WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era
Chapter 46
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This Land's Owner (2)
Sebeom Valley.
The line dividing Middle Hamlet from Upper Hamlet.
In front of the Seonangdang shrine tree, where strips of blue cloth hung down, the old woman who had ruled this land since the distant past and the old man who had come from a far-off future glared at each other.
Old Woman Wangdae spoke.
"You are insolent."
Han San lifted his chin.
"That hardly seems like something to be said by someone who keeps a young man standing in the dead of night and rattles off cryptic words out of nowhere."
"Young? You?"
"Young, yes. Especially compared to you, Grandmother."
Even reckoning his own age at seventy-four, he would still have lived fewer years than the old woman before him. In any case, no one in this world knew how old Old Woman Wangdae was.
"If you've got something to say, say it plainly, Grandmother. I'm young and know nothing, so I can't keep up with riddles like this."
There was a barb in Han San's tone.
Some of it was deliberate provocation. Yet despite his rudeness, Park Il, standing before the palanquin, and the bearers who must have carried it here, did not so much as twitch.
Even Old Woman Wangdae only let her shoulders settle.
"Very well."
Her eyes, large and grotesque, the black pupils filling so much of them that the whites were hard to find, looked down at Han San before she said,
"Then I'll speak in a way that's easy to grasp."
"Please do."
"You would do well not to leave this valley."
Han San faltered.
The rough blueprint he had sketched out only a moment ago—the plan to take his family into town and escape the flood—flickered through his mind.
He asked, "Why?"
"Because tribulation draws nearer the more you flee from it."
Old Woman Wangdae's voice was calm.
"Think on the Dog Star you made set early. The more it fled, the closer it drew to the sunset. To run in search of a way to live was instead to throw open the gate of death."
"Ha."
A dry laugh escaped Han San.
"That's because I planned its death."
And was he the only one?
Tono too must have planned Ginsei's death. Ginsei—the so-called Dog Star or whatever this old woman had crowed about so proudly—was nothing more than one great dragon of stones laid down on a baduk[1] board...
But Old Woman Wangdae only nodded.
"Because you were its tribulation."
"How very convenient."
Han San said it with his brow furrowed.
"How about thinking a bit more scientifically, Grandmother? Just saying whatever you please in some weighty tone doesn't make it a fact. Sure, some people might find comfort in that sort of thing, but ominous talk isn't even that kind of comfort."
"..."
"I'll be off now. I've a road to take before dawn."
As he spoke, Han San turned around.
Still gripping the leaf spring dagger, he started to trudge away.
"Only the younger brother stays."
Han San stopped.
He turned only his eyes, a glance back. Old Woman Wangdae's jet-black pupils met his.
"All of you will die."
Old Woman Wangdae was saying it.
"Tribulation will hunt you down."
She went on, "Wherever you are, soil will pour down on that place. Wherever you hide, water will flow into it. Falling trees will strike your bodies, you will be swept away by stones, and not even your corpses will be found."
"You,"
"Is it not so?"
"Right now."
Han San said it in a voice cold enough to turn the air around him white.
"Are you cursing me? Threatening me?"
How dare she.
"My family?"
His grip on the leaf spring dagger tightened.
"Grandmother, Old Woman Wangdae... you wicked shaman, are you right now—"
As he spoke, Han San made to step forward. He made to raise the leaf spring dagger. He made to raise his voice. He made to bellow loud enough to shake the whole village.
In that instant—
lightning struck.
Rrrrumble, KRAAANG!
In a sky thick with stars, in a sky bright with the moon, in a night sky without a single cloud, a sallow-yellow bolt, with no warning at all, lashed once across, then the next instant struck lengthwise down the mountain ridge, KRACK!
The world flared bright.
The outline of the lightning that drove down overlapped with the silhouette of the Seonangdang shrine tree stretching upward.
He saw it.
"That,"
Beneath that overlapping mark, far away, up there, up on that mountain ridge, above Meokbawi Valley that flowed right alongside Sebeom Valley, it was there.
It was sitting there.
Han San felt the past sweep past before his eyes—the water that had poured down like madness—Meokbawi Valley bursting open—the soil and water and trees and stones that fell at once upon Middle Hamlet and Lower Hamlet and swept them away, that swept his father and mother away, and then—
[Not even the tiger has truly vanished, either.]
The reason Han San knew that better than anyone.
[The Government-General types may sit at their desks wagging their pens and claim the Korean tiger has been rooted out south of the Imjin River, but what a joke. If that were so...]
The reason he had thought that way on the first night of his return, the night they held a feast of badger meat.
[Do you think there are still tigers?]
The reason he had asked his father that at the upper reaches of Meokbawi Valley—the very reason he had resolved to keep five rounds of ammunition until the flood came.
Old Woman Wangdae spread both her hands.
"The Great Lords come forth!"
The Mountain Lord—
In his past life, at the time of the Great Flood of the Gap-sul Year, the very being that had appeared together with soil and water and trees and stones.
A tiger with a body as huge as a house, sitting above Meokbawi Valley, looking down upon him—Han San saw it clearly!
