WeTried Translations

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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 12

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The Master of the Mountain

Tobacco of every kind sat lined up on the counter.

'Father.'

The image came back to him without warning—his father with the tobacco pipe between his lips, puffing away. And when the tobacco leaves ran out, his father rubbing bean leaves into the bowl and smoking those instead.

"That one, a pack of Huiyeon[1]..." Han San paused, then started again. "No, that one. Give me a pack of [Haetae], please."

The shopkeeper narrowed his eyes.

"Haetae? Those are cigarettes."

"I know. If you unroll them and pack them in a pipe, isn't it the same as loose tobacco?"

"You'd waste them on something that extravagant? And Haetae, no less?"

"Why, can't I? I'm trying to treat my father's throat a little."

"...No reason you can't. Quite the filial son."

The shopkeeper went quiet and took the fifteen jeon.

[Haetae, 1 pack: 15 jeon spent / balance 5 jeon]

Han San wished his father would quit smoking. But if he was going to quit anyway, then for as long as it took, Han San wanted him smoking the best tobacco he could get.

Tobacco was all equally bad, so was there even such a thing as the best of it? But things never sorted themselves out that neatly.

A bitter taste lingered in his mouth.

Right then the shopkeeper handed over a smooth pack stamped with the Haetae picture, and its scent tickled the tip of his nose.

'Maybe I'll have just one...'

The memory of being a seventy-four-year-old chain-smoker prickled at the back of his throat. One deep drag, and it felt like the knot in his chest would clear right out.

But.

'No.'

Han San thought back to the day he first smoked, in his past life.

The wreckage left behind after the Great Flood of the Gapsul Year swept through. He had lost his parents, lost his home, and was sitting on the mudflats in a daze with his crying little brother beside him. A man in a white durumagi[2], holding a folding fan, had handed him a single Haetae. That was how it started.

He had buried his grief in that acrid smoke, breathing out sighs, and spent seventy years that way.

Had spent them that way.

'I won't smoke.'

Because in this life, nothing like that would ever happen!

Once he had the tobacco for his father and stepped out of the general store, Han San flagged down a candy peddler without a second thought. With the last white nickel coin he had, he bought candy for his little brother.

[Rock candy, 5 pieces: 5 jeon spent / balance 0 won]

And with that, the shopping was done.

All that money had scattered in the blink of an eye, and his pockets were empty, but his heart was full.

"Let's go!"

Han San made his way out of the market.

As everywhere, the way out was never as tricky as the way in. Han San walked out boldly through Rimok Bridge, the proper entrance.

'Now, shall I go see whether that five won really copies itself?'

The path leading up to Daeseung Falls.

Oxen yoked to carts let out long lows, and scattered all around lay picks and shovels, levers and sledgehammers. Stakes and rope were stacked in neat piles, and there were also coils of good-quality wire and two sacks of cement.

But it was late afternoon now. Dusk came fast over Seorak, so the work had already stopped.

A dozen or so laborers stood looking down past the cliff edge, murmuring among themselves.

"Aw, there's just no way to get at that, I'm telling ya."

"Wind! Ah, there it goes swinging again!"

There was something almost gleeful mixed into the laborers' murmuring.

Their eyes were fixed on the middle of a sheer vertical rock face that dropped straight down. A bag, caught on a jutting branch of an old pine, swung back and forth with a creak, creak.

The foreman was the only one in a panic.

"You sons of bitches, did you open a moving-picture house?! If you're gonna stand around gawking, one of you climb down there and grab the damn thing already!"

The bellow had real menace behind it, but the laborers only waved him off.

"Aigo, foreman. How are the likes of us supposed to climb down there? We're working men, not circus acrobats."

"Just tie on a rope, go down quick, come up quick—that's all it takes!"

No matter how the foreman shouted and gestured, the laborers wouldn't budge.

"If it's so easy, foreman, you show us how it's done."

"Pulling that stunt nearly sent two men to the underworld already."

"Truth is, it did send them. A man breaks his arm. Can't work. Can't earn. Then, boom, he's as good as dead."

A faint resentment ran through the laborers' voices. One of them went so far as to spit, right out in the open.

The foreman's face went red. But he said nothing more. Push the laborers any harder, and if something went wrong, the construction schedule would fall behind.

Yet he couldn't very well leave that surveying equipment bag hanging there either.

The foreman backed off and bowed his head to the bag's owner.

"Tsuchimaru-sensei, my apologies. These ignorant louts..."

"How many times have I told you to call me Hajama-sensei?"

Hajama Tsuchimaru, a surveyor with round glasses and a hard-edged look, frowned.

The foreman swallowed a string of curses.

