WeTried Translations

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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 16

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The Beast's Den (1)

Once he had gulped down the cooling scorched-rice water too, dinner came to a satisfying close.

Ham Ssang-sim went off to the spring and started on the dishes. This time as well, when Han San offered to help, all he got was a smack on the back and an order to rest before being shooed away.

Bada slipped on his new rubber shoes and bounded down into the yard, thrilled. With a piece of candy clamped in his mouth like a whistle, he set off chasing the white chicken that had settled in the yard.

"Chickie, halt right there! There's gonna be an inspection!"

"Cluck-cluck!"

A peaceful hour, and up on the porch only the father and his eldest son remained.

Han San quietly scooted over beside his father and pulled out a pack of the Haetae cigarettes he'd bought in town.

"Father."

Han Man-seok turned his head. When he saw the Haetae picture printed on the smooth paper pack, his eyebrows twitched.

"What's this?"

"I saw them and bought one. Try packing this in."

Han San drew out a single Haetae cigarette, broke it apart, and tamped it into the tobacco pipe. Then he struck a match and lit it for him.

Tsss.

Han Man-seok gazed quietly at the cigarette his son had lit, then took a deep draw. A smoke softer than the harsh bite of leaf tobacco seeped deep into his lungs.

"Hoo..."

The hazy white smoke rode up on the night air. A languid hour.

"It's good."

Han Man-seok took another draw or two, then turned toward the cement sack and the wire propped beside the stepping stone. His gaze lingered especially long on the wire.

"What are you going to do with that wire?"

Han San grinned. He'd expected his father would take an interest.

"Ah, that. They gave it to me at the worksite so I brought it home... the gauge is pretty solid, isn't it."

Han Man-seok nodded.

"Looked good."

"Could you maybe make a trap or something out of it?"

When he asked, feigning ignorance, Han Man-seok hesitated a moment, then nodded.

"It can be made."

"What kind of trap?"

"Depends on what you're trying to catch."

Han Man-seok knocked off the ash.

"For rabbits a single snare does it. Finding their trail is the trick. Wildcats and foxes, those types are wary. They tap and test the bait, so you set the line loose."

The Baekdu Mountain trapper's explanation had no wasted words. Han San nodded and listened closely.

Then he asked.

"What is it you want to catch, Father?"

Han San was hoping for an answer of wild boar or deer, or with luck a wolf, so that he could naturally let slip a sigh of, [It sure would be nice if our house had a rifle.]

'Father still doesn't know that I know the rifle exists.'

So he meant to drag that fact out into the open first, while keeping up the act of not knowing, the way he had all along.

But.

"Badger."

At that unexpected yet clear answer, Han San stopped short.

"What?"

"That one we caught over at the Go house. That den." Hoo. Han Man-seok blew the smoke up deep. "I leaned on my stick and followed it."

Han San's eyes went wide.

"When... and with your knee bad."

"While you were off in town. The knee, well, it's not like I'm running."

Han Man-seok waved a hand to chase off the smoke and the worry both, then went on.

"There's a den. Up that way."

"A den... ah, of course. So the chicken it took was to feed its young..."

"Mm. Two pups, and one big male."

Having pinned down the count and the makeup of it, Han Man-seok glanced at his son.

"Even with that wire, I think it'd be too much for me alone..."

How could Han San fail to catch his meaning?

In the eyes of the son who had been staring blankly at his father, excitement, and then anticipation, began to bloom.

He grinned.

"A spring badger is a bit of a waste, but chicken thieves, that's a different story."

"Mm."

"Our chicken just came in too, so let's pull the whole thing out by the roots, the two of us."

The corner of Han Man-seok's mouth lifted, just slightly.

He knocked off the ash and rose to his feet.

"Tomorrow. When it's light, get dressed and follow me."

With those words, Han Man-seok went into the inner room. Looking at the shut door, Han San clenched his fist tight.

