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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 50

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The Club: South Jade Pavilion (1)

The moment Han San stepped over the threshold, he found himself in another world.

A dim central hall. A chandelier of unknown origin scattered a dull light from the ceiling, and the red carpet underfoot cushioned every step with a plush softness.

Is liquor made of tears, or of sighs...

It is the place to set down the burdens of the heart...

From a gramophone tucked in the corner came a melancholy melody, threaded through with crackling static.

Clack! Rrroll, clatter-clack! Shhhk, shrrr!

The crack of balls struck at the billiard table on one side of the hall, and from beyond a curtain of beads on the opposite side, the clack of mahjong tiles being shuffled, rang out by turns over the melody.

The crowd packed inside was a sight too. Korean gentry laughing with greasy faces and bared gold teeth, Japanese exchanging tea and talk in suits and kimonos, and weaving among them, white-faced waitresses and male staff decked out in fine suits.

The interior, blanketed in a thick haze of cigarette smoke, was almost dreamlike.

"Hm."

Han San let out a low murmur.

He had lived through the future of a homeland that passed through rapid economic growth, and thanks to his younger brother, Teacher Han Bada, he had been to all sorts of formal occasions. He had even dropped by this very South Jade Pavilion once, decades down the road.

If anything, that was why it struck him afresh that such a place existed in Inje in 1933.

"Welcome, honored guest."

The manager came hurrying over and bent at the waist. Perhaps he'd had a word from the doorkeeper, for his eyes burned with eagerness.

"How about it? Would you care for a round of billiards? Or mahjong, perhaps? It's all the rage on the Mainland too. Even if you're a beginner, our waitstaff will teach you well, so..."

"That's all right. If you've a quiet room, I'd rather be shown there."

"Ah! Of course. There's a private suite open on the third floor. Allow me to show you up."

Guided by the manager, Han San climbed the stairs toward the third floor. Even those stairs were laid with velvet carpet.

That was when it happened.

A waitress carrying a tray came down the corridor and into Han San's view.

'Hm?'

Han San narrowed his eyes.

A white apron over a black dress. She wore the same outfit as the other waitresses, but those languid, half-lidded eyes were familiar.

'Mrs. Go?'

Go Tae-chon's wife.

'Why is she here... no, wait.'

Only last evening, when the wailing rose at Go Tae-chon's tavern, he'd heard from his mother that she had set off for town alone.

The problem was.

'She's here already?'

Han San had left home the moment dawn broke. He'd cut straight through the mountains down to the Inje town center, at a pace impossibly, staggeringly fast.

Ordinary people couldn't manage that. From the Lower Hamlet you had to take a side path the long way round to reach the new road, and from the new road another long detour just to arrive at the Inje town center.

'Even granting she set out half a day earlier, even adding in the time I spent circling the shops and collecting the bounty...'

A woman, alone, winding round and round the new road in the dead of night?

'Did she get lucky and hitch a ride on a truck or something?'

Thinking it through logically, that was the only answer. And yet a sense of wrongness he couldn't quite name washed over Han San.

The surveyor Hajama pushed his angular spectacles up.

"Han San, what are you thinking about?"

Han San shook his head.

"Ah, it's nothing. Nothing at all."

At the end of the third-floor corridor, the two of them were shown into a two-person room with a nameplate that read [Plum Blossom], and they sat.

The room was quiet. The soundproofing was good enough that the noise from below registered only as a faint humming vibration.

"A bottle of cheongju[1] and one dish of food."

"Yes! I'll have it ready right away."

This one set ran 5 won.

A red flame nearly leapt up in his chest at price-gouging that made the extortion he'd pulled with his tavern look like child's play, but Han San kept his face steady.

'A good hunter doesn't skimp on the cost of bait.'

And he himself would be eating and drinking that bait right alongside Hajama. So the real cost was 2 won 50 jeon...! Reasonable...! At that rate, a reasonable price...!