"Ah,"
The next moment, the storm of light the lightning had brought finally faded away.
Darkness covered the ridge.
His vision was swallowed for an instant by the mountain shadow. Blink, blink—only after closing and opening his eyes a few times did the night grow familiar again and his surroundings come back into view.
Han San looked toward Meokbawi Valley.
The tiger was already gone.
But its afterimage lingered—in his slightly parted mouth, in the chest across from it, inside his pounding heart.
"I have told you all," Old Woman Wangdae said, as if mocking him. "Be off now. You've a road to take before dawn, you said."
And this time it was Old Woman Wangdae who turned around.
Park Il's thick lips twisted upward. After casting a glance at Han San, he walked over and lifted the palanquin's curtain. The bearers were already readying themselves to shoulder it.
And Han San,
'I...'
1. What a load of nonsense. Unscientific, illogical—tribulation, what? Lightning, a tiger? So what? What does that have to do with taking my family into town? It's rubbish. All of it rubbish. There's no cause and effect at all, I don't believe a word of it. Tomorrow I'll take my family out to safe Inje town, I'll—
'I,'
2. Fate cannot be changed. There are things in this world that surpass human understanding. My own return alone proves as much, and so—Old Woman Wangdae might really know. That if I leave Sebeom Valley, my family dies. I don't know why. But the thought that it will come to pass, and so, in that case, if I came back from the future only to watch my family die again, I—
'I!'
Han San pulled a single sheet of paper from his shirt.
It was a bill. Earned at the tavern. A one-won note brought by an outsider from beyond the village. A scrap of paper worth exactly the same as a single hen of a breed that had crossed the far seas.
The largest and most intricate sorcery the civilized world had ever wrought—a thing people believed had value and therefore did have value.
That symbol—KRACK! Han San hurled it without hesitation at the Seonangdang shrine tree and swung the leaf spring dagger down to drive it in.
Sap burst out.
Not dead bark but the living flesh of a living tree, and into that gash the crushed Bank of Korea one-won note bored its way.
"What in the!"
Park Il, who had kept his thick lips clamped shut like a statue through the whole exchange, let out a cry.
Old Woman Wangdae's mouth fell open too.
"You dare, against the sacred tree!"
An iron blade—and one first shaped not by human hands but by a machine, and filthy money on top of that—how dare he!
"Why."
Han San caught his breath.
"It's earnest money."
Pointing at the wound he had cut into the tree, Han San spoke toward Old Woman Wangdae.
"The land this Seonangdang shrine tree stands on, that Meokbawi Valley, the water that flows down through it—I'll buy it all."
"What did you say?"
"Tell it clearly, whether it's the Mountain Lord or a king or some beast's whelp."
The hunter's soul housed in a body brimming with vitality let out a growl.
"That this land is in my name."
He said it.
"And that if the tenant plays games about tribulation or whatever else without the landlord's permission, then I'll start by cutting down this tree and pouring concrete over it."
No one could move.
After a moment, Old Woman Wangdae moved. Baring her teeth, she turned to face Han San.
"You dare,"
"I dare to do exactly that."
Trudge—closing the distance with Old Woman Wangdae by a single step, Han San said,
"You ask why? You go threatening me with tribulation or whatever else, using my family's lives."
Trudge—one more step.
"And so."
Going close enough that the tips of their noses nearly touched, he pressed his own face against Old Woman Wangdae's broad face and spoke.
"That makes me afraid for them."
"You wretch..."
"I'll blast that ridge's waist apart with dynamite. Pack it down with a pickaxe. Haul in dozens, hundreds of sacks of cement. Strip out the gravel down to the last pebble, then drive in nothing but cut stone to twist the water's course away."
Like two beasts growling, breath flowed through the gap between their tightly pressed faces.
Han San's breath flowed harder.
"I'm curious, Grandmother... will it be tribulation, or some plague nonsense, that falls on my family then too?"
"Insolent!"
Old Woman Wangdae roared.
"Do you think a man can defy a disaster! Can defy nature!"
"I'll not only defy it, I'll fasten a leash to its neck."
Han San bared his teeth and smiled.
Man had always done so—against the mountains, against the fields, against the rivers, against the sea—against the beasts.
So it had always been.
"In fancier words they call it civil engineering. With money and manpower, the things called [capital] out there in the wider world, Grandmother... do you know that a flood becomes a vacation, and the Mountain Lord becomes nothing but carpet material?"
"Arrogant whelp!"
"I'd rather not be arrogant either, but what can I do. That's simply how the facts are."
It was not bluster.
Every word Han San spoke, each one, was sincere.
He would not run. He would stay on this land.
He would buy up Seorak!
He had thought himself no vessel for such a thing, and still thought so, but he had a father, a mother, a younger brother.
Granted the timing had fallen into place, he had the knack that had earned 500 won in a single month, and the breathing room of fourteen months still left to him.
By whatever means—with the money he could earn, the power he could wield, and the information he held—he would grow it all and meet the day of the Great Flood of the Gap-sul Year.
