WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era
Chapter 49
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This Is No Ordinary Meeting (3)
The dead surveyor's name had been Hajama Tsuchimaru. The character for earth, plus the character for round.
The newly arrived surveyor was Hajama Tsuchikaku. The character for earth, plus the character for horn, or angle.
'So that's why his spectacles are so angular.'
While Han San nursed a headache over some realization he couldn't quite name, the surveyor Hajama fixed his gaze on the wooden box set on the desk.
"Is this the head of Ginsei, the inauspicious star that slaughtered my elder brother?"
Sawada nodded.
"It is. Would you care to confirm it?"
"If you would."
Sawada looked at Tono, and Tono nodded, and then Sawada looked at Han San.
'Wait, why me?'
Han San was puzzled for a moment, then remembered that the adjutant had stepped out.
Which meant the only person on hand to do the menial work was...
'Sawada, you've got to be kidding me.'
He wondered whether the man was too lazy even to call the adjutant back, but at the same time that very sloth struck him as strange. Why seat him in on a matter touching Ginsei?
Still turning the question over, Han San opened the box.
A wave of fishy reek and rank stink rolled out.
The head of Ginsei, cured in salt and lime, revealed itself, its beastliness undiminished all the same.
The surveyor Hajama peered down at the head, then drew a heavy lump of metal from his leather bag.
Han San sucked in a breath.
'A Leica.'
A portable camera!
The latest model, German optical artistry distilled into one device!
'A single one of those costs as much as a whole tile-roofed house...'
It was in no way a thing an ordinary surveyor, a mere civil servant, would carry around, yet the surveyor Hajama handled it with practiced ease.
He fitted an L-shaped bracket to the side of the camera, then poured a generous heap of gray powder from a metal canister onto a small dish.
"This is no mere movement of the hands. It is a taxidermy of this very moment."
The surveyor Hajama held the shutter open, and then—
Kwaang!
First came the flash, then the blast in the same instant, and after that the acrid stench of gunpowder filled the office. The magnesium flash peculiar to cameras of this era.
"Mm."
The surveyor Hajama smacked his lips and put the camera away.
"I already photographed the body outside. My uncle in Busan will be satisfied as well."
"That is well, then."
"It is no mere matter of being well. It is a flood of grateful tears at the fact that the Empire stepped in directly to avenge a subject of the Empire."
"...Ah, yes. In any case, I'm sorry about your brother."
"It is no mere tragedy. It is an enshrinement of the fact that my brother became a cornerstone of the Empire."
"...I see."
His face full of exhaustion, Sawada rolled the wild walnut with a crunch.
Even the baron Tono, though he wore a beaming smile, kept the teacup pressed to his lips and would not take it away, as if to advertise, 'I am drinking tea at the moment, so I cannot possibly join in your conversation!'
Sawada jerked his chin toward Han San.
"Introduce yourself. This fellow's called Han San, a local guide who cooperated in catching Ginsei. You could say he has some small merit to his name."
'Hold on.'
Only then did Han San grasp why Sawada had kept him there to open the lid on the box holding Ginsei's head.
'Sawada, you son of a bitch!'
Han San did not for one second mistake the remark for the man looking out for him. The family's manner of speaking was far too infuriating for that.
"Oh! Is that so?"
The surveyor Hajama strode over and seized Han San's hand.
"This is no mere meeting. It is a blessed bond that brother Tsuchimaru tied for us from the world beyond."
"Ah, yes..."
Swallowing a curse, Han San glanced sideways to find Sawada watching him with a faint sneer. Crunch, crunch. The way his hand rolled the gifted wild walnut looked rather merry.
'No, but...'
Han San called to mind the years he'd accumulated. He'd lived all of seventy-four years, after all. Was he really going to be undone by the spite of some fellow who couldn't even claw his way up in the world?
He pulled himself together quickly, then gripped the surveyor Hajama's hand right back.
"My thoughts exactly! Truly a blessed bond!"
"Oh! You think so too?"
"Yes! And it is no mere blessed bond, either. It is blessing piled upon blessing like compound interest, a blessing that bubbles and teems. In a word, a duplicate copy of blessing!"
