn't a bad deal for Han San either.

"Sure, do that. I'll look at the condition and take whatever's usable."

"Alright! Just you wait. Aren't I the eldest grandson of the Kim family?"

Watching Kim Tae-yang prattle on in high spirits, Han San's wry smile deepened.

'If it's all junk, I can just turn it away then and there.'

The upper hand stayed entirely with him, the one appraising the goods.

So what was the problem?

Maybe there really was treasure in there. He'd lived through the future, so whatever else, he had a wider range of knowledge than the average person of this era.

While Han San was thinking that, Kim Tae-yang, in his good mood, rattled on about family circumstances no one had even asked about.

"My sister's opening a club in Inje town center soon, you know? Figured I'd better bring a gift along to keep up appearances. I'm the eldest grandson of our family—can't very well show up empty-handed."

"A club?"

"Yeah. They play mahjong, Western cards, billiards... the name's South Jade Pavilion. Doesn't that have style?"

Inje town center. A club. South Jade Pavilion.

The light went on in Han San's memory.

[1] Sundae (순대) is a traditional Korean sausage made by steaming animal intestines stuffed with ingredients such as glass noodles, blood, and grains.

[2] Inner force (내공, neigong) is a wuxia and martial-arts concept denoting internal energy cultivated through training, said to grant extraordinary strength and vitality.

[3] King Yama (염라대왕, 閻羅大王) is the Buddhist and East Asian lord of the underworld who judges the dead and decides their fate.

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