'The peninsula bastards throw a fit if you call them by surname, like you're picking a fight, and the islander bastards throw a fit if you call them by given name, like you're getting too familiar. What rhythm am I supposed to dance to?'

Ah, harmony between Japan and Korea[3]! That far-off ideal!

'Just drop dead, the lot of you.'

The foreman—a Japanese-Korean of mixed blood who had to serve a Japanese official while driving Korean laborers—simply hated this whole world.

Hajama Tsuchimaru folded his arms.

"Hajama is no simple surname. It is the pride of our clan, who take surveying as our trade."

"Ah, yes... my apologies, Hajama-sensei." What the foreman did not say was, and does that really matter right now, you bastard. "It looks like we won't be able to recover it today either..."

"Truly useless."

Hajama Tsuchimaru let out a huge sigh. His irritable eyes were full of contempt.

"This is no simple uselessness. It is disloyalty to our empire, which raises you, feeds you, and gives you work. Now I see—the seditious Koreans[4] aren't all in Manchuria; they've all come here instead."

"My apologies..."

"That is no simple piece of equipment. It is a symbol of Western science, brought across from Germany. Is there really not one brave soul to rescue that symbol? When I've even put up a five won reward?"

"My apologies..."

"That is no simple reward. It is a hymn of glory, to be offered to whoever brings me that bag. Do you not wish to receive that hymn?"

"My apologies..."

Bowing his head over and over, the foreman felt all sorts of questions stirring.

For one, why in the world did this bastard talk like this? Why did he keep correcting himself with this [it is no simple such-and-such] business? Why was it that the longer you listened, the more irritation welled up, and the more you wanted to knock his teeth out?

"You folks still at it?"

A young voice cut in just then.

The laborers, the foreman, and Hajama the surveyor—who had been picking at the foreman in that soft, measured tone—all looked toward it. A man wearing rubber shoes, an A-frame carrier with a chicken loaded on it slung across his back, had pushed his way out through the brush.

Seeing his chance to escape the haranguing at last, the foreman glared.

"Who are you? This is a construction site. If you want work as a laborer, go to the town and find the civil engineering office..."

"I heard you're offering five won."

The man was, of course, Han San.

Han San shrugged the A-frame carrier off and set it down. "Cluck-cluck!" The white chicken tied to the frame let out a pitiful cry. He strode forward and looked down at the rock face where the bag hung, and only then did the people's expressions change.

"They said something got posted on the notice board. Came out here over that, did he?"

"Ha! Blinded by five won."

"Another one's gonna break his arms and legs, boom."

"That young fellow, really..."

Ignoring the murmuring of mockery and worry, Han San walked up, craned his neck, and checked the position where the bag hung.

'Hmm.'

Tok. That was the sound of Han San kicking a small pebble with his foot. Tok, tu-tok, tok. Three or four pebbles and bits of dirt bounced off in their own directions and went sliding down the cliff.

'So that's how it is.'

Following the rolling stones and dirt, Han San read the grain of the rock face.

Others might think it nothing but a smooth cliff, but to the eyes of a seventy-four-year-old mountain man, the outcrops he could grip and the cracks he could step into stood out plain as day.

"Mind if I use some rope?"

That snapped the foreman back to attention.

"You really mean to do it?"

"Can't I?"

"No, no! You can, you can... can you? Really?"

"If there's some rope. That's why I'm asking if I can use it. And gloves."

"Bring it."

It was Hajama, the surveyor, watching Han San with interest, who gave the order first.

The foreman started to say something, but since Hajama had said so, he just waved a hand. One of the laborers, who had exchanged glances with the others, brought over rope and cotton work gloves.

"Young fella... look, you can't go throwing your life around so carelessly. You can't."

The tone was scolding, but Han San didn't take offense. After all, the man was only acting that way out of concern for him.

He pulled on the gloves and measured out the length of rope in his hands. He wrapped it around his waist and tied a firm knot. Then he looped it three times around a tree, took the other end in one hand, and only then answered.

"I won't be careless. Watch and see. And keep a good eye on my A-frame too."

Han San moved up onto the rock face.

The crowd's eyes followed him. When Han San stepped onto the slope and slipped out of view, every neck craned forward at once. That was the moment.

Han San gave a light leap.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

In the very instant the crowd cried out in alarm—thunk—Han San's hands and feet clung to the cliff rock.

His body came to a stop.

His hands gripped a part that jutted slightly out of the rock, and the soles of his rubber shoes pressed flat against the wall, holding him there—a sense of balance that bordered on the miraculous.

"Is—is that even a person?"

"A monkey... no, isn't that a gecko?"