At the sight of Han San suddenly going one better, Sawada's expression turned grotesque.
But the surveyor Hajama was genuinely delighted.
"A duplicate copy of blessing! A magnificent turn of phrase. It is no mere wordplay. It is a poem you hurled forth from your very soul at our meeting!"
"And why stop at a poem? It would be no exaggeration to call it a single cigar the two of us share and smoke together!"
"...Those words run deep. Approach them as carefully as you like, and you still find an epic in itself, armed with consequence and meter."
"That remark of yours rings out like a proclamation, truly!"
So the two of them, hands clasped, lifted each other to the heights, and from within all that, Han San made a proposal with real passion.
"Surveyor-nim. As it happens, I have a connection with your elder brother as well."
"Oh? Do you?"
"Yes! There was a time when he was in some difficulty, and I helped him out of it. He even offered me a position as his assistant..."
"A position as his assistant?"
"Yes. And as for how I answered him... ah, dragging the story out here would only be an imposition on the captain and the baron. How about it? Shall we step out for a moment and talk?"
"Splendid! Then, you two, I'll pay my respects again later."
The surveyor Hajama bowed his head to the pair. Han San gave a pleasant smile and bowed along with him.
"I'll see you again as well."
"There won't be any such chance."
Sawada wore that thoroughly spiteful face again. He hadn't known the Joseon fellow's stomach could be so strong. Far from making a fool of him, he'd ended up introducing the man to someone useful.
Tono, on the other hand, finally took the teacup from his lips and waved a gloved hand.
"Take care of yourself! When the time comes, I'll come visit you in person!"
'No, that one's a bit much too...'
Han San frowned inwardly without meaning to, but soon reconsidered.
"It's a humble place, but if the baron-nim should come, I'll welcome you with honor anytime."
Recalling the trajectory of his past life, once he took over Sebeom Valley and made this whole region his own territory, he'd get tangled up with Tono whether he liked it or not.
'By then I just need to be sturdier than I am now.'
Resolved, Han San stepped out of the police constable post, the surveyor Hajama loaded onto his A-frame carrier.
"Now, Han San, was it? There's no need for you to carry me. I'm hardly a piece of baggage."
"This is no mere A-frame carrier. It is a treasure shaped by the site laborers at the very site where the late surveyor Hajama worked."
"Ah, is it now?"
"Yes. So just sit there a while and..."
Answering offhandedly, Han San drew the prize envelope from inside his coat.
The moment he tore it open and checked its thin contents, a dry laugh crossed his lips.
'Three hundred-won notes.'
Bank of Joseon hundred-won notes.[1] These scraps of paper printed with the image of Daeheukcheon[2] were, in this Inje township of 1933, no different from a deadly poison.
A bowl of gukbap cost 10 jeon, and the total sum Cheonbo Pharmacy could allot him for buying medicinal ingredients ran to 30 won a month. That was the Inje economy.
'Sawada, you dank, slithering viper.'
This money couldn't be broken here.
To be precise, it could be broken, but only by forcibly buying up several luxury items at a few dozen won each—leather trousers, leather coats, that sort of thing—or else placing a bulk order outright.
And if he didn't want that? Then he'd have to go all the way to Chuncheon. Even there, flashing it just anywhere would bring a constable running to make a nuisance of himself, so he'd have to go step by step. Build credit with a shopkeeper, say, or break into a bank entirely.
And to open an account that way, his household register had to be clean, and arranging that register and seeing to all the rest—how much time would that take?
But.
'That's the ordinary case.'
Han San gave a snort of a laugh and tucked the three hundred-won notes back into his coat.
A hundred-won note in the hand of an ignorant slash-and-burn settler would only be a bother and draw suspicion, but in the hand of a man who possessed [standing]?
'It becomes [authority] instead.'
Han San spoke to Hajama on the carrier.
"Now then. Let's go and talk, gisu-nim."
"Where are we going?"
"Where else? A place where men become close."
The truth was Han San didn't know it well himself, but the old man who had regressed before living to see the nineties had picked up a bit of hearsay about that [place where men become close].
"Let's head to the South Jade Pavilion club."
A place like that would be able to break even these hundred-won notes.