After the liquor had gone round a time or two, the surveyor Hajama adjusted his spectacles and spoke.

"So, what was it you meant to say earlier? You said you'd been offered an assistant's post by my elder kinsman?"

"Yes. This is the calling card I received back then."

Pulling out the card Hajama the First had handed him, Han San recounted vividly what had happened that day.

Hajama the Second's eyes lit up.

"Ho! There was a thing like that?"

"He must have taken a liking to me. He went so far as to ask, in those flattering terms, whether I had any thought of taking on assistant work full-time."

"Why didn't you? Was the pay my kinsman offered not to your liking?"

"No, the pay was fine. It's that I have a main line of work of my own, and I can't very well leave this area where my parents live... But surveyor-nim, see how the two of us have this happy thread of fate between us."

Han San drained his cup in one go.

"What I wanted to say was this: when you go about surveying this region, surveyor-nim, I could lend my cooperation as a guide and a temporary assistant. Something like that."

The surveyor Hajama set down his cup and gave a small chuckle.

"A guide and temporary assistant, is it? But wouldn't that make the pay hard to figure? Even if we set a rate per job, every site is different."

"About that."

Han San began, little by little, to lay out the heart of the matter.

"Settling it in money is fine too. But when I have need of you—in matters touching survey work, that is—if you might lend me help privately, surveyor-nim, if we could each fill the gaps in the other that way, wouldn't that be a beautiful thing as well?"

This was Han San's aim.

'My own territory.'

If he meant to clear and cultivate Sebeom Valley, the neighboring Meokbawi Valley, and the whole surrounding area, to build weirs and dig for gold, it could not be done by rough guesswork and the naked eye alone.

He needed a genuine surveyor who had completed an Empire university course. Better still if it was someone from a clan that boasted of handling nothing but such work as a specialty.

Of course, that was only Han San's own wish.

"Hmm."

The surveyor Hajama lifted his angular spectacles once, then set them down.

"That's quite some confidence. But surveying is no simple mountain hike. It is a single dialogue carried on between the earth and mathematics."

Taking the cup Han San filled for him, the surveyor Hajama went on.

"Han San. You're a fine fellow. It's true there's a happy thread of fate between us. But that cliff you say you climbed—is it really the kind that can cut in on that dialogue between the earth and mathematics?"

Han San smiled. In short, what the surveyor Hajama was saying amounted to this:

[I can see that you're good at mountain work. And that you played a part in catching Ginsei. But are you really that good? Good enough to dare make a demand of that order?]

Everything has its upsides and downsides.

Had he been carrying on the conversation with Hajama the First, his ability at mountain work would have needed no further proving.

But to that Hajama the First, he was at most a slash-and-burn settler who could climb a bit. A request to help with private surveying would have been thrown out for falling short in standing.

To Hajama the Second, on the other hand, in this conversation, his standing had been filled in plenty by the way Han San had seasoned the events with Hajama the First to his liking, and by his hand in catching Ginsei. But now a fresh need had arisen to prove anew that he was good at mountain work.

'In that case, the matter is simple.'

Han San rose from his seat.

"Would you care to see something fun for a moment?"

"Hm?"

"This."

Walking over to the window, Han San drew out a single 100 won bill.

The surveyor Hajama tilted his head.

"That's money. 100 won. Han San, even if you have money, my skills are..."

"The wind's nice."

Sliding the window open with a rasp, Han San flung the 100 won bill out into the open air.

"What?!"

Hajama shot to his feet.

"What are you—that's not just money! That's a thousand geun's worth of polished white rice!"

No matter that the Hajama were a wealthy clan with a great industrialist seated in Busan and a portable Leica camera they carried about, 100 won was a sum too large to wave off.

And it had just been thrown out the window!

What kind of madness was this!

And the madness was not even over yet.

"That's right, a thousand geun's worth of white rice."

Han San set one foot up on the windowsill.

"Be a shame to let it get all muddy and go to waste."