It wasn't the picture he'd intended, but his chest only burned hotter for it. His father already had a plan that had nothing to do with his own shallow scheming, and in that plan, his father needed him.

Tomorrow he was going hunting with his father!

***

Kim Tae-yang kicked the gate, huffing and puffing.

Bang!

"Wow, damn it! This is unbelievable, for real! That San brat, daring to put me down?"

His neck still burned, and it wasn't only because of the handprint left on it like the mark of a dog collar.

'That Im Baechil idiot saw the whole thing...'

He couldn't stand the shame of it. If that lumbering oaf went around blabbing it all over the village, what would become of his [face]?

If Im Baechil thought ahead about the consequences he wouldn't dare, but Kim Tae-yang just couldn't trust whatever was in that idiot's head...

'Should I go right now and threaten him to keep his mouth shut, tell him he's dead if he talks? No, damn it, but that makes it look like I'm bothered about it, which is embarrassing too...'

Kim Tae-yang straightened his collar and stepped into the yard.

A brick house that stood out even in the Lower Hamlet, a place that hardly looked like a slash-and-burn settlers' village to begin with. On the broad daecheong[1] floor, a giant of a man with a Maco cigarette in his mouth was flipping through hwatu[2] cards.

It was Pi Sun-dae, one of Kim Tae-yang's [uncles].

"Aigo, what've you been up to now, coming home looking like that?"

At the sight of Pi Sun-dae frowning, Kim Tae-yang shook his head.

"What's wrong with how I look. Nothing happened."

"You didn't go and get yourself beat up somewhere, did ya? You son of a bitch. If your big bro and big sis find out, it'll be a brawl all over again."

"Nothing happened, I said! Who'd get beat up, how embarrassing. Unbelievable."

Grumbling, Kim Tae-yang plopped down in one corner of the floor. Pi Sun-dae clicked his tongue and started flipping the hwatu again. Beside him sat crumpled bundles of loan IOUs and grimy, well-thumbed one-won bills.

Eyeing the money, Kim Tae-yang spoke up.

"Uncle Sun-dae."

"What."

"Is a badger worth money?"

"A badger? What's this out-of-nowhere badger. You hear Mrs. Go blabbing about it too? Honestly, I oughta just slit her belly and boil up a badger-cap sundae soup."

A vile string of curses poured out, but Kim Tae-yang's head filtered all of it and left only the core.

Mrs. Go was Go Tae-chon's wife. And it had been Go Tae-chon who brought up the badger.

Kim Tae-yang's eyes lit up.

"What's that woman saying?"

"You know that crippled gentleman from the Han house. They say he looks to have clubbed it to death with a stick. Said she nearly died of fright, him flailing around with a club in front of their chicken coop, carried on like a damn fit about it."

"Ah, for real? But if he clubbed it dead, then it's caught, what's this 'looks to have clubbed it' nonsense?"

"How would I know what's in that nattering? That woman's had her eyes rolled back wrong ever since she was up in Chuncheon with your second mistress, something off about her."

Pi Sun-dae snapped the hwatu cards down and glowered.

"Anyhow, no funny business out of you, just sit tight. And learn the flower cards and that other thing, mahjong, more! Word is your third mistress is opening a club[3] in Inje before long, and you've gotta get over there and start picking up the trade, don't you, you son of a bitch."

Kim Tae-yang's brow scrunched up hard.

'They call my sisters mistress, mistress, all proper, so why am I always a son of a bitch? You slave-born wretch.'

Should he just tattle to Mom and Dad? No, that's an embarrassing thing to do too...

Luckily, Kim Tae-yang's head had one heck of a filter built into it. After a few seconds, just the kernel settled out as always.

'Third sis is opening a club in Inje?'

His first thought was that he was jealous.

If not for that [incident] in Gyeongseong, he wouldn't be living out in some backwater with his [uncle]. He'd never have gotten tangled up with idiot oafs or dirt-stinking yokels.

