Chapter 21: Dano Meets Tschai

21
Dano Meets Tschai, 1969



There were deliberations of and worries about my lodging problems, which made my class of 1967 seek out ways for my bailout. I was indebted to a lot of allies: Y.C. Kwon, Y.S. Lee, D.I. Park, J.S. Hwang and others. They used to mob me on the rocky seat around the Blue Dragon Statue, whereby the leggy coeds passed by, with their collegial books on their bosoms, talking and laughing.

Some arranged temporary lodgings, some others sold their gold ring for me, and some others chipped in to make some allowance for me. It was too much for me and for them. It's time to blow a whistle. I thought it's time I ran. From Willowy, from the college campus, from the whole things that Seoul represented.

The mountain trail was so rough, my preparations were so lousy, my mindset was so impulsive and reckless, the snowstorm was so high that I decided to dismount. Another default.

My whimsical shift--changes of professional status from teaching to learning, and again to teaching-- could have been the butt of ridicule, or the subject of derision. I had quit the teaching profession and gone to college and, no more than a year later dropped out of it and reclaimed the earlier job.

Although my academic frustration was inevitably caused by a tight financial condition, my defective personality that used to give up on a pending task, not to face up to it, might have also been a major problem. Reporting for work by submitting a reappointment paper, I felt the eyes of suspicion, concern and antipathy showered on my face by the principal and the deputy principal of Kilan Elementary School.

But the faculty received me warmly. And my two alma maters were among the faculty. Once I was put in a square wooden classroom, adorned with glass windows on the south, reeking of dusty filth, and looking at the bright young kids playing on the school ground, I felt a deep sense of guilt.

Conveniently situated at the junction leading to Euiseong to the west, to Andong to the north, and to Cheongsong to the east, Kilan was a basin town sprawling along the river, surrounded by mountain hills, and populated by two thousand more or less residents and two thousand people more on the move. Educated by an elementary school and a middle school, administered by the myon office, protected by the security force of a police branch of Andong Police Station, and financed by a farming cooperative, Kilan was a functional town.

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The people of Kilan, or the Kilanese, had been known for their high sense of humor. A live legend had it that there had been Kilan Sampo, or three cannons of Kilan, that is, three notorious exaggerators: Ju Po, Shin Po, and Yang Po. The big talkers mixed among themselves, of course, and with other close friends as well, over a bowl of makkolli, spinning miles of yarns, giggling and guffawing.

I heard a hilarious episode myself about Shin po who had run into a brawler at the town bazaar which had used to open every five days. As things turned lousy and the brawler was about to go violent, Shin Po stepped forward, announcing with some bluffing, "I warn you. I am taekwondo samdan. (level three black belter) As soon as this had been said, the fists of the tall wide-shouldered guy flew, by which the Cannon Shin naturally got knocked down. Pulling himself up, the downer pronounced solemnly, gasping for breath, saying "You must be sadan. (fourth level black belter)

The town was caressed by stream rivers, which, upstream, were branched off valley creeks. The river was not running so fast, nor so slow, nor dry all the year round. The Kilan River Tributary was not so shallow but aptly wide. The tributary ran south west, sloped not steeply to the west, met with neighborly streams, finally converging on the Nakdong River proper.

The waters were full of fish, of which kkokji, or coreoperca herzi, were most popular. Like the energetic residents of the district, the fish were fast and energetic. The Kilanese knew how to handle the kkokji. They did not catch them by fish trap or something; They caught them by net throwing. They cast the fishing nets which would spread in the air just like the bamboo fans and retrieved the fish caught in them. The fish, aptly small and pretty, used to give a mild protest when caught with their sharp scales. The fish meat was delicious when eaten broiled with side dishes of vegetables and a bowl of makkolli.

Winds drive clouds and mist which turn into water drops which merge into a river and a sea. What a fate it is that some water drops fall onto the seas, singing and dancing the joy of the ocean life while some waters fall onto the pit of the cow manure, suffocated with the toxic odor. Some others satiate the thirst, feed and nurture all the living things.

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I ran into Tschai, who had been a seamstress and dressmaker at Kilan. She was pretty in her early twenties with a small face and medium height. She was present, so present that she was close at hand. She was running a roadside shop, sitting coyly at a sewing machine. I was at rough sea and she was a siren with a magnetic appeal. She was as transparent as crystal in her purple dress with short sleeves. Whereas Spear Handle had been celestial and Willowy wavering, Tschai was down to earth.

