Mukho, 29 February 1960
Mukho is a great place to hide if you don’t mind the smell of dried squid permeating your life. If you catch the slow train up the east coast of the South Korean peninsula until you can go no further and walk ten miles or so towards the Eastern Ocean, you will arrive at the small fishing village. It borders the demilitarised zone with North Korea, so not many people go there, and the few that do are either lost or running away from something. That was the route I took in the summer of 1954, although I was unaware of it at the time.
This winter has been the coldest in living memory. I don’t know how we survived. A sudden and irreplaceable loss plunged me into a dark depression that was difficult to escape but, somehow, I managed it. The last thing I want to do now is go outside, but I have no choice. The charcoal won’t last the night. I must go to the market or we will freeze to death. I strap my son to my back with my podaegi, a small, quilted blanket, and take the last of the money from its hiding place under the vinyl floor. I stare at it before scrunching it into a ball in my fist. If my husband doesn’t come back soon, I don’t know what we’ll do. His threadbare coat still hangs where he abandoned it, so I throw it around the both of us so that it rests it on the top of my head and fasten the top button under my chin. It still smells of him.
The market is only a brisk hour’s walk away, but today it feels much longer; perhaps it’s because of the biting cold that cuts like a whetted knife or the fact that I’ve been housebound for so long. I pull the old coat closer to my body to keep out the groping icy fingers of air and, eventually, we arrive. The market is the usual bustle of activity. The hawkers yell in my face and urge me to try their wares; they thrust free samples of steamed silk-worm larvae, roasted chestnuts and rice cakes under my nose. Huge aluminium cooking pots boil vigorously under hissing propane burners, filling the air with steam and the aroma of anonymous pig parts, garlic, ginger and cinnamon. The cloying smell reminds me of better times and sets my stomach grumbling. Temptation calls, but I ignore it and head over to the charcoal seller.
‘Azuma. It’s your lucky day,’ he shouts. I wince. He is as black and dusty as the pile of briquets stacked in front of him. Lucky day, indeed. That will be a first. I have no husband, no money, and a young child to raise. And where did all the years go? Not that long ago, I would have been addressed in public as a young woman, not an old mama. I’m only thirty-three years old. The upsetting part is that I know he is telling the truth, but I could do without the reminders.
The hawker beckons me to come closer and whispers, ‘I have a special offer. Just for you. Forty-five hwan for ten briquets. You can’t beat that. Top quality charcoal. How many would you like?’
I pick up one of the heavy cylinders, the size of a paint tin, and inspect the holes drilled radially around the centre. ‘It’s not that imported Chinese rubbish, is it?’
The hawker pulls a face as though deeply offended. ‘Of course not. As I said, this is top quality. It’s made right here, in this very town.’
‘It feels damp. That last lot I bought from you crumbled before I even got home, took ages to dry out, and when I finally did manage to light it, it hardly gave off any heat.’
‘There’s plenty of other customers.’
‘I’ll give you twenty hwan for six briquets.’
He flashes his best salesman’s smile. ‘Has old age made you deaf, Azuma? Do you have dementia? If you remember, I have just told you that it’s forty-five hwan for ten briquets.’
‘Well, I’ve only brought twenty hwan with me. I left the rest of my cash at home in case I was robbed. It looks like I made the right decision.’
The charcoal seller laughs. ‘I won’t be able to feed my children if I sell at that price. I can let you have four briquets for fifteen hwan. Take it or leave it. That’s the best I can do.’
We both know I have no choice. ‘If that’s the best you can do for a poor old Azuma, Then I guess I’ll have to take it,’ I say, knowing full well that I can only manage to carry four briquets anyway.
The hawker stacks two cylinders on top of each other and threads some twine, made from plaited rice straw, through the holes. He makes a loop in each end so I can carry one in each hand, and I hobble over to the Hae-nyeo. The Hae-nyeo, or Sisters of the Sea, make a living free-diving for octopus, conch and abalone. They had taken me under their wing when I first arrived in Mukho, and I knew I’d never be able to repay their kindness. I would pay my respects and maybe, just maybe, they would have something left over.
I find them huddled around a brazier, trying to keep out the evening chills. Their faces are lit up in the glow, each one the texture of wrinkled leather that had been used hard and put away wet. Faces never lie; they always reflect the type of life you lead. There’s a row of large plastic buckets, the colour of a shiny terracotta, standing along the quayside and one of the women breaks off from the group to pour fresh seawater into it.
‘Sisters, look who is here,’ she says. The other Hae-nyeo wave. Most are in their sixties or seventies, and all had outlived their husbands by a good many years. They have been diving and harvesting the sea for decades, and their fitness and steely determination have been the stuff of legends. It was rumoured, mainly by fishermen who never left the safety of their boats, that even the sharks feared them.
The matriarch stretches out her arms and says, ‘Come on. Give him here.’
‘He’s sleeping.’