The laborers' mouths hung open as Han San started moving again. Just as they'd said, like a gecko, he loosened the hand holding the rope just barely, and each time he grabbed a crack in the rock with the other hand, he descended step by step, slip, slip.

'My body's so light I could fly.'

In the old body of his past life, he wouldn't even have dreamed of it. But the muscle he had now was like steel, and his joints moved as smoothly as if they'd been oiled.

Before he knew it he had come down some twenty meters, and Han San reached the pine branch.

"He—he really made it!"

"Wow!"

"Careful! Hey, careful! That thing's heavier than it looks!"

"Don't carry it in your hands—sling it! You know how to sling it?!"

The laborers shouted over one another. The earlier sneering and worry had vanished without a trace, replaced by pure absorption and cheering.

Han San grinned at their simple honesty. He reached out and snatched the end of the bag caught on the branch—tak. Just as they'd said, it was a heavy thing, and he swung it around once and slung it onto his shoulder, then pressed himself tight against the wall, crouching low to bleed off the added weight.

Cheers rang out from above.

"He's got it! He's slung it on!"

"Come up careful! Want us to pull? The rope!"

"Everybody! Put your gloves back on and grab the ropes..."

The foreman shouted. The laborers were already finding their cotton gloves and pulling them on.

But Han San called out at once.

"No, it's fine! Don't pull!"

"What?"

"I'm going down even more! Slipping out to the side! And going around to climb up, so don't pull!!"

"Going down even more...?"

Before the foreman could even grasp it, Han San began, just as he'd said, to head further down.

'This way's easier.'

Going down was a matter of reading the grain of the rock and keeping his balance. But climbing up—well, and on top of that, scaling a near-vertical cliff while slinging a bag with such an unstable center of weight—Han San had never had any intention of doing in the first place.

It wasn't that he couldn't, but with an easier and safer route right there, why bother?

So Han San went down, lower and lower. The closer the floor below drew, the more careful he became, keeping his guard up to the very end.

At last Han San set down at the bottom of the cliff. Tok, tok. He tugged the rope to signal that they could haul it up, then found a ridge and slipped out to the side.

When the laborers saw the tiny figure of Han San far below vanish into the brush, they finally let themselves relax.

"He's something else, really. That a native of Gangwon?"

"A friend of mine said all those slash-and-burn settlers were savages, ignorant louts—but at that level he's earned the right to be a savage, hasn't he?"

"Savage your mother. Choi, you, you something special?"

"What's that, you bastard?"

Rough men being rough men, the mood soured again in no time, but there was none of the heart-clenching tension from before.

No—in another sense, there was a heart-clenching tension after all.

The foreman was suddenly seized by the kind of unease you feel when you can't quite recall the name on a sealed, signed contract.

"He's not going to run off with the bag, is he..."

What would a louse in plain cotton clothes and rubber shoes do with a bag of German surveying equipment even if he did run off with it? But since he was out of sight, the unease just welled up anyway.

One of the laborers cackled.

"Aw, his A-frame's right there. What's he gonna run off with?"

"Ah, right."

Still, the foreman fretted. Couldn't a man just toss aside an A-frame and run? The salt and the rice and the chicken all together came to a few won at most... whereas the equipment in that bag was worth hundreds... uh, oh?

About the time the foreman was gnawing his nails and craving a smoke, the brush in the woods rustled.

"I'm back."

Han San had returned. On his shoulder hung the leather bag.

"Oh, oh!"

"He really did it!"

The foreman wasn't just relieved—he nearly collapsed on the spot.

"Aigo, fine work! Truly outstanding! Here, hand it over, quick!"

The foreman reached out to take the bag, but someone got there first. It was Hajama Tsuchimaru.

Hajama looked Han San up and down, then clapped—clap, clap.

"Splendid. Truly splendid."

The surveyor Hajama spoke with a satisfied look.

"You are no simple mountain man. You are a master—one who plays the instrument named the mountain, striking its rock and sawing through its brush."

The foreman and the laborers, and Han San too, all felt an irritation they couldn't put into words.

[1] Huiyeon (희연) and Haetae (해태) were cigarette brands of the colonial period; Haetae was the pricier, more prized of the two.

[2] A durumagi (두루마기) is the traditional Korean overcoat worn over the jacket and trousers.

[3] "Harmony between Japan and Korea" renders naisen ittai (내선일체, 内鮮一体), "Japan and Korea as one body" — a colonial assimilation slogan pushed hardest from the late 1930s.

[4] "Seditious Koreans" renders futei senjin (불령선인, 不逞鮮人), a contemptuous colonial label for Koreans deemed rebellious or malcontent.

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