Leaving the police constable post and walking just a little way down the main road brought you to the busiest street in the Inje town center.
Among the buildings stood a gaudy four-story one, the South Jade Pavilion, and planted before it like a pillar was one enormous man.
Shoulders broad as a slab, trapezius muscles so thick his neck seemed to vanish into them, a suit jacket dangerously close to bursting at the seams. He was the doorman of the South Jade Pavilion.
Step, step.
Footsteps approached.
The doorman looked at the toes of a fairly fine pair of leather boots.
'Hmm.'
The shoes passed muster.
He raised his eyes, and the trousers, the shirt, the vest all passed muster too. The fedora on the man's head wasn't expensive, but it wasn't the sort of thing that would get you turned away anywhere.
The doorman nodded to himself. A pass. This much, and even if not a VIP, the man could play in the main hall. And with a bit of money in hand, he could even get into a private room toward the back of the first floor.
The doorman had drawn up his estimate inwardly, but then his jaw dropped, as if he'd just seen something bizarre.
A man dressed that well was carrying an A-frame carrier!
An A-frame carrier!
In that getup!
And not even an ordinary carrier, but that... what was it? Wood joined together by hand, then reinforced here and there with iron pins? The cords used to bind it had no consistency to them either—hemp twine, rope, even wire, all mixed together.
It looked sturdy, sure enough, but it was the height of country crudeness. If clothing had an attribute like lethality, that one carrier would be slapping on a minus two hundred or so.
'And on top of that...'
What in the world was that man, seated atop the carrier with his knees drawn neatly together, demure as a borrowed cat?
Why was a person sitting on an A-frame carrier?
A full-grown adult man, no less?
In such a meek posture?
The doorman's face turned grim. As one who, in the literal sense, 'guarded the door,' he could not permit such bizarre beings to draw near the South Jade Pavilion.
"Hold on a—"
The instant he readied himself to bark them off and got a proper look at the man on the carrier, the doorman's expression lurched all over again.
Angular spectacle frames, sharply pressed high-end suit trousers, a gaze both irritable and arrogant.
'A Japanese?'
Wasn't this a dapper Japanese gentleman who'd hold his own dropped right in the middle of Gyeongseong?
The doorman fell into a state of complete stupefaction.
A carrier man clad in modern dress, a Japanese gentleman perched on that carrier. Had it happened in Gyeongseong, it would have made for a scene bizarre enough to be filmed into a moving picture under the name of some Gyeongseong ghost story, and it whittled the poor doorman's reason down without mercy...
"I am called Han San."
And Han San, paying no heed at all to the doorman's confusion—or rather not even noticing the man was confused—simply stood before the entrance with full composure.
"And the gentleman up here is the Government-General's surveyor, Hajama Tsuchikaku."
"Ah... um, yes..."
"The madam invited us here."
Han San drew a calling card from his coat.
The doorman looked at the card. 'Kanezora Matsuko.' At once his confusion cleared and his waist bent in a smooth bow.
"Aigo! I failed to recognize honored guests! Please, come in!"
He said it in a voice snapped taut with discipline, then turned and flung the door wide open.
"After you, surveyor-nim."
"Mm."
And so Han San made to step into the South Jade Pavilion with Hajama on his back. Even so, with another mm, the doorman worked up his courage and spoke.
"Excuse me, sir. The, ah... I'll look after that baggage for you."
"Hm? Well, sure. Surveyor-nim, come on down."
"A shame. I was just starting to take a liking to the feel of it."
The surveyor Hajama climbed down from the carrier with a regretful face. Han San slipped off the carrier and handed it to the doorman.
"Here. It's precious, so handle it well."
"Yes! I'll tend to it like my very own baby."
The doorman took hold of the carrier with a relieved look.
And so Han San and the surveyor Hajama stepped into the South Jade Pavilion.
[1] The Bank of Joseon note (조선은행권) was the legal currency of colonial Korea, issued from 1911 by the Bank of Joseon, the Government-General's central bank of issue.
[2] Daeheukcheon (대흑천, 大黑天) is Mahākāla, a Buddhist guardian deity adopted in Japan as Daikokuten, a god of wealth and fortune; his image appeared on the Bank of Joseon's high-denomination notes.
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