Dano had not been a gawking type. His stare had almost always been constant. He did not give sidelong glance at the roadside, the roadside people and things, that is. He made it a rule to walk straight with his shoulders upright. Dano, who had been on his way to the school from his lodging house, was called back from the roadside one day. It was the lanky Kim who had been working for the local tobacco association. "Mr. Park, why are you in such a hurry?" Dano looked to his left and found Kim sitting at the seamstress' shop, she working at the sewing machine and he giving an idle talk.

"Hi, do you say there is something good enough to stop me?"
"Mr. Park, why don't you take your time? Let's take a brief break coming here," he said, producing a refreshing soft drink for me Dano. "By the way, haven't you two met yet?" he casually introduced Tschai to me Dano and vice versa, adding that she was his cousin on his mother's side.

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Mrs. Euiseong Kim was uncomfortable ever, keeping a low profile since she had moved to her oldest son's house. Her removal from Don's to Bin's meant that her days were being numbered. The local tradition had it that the elderly parents were supposed to spend their final days at their first son's house because their welfare after death would be taken care of by their first son who was supposed to host funeral and annual memorial services, and take custody of their subterranean resting places. Mrs. Euiseong Kim, with her shoulders a little stooped and with unsteady gaits, began to show a strange habit of commuting between her two sons' houses.

When coming to Boolim's, her dear old naggee, my grandma turned to the obedient daughter-in-law of hers for the role model of her lifelong captive audience. She blurted out, for no end, her inconveniences she claimed she had been roughing it at Bin's, about which Boolim mildly protested and from time to time mildly rebuked, too. Then, her mother-in-law pouted and fitfully started hitting the unwelcome road back to Bin's, where she began to show a weird habit of pacing up and down the small clamped room.

She progressively began to get stuck in the woods of words in the process, stuttering and murmuring to herself. She got herself wired in the cobwebs of frustrated memories, swamped in the wetlands of hateful sights and faces. She began to show an evident sign of nomang, or the senile dementia. Arguments erupted among Bin, his wife, and their adult sons, raising their voices, over the justification of erecting isolation compartment for the poor mother and grandmother: Mrs. Euiseong Kim got caged, that is, got confined.

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What drove Don, from small hours of the morning till late at night, to dig and till a modicum of bare land? To lead a decent life. But the aim of the decent human condition was far from a grab. A considerable stash of cash at Manchuria had been stolen; The homecoming packs from Nagasaki, which had contained Japanese cash and war bonds, had been pulverized by sea bombs; The expectations of harvest bumper crops had been dashed by a severe drought; The grain inventory had been emptied by Boolim's accident and the subsequent hospital fees; What deposit money they had kept at a local farming cooperative was forced to be withdrawn because Dano had gone to college.

Still, my father did not give up, though. He was always at work on the land. Whosever land he did not care. He toiled during the summer's days on the others' paddy fields for a day's fees. He was tilling the wasteland with no tilling machine or something but with picks and shovels, removing the rocks. Rumor had it that the roosters of the village across the stream cuckoo by the cling and clang made when Don removed the rocks. He planted peach trees on his sweaty efforts himself. His lifelong motto was: Be constant.

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The human gravity might have worked. But the attraction was mutual: Dano was attracted to Tschai, and vice versa. To speak of the sophistication of the moment by means of a Freudian jargon, Tschai's libido might have reached its peak, and Dano's, too. In her later years, she confided to Dano about her motive of the eastward move, admitting to having consulted a fortuneteller who had advised her that she go to the east: "Go east, and you will run into your lifelong companion."

Tschai had traveled about 40 kilometers east and had set up a roadside siren's house: Me Dano had been ambushed. The initial amorous union had taken place at his boarding room at Kilan. In the process, he had casually seen a blood stain on a large towel spread which had given him a bizarre sensation of euphoria, which he had ignored, and of course not mentioned. Tear drops had oozed out of her eye corners which looked to be crystal. She later hummed love songs in his presence, reclining on his front, "Since I knew you, I've learned about love. Since I knew you, I've learned about tears..."

There happened an "i", or change. The wind met the water and the other way around. The water danced and the wind danced, also. Tschai turned garrulous and made the reticent Dano laugh by her gaffes. She kept many interesting tales by heart. The second daughter of the six sisters and one son, she was the darling of her father who used to take her along on his way out for the Kyeongju Lee clan meetings or local political gatherings. Her father had long been a local chief of the district opposition party chapter. So she had naturally had a lot of opportunities to get herself "enlightened" by the light jokes of the adult folks. She was a born story teller, indeed. Of the many amusing ones, the Story of Three Sisters was a really hilarious one. "May I come naked, or fully clothed?" was the title Dano later designated.