‘Give him here. You need to rest after all you have gone through.’ She unties my podaegi and takes my son over to the brazier. I can smell the aroma of fish stew bubbling away on the top. One of the sisters is still in her wetsuit. She is squatting on the ground, and she suddenly grasps a writhing eel, pushes its head onto a nail set into a wooden board, skins it alive with a sharp knife and chops it into bite-size pieces. She puts the still squirming mass of pink flesh on the grill. The sound and smell of searing fish waft my way, and I deeply inhale the aroma.
I already know the answer, but I ask anyway: ‘Do you have any live fish left?’
The Hae-nyeo laugh, ‘Of course not. Not at this time.’
My son is fully awake now and starts whining. The head Hae-nyeo digs around in the coals and retrieves a soot-blackened sweet potato. She peels back the charred skin, breaks off small pieces, and blows on them until they are cool enough to feed to him.
‘You are more than welcome to join us for dinner,’ says the woman in the wet suit, and she nods to the pot. ‘There’s plenty.’
‘I would love to, but I have to get home before it gets too dark. Besides, my husband will be back tonight. Can I have five hwan of whatever shellfish you have left?’
One of the sisters takes a plastic bag and puts a generous scoop of whelks into it.
‘That’s far too much,’ I say, embarrassed by their generosity.
‘How are you feeling? Back to normal?’
‘Yes, I think so. Thank you for all you have done for us. I don’t know what happened to me. It must have been the sudden shock of —’
‘Hush. Don’t say another word. We understand.’
‘I’m sorry I can’t stay any longer, but I will come back soon. I really must get going.’
The head Hae-nyeo helps me to strap my son to my back, and as I bend down to pick up a charcoal bundle in each hand, she slips a large, fat flounder into a plastic bag and ties it to my podaegi. It flutters in protest, and my heart does the same. As I’m leaving, she whispers into my ear, ‘I hope he’s there when you get home.’
‘Come back soon,’ they urge.
‘I will,’ I reply, but I know I will not. Not until I have some money, and who knows when that will be? I glance back at the harbour. The first electric lights flicker into life, and their soft light diffuses through the orange soju tents that fringe the quayside.
The journey home seems much quicker, and my son falls asleep on the warmth of my back. I can hear him gently breathing over the crunch of my snowy footsteps. The flounder flutters on my breast until its protests grow feeble and they eventually stop altogether. It freezes in an icy patch over my heart. It’s only then that it occurs to me that the head Hae-nyeo must have been saving the flounder for her dinner but decided to give it to me instead. Maybe the charcoal seller was right: perhaps this is my lucky day? I feel sure my husband will be waiting for me when I get home. I could make sashimi for him or even a fish stew now that I have plenty of charcoal. He always likes that.
It’s dark when I arrive home, and the snow starts to fall in a fierce flurry. The temperature plummets, and my exposed hands feel frozen solid from carrying the charcoal. But, even in the dark, there is no mistaking my home: a rough stone shack that had once been thatched but now has a rusty corrugated iron roof that gives it a unique silhouette against the night sky. There’s no light on inside, and my heart sinks. I put down the charcoal to avoid breaking it, and I catch sight of something out of the corner of my eye: a parcel wrapped in rags that somebody has left on my doorstep. There’s a label attached to it with the words, Up to You? Feb 29, 1960, scrawled on it. I decide to leave it on the doorstep.
The shock of finding the parcel has taken the edge off my appetite so I put the flounder and the whelks into a bowl of cold water and put a new briquet on the heater with the charcoal tongs. My head is spinning. What should I do? The neighbours must have seen somebody leave it so I couldn’t just abandon it. I bring the bundle in and place it on the floor. I remove an old rag from a crack in the wall, and an icy blast of air whistles in. That should be cold enough, I think.
I hug my son under my yo, a thin mattress topper, and press my body against the warmth of the floor. Once or twice, my son wakes up, and I let him have my breast until he nods off again, but the sleep I crave will not come. My mind is a jumble of thoughts, and every time I nod off I am stabbed awake by a prick of conscience. I feel betrayed and abandoned with only my silent sobs and salty tears for company. Occasionally, my anger gets the better of me and I stick my foot out of the yo and nudge the bundle closer to the icy draught.
That night seems the longest of my life, as if the morning would never come. And sometimes I hoped that it never would, but of course it did. I must have dozed off at some point because when I awake, all is silent. A fresh batch of snow has fallen and cast a blanket over the world that soaks up all the sounds of humanity. It’s a bright, eerie morning and I’m so scared I keep my eyes tightly shut and listen. The only sounds I can hear are the sounds of my son softly snoring and my pounding heart reverberating off the hard floor. There’s no sound coming from the bundle in the icy corner of the room. Not a whimper. The silence of the dead. Good, I think. It worked. Anyway, there’s nothing I can do about it now. It’s too late. The foundling must have frozen to death in the night.