That tribulation or whatever it was—every last thing that dared to disturb his territory—he would [hunt] them all down!
"Do you think you can pay the price for that!"
Old Woman Wangdae glared as if to kill him, but Han San still smiled with his teeth bared.
"I'll pay it." He added, "And I'll wring out as much as I paid."
"Wring out?"
"Grandmother, do I look like some easy mark to you? You think I'll just back off after taking a threat like this?"
As if he would tolerate a draw.
"You'll pay the price."
Han San said it as though whispering.
"Once I buy up this whole area and tame it and beat it into shape, then surely even the ghosts clinging to this land will go—oh, master, we did wrong, please forgive us—and cough up a bit of gold while they're at it. This is Gangwon, after all."
That too was sincere, and it was true.
In this period, Gangwon was the heart of the gold rush[2] in Korea.
The Cheonpo Mine in Jeongseon, the Daemyeong Mine in Hongcheon, the placer gold around Chuncheon...
Dovetailing with the Government-General's policy of encouraging gold production, more than a few lucky placer miners and sharp-eyed prospectors had managed to turn their fortunes around.
And Han San, a returnee, was bound by necessity to be both lucky and sharp-eyed.
'As it happens, there was a gold vein around here too.'
Han San looked over Upper Hamlet and Meokbawi Valley once each, with cool eyes.
"The regret will be yours. That you should have just let me go."
Silence fell.
Park Il and the bearers glared at Han San too. Han San did not even snort. He did not even glance at them.
He looked only at Old Woman Wangdae, only at her.
Old Woman Wangdae was looking at Han San too. Her gaze seemed to be weighing truth from falsehood, but Han San did not look away.
Every one of those words, again, down to the last period, was sincere.
Except.
"Cooperating would be better for you too, Grandmother."
"What?"
"Say tribulation clings to me. It might cling to my family too. But, Grandmother... if we take that tribulation, do you think you'll come through it unharmed?"
This.
"That Mountain Lord Mama[3] or whatever it is you serve—is it a god so vast in mercy that it saves your kind? Or is it a god that, since all people under heaven are equal, simply sweeps every last one of them away?"
These words.
"I guarantee you, when next year's tribulation breaks, it's you lot up in Upper Hamlet who'll be swept down before my house. Just you wait and see."
That last bit alone, of all of it, was Han San's bluster.
The returnee who had come back having seen the future, Han San, knew. More deeply than anyone.
'When the Great Flood of the Gap-sul Year came, Upper Hamlet was unharmed.'
All that damage stopped at Middle Hamlet and Lower Hamlet alone.
As if measured with a ruler.
As if cut with a blade.
But.
'And that very fact, Old Woman Wangdae—would you know it?'
The bulging eyes of Old Woman Wangdae, who had failed to see through Han San's greatest secret—his return—twitched.
On the face of Park Il, silent as a guardian Vajra warrior[4], and on the bearers' faces too, agitation followed in turn.
A thrill at having struck the target ran deep through Han San's chest.
The old hunter's [curse], like a rusted arrow, had lodged in the hearts of these Mountain Lord Mama's proxies, snapped off, and left behind a blackened venom.
Old Woman Wangdae glared at Han San for a long while. Her eyes, filled with black pupils and almost no white, dimmed their grotesque glint little by little.
As if chewing the words, Old Woman Wangdae spat out,
"Just you wait and see."
Old Woman Wangdae whirled around. She climbed unsteadily into the palanquin.
"...Let's go."
Park Il bowed his head. Deeply. The bearers did the same.
They cast a glance at Han San—one that seemed glaring, or perhaps revolted—then shouldered the palanquin.
They left.
In the Seonangdang shrine tree set between Han San and the palanquin, the knife and the crushed bill were still driven in.
The bill hardening in the sap that had run out looked like a seal stamped by the mountain spirit's own hand.
At last the palanquin vanished completely into the shadows, and Han San let out a long breath.
"Whew..."
As the tension drained away, he felt his hammering heart anew. But Han San smoothed back his now-clear head and smiled.
'I face it head-on.'
The goal ahead had grown clear.
'Make money. Gather people. Build a weir at Meokbawi Valley, dig out the gold, and put a bullet through the Mountain Lord Mama's skull.'
The hunter's eyes glittered.
'—Become this land's owner, and protect my family!'
Han San pulled the knife from the Seonangdang shrine tree. Only the fragment of bill, cut deep, glistened, hardened in the sap.
He turned toward home without looking back.
[1] Baduk (바둑) is the Korean name for the board game Go, in which players surround territory with black and white stones; a connected line of stones is called a "dragon."
[2] The Korean gold rush of the 1930s saw Gangwon Province dotted with mines and placer claims, spurred by soaring world gold prices and the Government-General's policy of encouraging gold production.
[3] Mama (마마) is a high Korean honorific once reserved for royalty and revered deities, here attached to the Mountain Lord as a mark of sacred reverence.
[4] A Vajra warrior (금강역사, 金剛力士) is a fierce, muscular guardian deity of Buddhist temples, often flanking gateways with a glaring, mouth-shut expression.
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