Almost all the weddings of the countryside towns in South Korea had been held at the brides' houses on the traditional protocols until the 1960s. The bridegroom's father and his party had used to lodge at the bride's on the eve of the wedding while the bridegroom and his company had used to appear on the very morning of the rite. And when all the hustle and bustle of the day's rites had subsided, with the roosters and hens starting nodding off on their perches and with the dogs of the village starting barking at the moon, the portable wooden tables laden with night snacks had started being served with the bride starting sitting on the yogang pot hidden on the patio in the rear garden because she was fitfully nervous.

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It was midnight, and the bridegroom coughed a few times at the door to inform the bride in the room of his presence. But nobody opened the door for him but the bridegroom himself. The bride noticed her nightly company to shuffle along the room, and sit opposite to her, but she hardly raised her eyes. Outside the room some girl pranksters had made holes on the paper windows to peep, with stifled giggles.

The bride had a hard time, attired in a formal wedding dress and sitting in an upright position. But the bridegroom had not been trained in niceties and courtesies, or the manners needed in the course of the contacts toward his bride. Unreasonably enough, the bridegroom had not been mature but only appeared rash toward the night's union.

He tried to undress the bride by untying the knots at the long stripe of the jogori. The bride, naturally taken aback by the bridegroom's "indecent" advance, made a gesture of rejection by saying, "You can't." The bridegroom was astonished at the bride's blunt response, but he didn't quit because he had been coached by the older folks of his clan that the initial rejection on the part of the bride was a sure sign of a chaste woman.

But the bride's didn't loosen a bit because of the tips she had earlier gotten from the aunts of her clan that she would be considered "cheap" if she would allow the bridegroom to open her with ease. The night nearly ended as the bridegroom's advances and the bride's adamant rejections continued. In time, the roosters of the town started cuckooing at last. The bridegroom, deeply upset by the fact that he had failed in consummating by the bride's obstinate rejections, bolted the room and went back to his house.

Rumors that the first daughter had been jilted by her bridegroom on their "first" night must have been a fatal trauma. Naturally the rumors added wings that they flew over the town border. As a result, there were no more suitors and matchmakers for the first one.

The second daughter learned the lesson from her sister's sad fate on account of tough rebuffs and the subsequent desertion by the bridegroom. Another nuptial ritual was served and the fateful moment to which she was looking forward arrived at last. The bridegroom gave a few polite coughs and entered the room his bride had been waiting.

Hardly had the bridegroom taken a seat opposite to the bridegroom when she suddenly got up and stripped herself in a hurry. He was surprised. Dumfounded was the exact word for the occasion. He then got to his feet and left the town hurriedly as if he had seen an apparition. Sadly the second daughter had met the same plight as the first.

Time flew, so the third and the last daughter would get wedded. She was the "wisest" of the three. She was now more prudent than the other two. She prepared herself lest she should run into the worst occasion of being jilted. When the nuptial ritual was done and the moment of the trial came, she retired to another room adjacent to the bride's, where she asked, in a whispering voice, to the bridegroom in the room, saying "Mister, may I come in naked or fully clothed?"

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"You make me depressed," Willowy had once told me Dano in a warm spring afternoon's intimate gathering at a kids' classroom after they had gone back home. My tendency to demean dourly and to get moody might have played an unwholesome impact on her. Spear Handle might also have hesitated to move closer at the time of my earlier approach because she had felt heavy from my aloof attitudes. Tschai might also have intuited clouds on me Dano, but she loved them and allowed them to land on her garden where she changed them into rain for her flowers.

Tschai didn't mention Dano's low spirits but made efforts to cheer him up. She rattled off interesting clues. hilarious anecdotes to make him laugh. Although she hadn't given him a happy ending of consummation to the Story of Three Sisters, she invited me Dano to meet her parents. She had put up a sleeping quarter for me Dano at an inn of Pungsan not far from her home on the eve of the meeting so that I would be able to come early in the morning.

The father of six daughters, a mild-mannered farmer in his middle fifties, didn't give no for his answer. Asked, after receiving a greeting of a deep bow from me, to give me the honor of taking his dear daughter as wife, he said smiling, with his wife in her seeming early fifties beaming beside him, "I always welcome any young man who is willing to come to take my daughter."

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My father-in-law was a great tree, not so big nor so small, which had stood rainstorms. He was a gentleman of good personality who was warm and nice to every man and woman he had met. He was nice to his six daughters with undiminished affection for them.

He was a generous tree which was very tolerant of the nests that all sorts of birds built on it. The tree didn't mind the troubles the ugly nests of lousy architecture might have inflicted on it. He was nice to me. I appreciate his deep considerations toward me. I miss him very much.