But things had turned out that way, and three years had already gone by. By now it didn't feel like he'd come to take refuge, it felt like he'd been shipwrecked.

And yet his sister was set to open a fine club and be called madam.

But the jealousy didn't last long.

'Damn it, how embarrassing.'

How could the family's one and only son, the heir who would one day lead the house, be jealous of a female sibling?

'Right, instead of being jealous, I should look out for her.'

It was an opportunity, really. A chance to show some dignity as the heir of the house.

'My sister's having an opening, you can't go empty-handed, can you? Buy some killer opening gift, hand it right over, and stand tall, that's what makes a man the Taeyang of the Kim house.'

Kim Tae-yang propped his chin in his hand. His brow, tanned bronze under the Gangwon sun, knit in deep thought.

'To buy a gift I need money though...'

But a gift bought with the allowance Pi Sun-dae handed him would mean nothing. Even Kim Tae-yang understood that much logic. And working at some place like a construction site, well, that was embarrassing.

It was right then that [badger] and [money] clicked together in Kim Tae-yang's head.

'If a cripple can catch one, doesn't that mean I can catch one too?'

Han Man-seok. The way that old man's leg dragged, even the village mutts all knew it. If a gentleman like that had clubbed one to death, didn't that mean the badger was lower than a village mutt?

'Catching it and turning it into money, that's just a matter of putting my uncle or the guys who owe debts to work.'

Above all, the thought of [catching an animal to make money] tickled Kim Tae-yang's boyish heart. He was seventeen, after all.

'The problem is where to find the badger...'

That, too, was no hard thing for Kim Tae-yang. Weren't the mountains overflowing with beasts? That was why they were called mountains.

And besides, if he really couldn't find one, why couldn't a sound-bodied fellow like him go anywhere that crippled Han gentleman could go?

If a hunter tracked his prey, then he would just track the hunter himself!

'My sister'll love it.'

Kim Tae-yang grinned. Rolling the hwatu cards Pi Sun-dae had set down between his fingers, he sank into daydreams about what gift to buy.

***

The next day, the dawn air was cold and clear.

"Hoo."

Han San stepped over the threshold. His breath turned white and scattered.

Dawn in Sebeom Valley was still. While the chirping of insects and birds tickled at his ears, the winding ridgelines locked against the sky like teeth.

His father was already out front.

"You didn't sleep?"

"Woke early."

Han Man-seok sat on the porch, binding that [cloth-wrapped iron rod] tighter still with wire. The knot was clever. Han San could see that it would never come loose on its own, yet pull and snap a single strand and the cloth would unravel in an instant.

Thinking that his father was getting himself ready too, since he was taking him out into the mountains, Han San felt a corner of his chest grow warm.

"Should we make the trap here, or once we're there?"

"We'll do it there. The dawn'll break while we work." A moment later, Han Man-seok added, "Pack firewood."

"Yes."

"Leave the cigarettes."

"Yes."

Han San got the A-frame carrier ready. Onto it went a sickle and a knife, vine cord and a sack, and the bundle of wire he'd brought back from the worksite the day before. As told, he packed a fistful of dry firewood and left out the cigarettes and the tobacco pipe.

Han Man-seok rose, leaning on the cloth-bound rod in his right hand and a walking stick carved from birch wood in his left.

So the father and son set out through the brushwood gate.

A wordless walk stretched on.

Crunch, press. Crunch, press.

Only the sound of shoes treading the earth and his father's stick pressing the ground rang out, taking turns.

The path out of the Lower Hamlet up toward the Upper Hamlet. In his past life Han San had walked this path so many times.

Mostly alone.

Having lost his parents, grown distant from his brother, and climbed this path alone, all those countless hours he'd swallowed down seemed to fragment and scatter in the white puffs of his breath with every step he took.

Beyond that breath, the back of his father walking ahead came into view.

Thin though it was, and dragging on one leg, it was a back more dependable than anyone's.