In the next instant, Han San's back vanished out the window.

"What in the—"

The surveyor Hajama rushed to the window.

And he saw it.

Having hurled himself out the window, Han San struck the tip of his toe against the narrow eave jutting out below—smack!—and in the same motion snatched hold of the drainpipe.

Whoosh!

His body spun a full turn like a windmill.

The instant he kicked off the wall he caught the drainpipe again and spun another turn, and spinning so again, the instant he kicked off the wall he caught the drainpipe and spun once more.

Stepping off the window frames here and there along the way, Han San descended into the back yard like a mountain goat scaling a cliff.

Thud.

The barest wisp of dust rose. Han San, who had bent his knees to let the impact flow away entirely, slowly straightened.

He lifted his head.

Toward the surveyor Hajama, who had poked his head out the window, Han San smiled and held up his index and middle fingers, spread apart.

The very 100 won bill he had just dropped was pinched there between them.

He'd snatched it before it ever touched the ground.

"...Good heavens."

The surveyor Hajama stared, not even noticing his spectacles sliding down his nose.

'No wonder my kinsman coveted him!'

It was a sense of balance that simply made no sense. If a man with skill like that came on as an assistant—no, even if he only helped at the crucial junctures—what a tremendous asset he would be.

'That is no simple aid,' Hajama Tsuchikaku thought. 'It is an admission ticket to every hidden wonder tucked away across the peninsula!'

Cliffs of strange and wondrous shape that no ladder, and certainly no rope, could ever solve. Caves hidden away as if scooped out of the very heart of a waterfall.

The Hajama clan, who had ranged across the peninsula with surveying as their trade, knew of more than a few such places they had been able only to look upon, never to touch.

If even one of them could be explored with Han San's help, it would be an enormous accomplishment.

"How about it? Is that enough to qualify me to cut in?"

"More than enough!"

A short while later, when Han San returned to the room, Hajama gave him an unstinting round of applause.

"That just now was no simple wall-climb. It was a single dramatic grand compromise struck between gravity and mass!"

"Mm, yes..."

"Here. Take this."

Hajama Tsuchikaku drew out a calling card and scrawled something on the back. A contact and a signature.

"I'm staying at a place called Inseon Hall. Even when I'm out in the field, leave a message at Inseon Hall and it'll reach me. Leave word any time you have need."

"Thank you. I'm staying in a slash-and-burn village called Sebeom Valley, but, hmm. It'd be a hassle for you to come all that way each time, so once I've secured a contact in town I'll let you know."

"Good! Truly remarkable!"

In that warm mood, Han San took and tucked away Hajama the Second's calling card.

'There we go.'

He'd succeeded in formally securing a connection to a top-grade surveyor. The very moment Han San smiled in satisfaction—

"You're right, I think I'm pretty remarkable too."

An unfamiliar, or perhaps familiar, voice came from behind.

Turning, Han San saw two women standing in the doorway.

One was Mrs. Go, whom he'd seen in the corridor. A sullen cast over her languid eyes, she stood watching him.

And the other.

A woman in a dress the deep color of night, wreathed in the cigarette smoke spilling from her lips, stood there.

Her hair, glossy as ebony, was bound up high, hairpins driven through to either side to shape a silhouette like the ear tufts of an owl. Beneath the shadow of deeply drawn eye makeup, a gaze that called to mind a bird of prey was turned this way.

'Kim Mal-ja.'

By the common name[2] Kanezora Matsuko, mistress of the South Jade Pavilion.

The instant their eyes met, Han San felt a light come on somewhere deep in his memory.

[1] Cheongju (청주, 淸酒) is a clear, refined rice wine made by straining off the fermented mash, prized as a higher-grade drink than cloudy makgeolli.

[2] A "common name" (통명, 通名) was a Japanese-style assumed name a colonial-era Korean might adopt or use in public dealings, a practice later forced wholesale under the sōshi-kaimei name-change policy.

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