'Come to think of it.'

Walking and watching that back, Han San realized something anew.

'This is the first time I've gone hunting with Father.'

No matter how he dug through his memories of his past life, there wasn't a single memory of having set out to hunt alongside his father.

Was it simply because they hadn't gotten along?

'No.'

The very notion that they hadn't gotten along was his own childish conceit. Han San could see now that his father wouldn't have cared in the slightest how he was regarded.

Was it thanks to the wire he'd brought, which made it possible to build a trap?

'No.'

There was no way his father had failed even once to get hold of something like wire in all the years before he was swept up in next year's flood and died. And yet his father had only ever chosen to go out alone or simply stay home, never once setting out on the path together with him.

'Then?'

The reason fate had shifted was clear.

'He was watching.'

Catching frogs and crayfish, standing up to Go Tae-chon, going to town and back alone, all those sights. His father had been quietly smoking his pipe, weighing his son's capacity all along.

Whether his son had grown enough to take charge of guarding the back of a man with a bad leg.

Strength gathered in Han San's fist.

If so, the meaning of this joint hunt became clear too.

'This is a test.'

A mountain-entry trial handed down by a seasoned hunter. A gateway to decide whether he could be acknowledged as an adult who pulled his own weight.

'If I pass this.'

Han San's gaze turned to the club wound round and round with cloth in his father's hand.

'Maybe he'll show me the rifle inside it, without my having to pull any cheap little tricks.'

Even in the dawn mountain wind, Han San felt a corner of his heart swelling full.

That was when.

"They're comfortable. These shoes."

His father said it, almost out of nowhere.

It took Han San a little while to realize it was about the rubber shoes he'd bought the day before. He nodded quickly.

"I'm glad they fit your feet."

"Mm."

"These grip even on rock, so they make climbing a bit easier. Ah, isn't the dew slippery? If I buy some rope later and wind it together with straw, that helps a little too..."

He was so glad and so full that his words came in a rush. Then all at once he caught himself, and noticed his father gazing at him steadily.

He felt a touch awkward, but on second thought, what was there to feel awkward about in front of his own father, and he straightened up.

His father's mouth, too, curled up just a bit.

Not for long.

Composing his expression, Han Man-seok raised the cloth-bound rod and pointed ahead.

"Watch yourself."

What lay before them, mouth gaping open, was the entrance to the Upper Hamlet.

If the Lower Hamlet entrance stretched off along a side path toward the new road, the Upper Hamlet entrance bored straight into the mountain's ridgeline.

What guarded the entrance was no marker stone either, unlike the Lower Hamlet. Ancient trees lined up to the left and right. From every branch blue and white and red cloths drooped like tongues, and bells shaped after babies' faces hung quietly.[4]

"You can't let your guard slip."

The look in Han Man-seok's eyes as he gave the warning had changed. From the father pleased over his son's gift, to that of the hunter who had ranged across Baekdu Mountain.

Han San steadied his own gaze too.

"Yes, Father."

"Mm."

The hunter and his apprentice strode, in, into the mountain.

***

"Achoo! Ah, damn it, it's freaking cold."

It was an hour after that when Kim Tae-yang walked into the mountain alone.

A wind blown in from somewhere set the baby bells laughing in a loud clamor.

[1] The daecheong (대청) is the broad, raised wooden-floored hall at the center of a traditional Korean house, open to the yard and used as a communal living and resting space in warm weather.

[2] Hwatu (화투) are Korean flower-pattern playing cards, derived from the Japanese hanafuda, used for popular gambling games.

[3] A "club" here renders gurakbu (구락부), a colonial-era Korean transliteration of the Japanese kurabu (倶楽部, itself from English "club") denoting an entertainment and gambling establishment.

[4] The cloths and baby-faced bells mark a seonangdang (성황당), a village guardian shrine of Korean folk religion set at a settlement's edge to ward off misfortune.

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