The Crane

The Crane
Hwang Sun-Won
Translated by Peter Lee

What is the significance of a friend? The story that follows will assist you to know the answer.

The northern village at the border of the 38 Parallel was snugly settled under the high bright autumn sky.
One white gourd lay against another on the dirt floor of an empty farmhouse. The occasional village elders first put out their bamboo pipes before passing by, and the children, too, turned aside some distance off. Their faces were ridden with fear.
The village as a whole showed few traces of destruction from the war, but it did not seem like the same village Song-sam had known as a boy.
At the foot of the chestnut grove on the hill behind the village, he stopped and climbed a chestnut tree. Somewhere far back in his mind he heard the old man with a wen shout. “You bad boy, you’re climbing up my chestnut tree again!?”
The old man must have passed away, for among the few village elders Song-sam had met, the old man can’t be found. Song-sam gazed at the blue sky for a while. Some chestnuts fell to the ground as the dry clusters opened by their own accord.
In front of the farmhouse that had been turned into a public peace-police office, a young man stood tied up. He seemed to be a stranger, so Song-sam approached him to have a closer look. He was taken aback; it was none other than his boyhood playmate, Tok-chae.
Song-sam asked the police officer who had come with him from Chontae what it was all about. The prisoner was vice chairman of the Farmer’s Communist League and had just been flashed out of his hideout in his own house, Song-sam learned.
Song-sam sat down on the dirty floor and lit a cigarette.
Tok-chae was to be escorted to Chongdan by one of the peace policemen.
After a time, Song-sam lit a new cigarette from the first and stood up.
“I’ll take the fellow with me.”
Tok-chae, his face averted, refused to look at Song-sam. They left the village.
Song-sam kept on smoking, but the tobacco had not taste. He just kept drawing in the smoke and blowing it out. Then suddenly he thought that Tok-chae, too, must want a puff. He thought of the days when they used to share dried gourd leaves behind walls, hidden from adults. But today, how could he offer a cigarette to a fellow like this?
Once, when they were small, he went with Tok-chae to steal some chestnuts from the grandpa with the wen. It was Song-sam’s turn to go up the tree. Suddenly, there came old shouts from the old man. He slipped and fell to the ground. Song-sam got chestnut needles all over his bottom, but he kept on running. It was only when they reached a safe place where the old man cannot overtake them that he turned his bottom to Tok-chae. Plucking out those needles hurt so much that he could not keep tears from welling up in his eyes. Tok-chae produced a fistful of chestnuts from his pocket and thrust them into Song-sam’s...Song-sam threw away the cigarette he had just lit. Then he made up his mind not to light another while he was escorting Tok-chae.
They reached the hill pass, the hill where he and Tok-chae used to cut fodders for the cows until Song-sam had to move near Chontae, south of the Thirty-eight Parallel, two years before the liberation.
Song-sam felt a sudden surge of anger in spite of himself and shouted, “So how many have you killed?”
For the first time, Tok-chae cast a quick glance at him and then turned away.
“How many did you kill?” he asked again.
Tok-chae turned toward him once again and glared. The glare grew intense and his mouth twitched.
“So you managed to kill many, eh?” Song-sam felt his heart becoming clear from within, as if an obstruction had been removed. “If you were vice-chairman of the Communist League, why didn’t you run? You must have been lying low with a secret mission.”
Tok-chae did not answer.
“Speak up, what was your mission?”
Tok-chae kept walking. Tok-chae is hiding something, Song-sam thought. He wanted to take a good look at him, but Tok-chae would not turn his averted face.
Fingering the revolver at his side. Song-sam went on: “No excuse necessary. You are sure to be shot anyway. Why don’t you tell the truth here and now?”
“I’m not going to make any excuses. They made me vice-chairman of the league because I was one of the poorest and I was a hard-working farmer. If that constitute a crime worthy of death, so be it. I am still what I used to be- the only thing I’m good at is digging in the soil.” After a short pause, he added, “My old man is bedridden at home. He’s been ill almost half a year.” Tok-chae’s father was a widower, a hardworking poor farmer who lived only for his son. Seven years ago his back had given out and his skin had become diseased.
“You married?”
“Yes,” replied Tok-chae after a while.
“To whom?”
“Shorty”
“To shorty?” How interesting! A woman so small and plump that she knew the earth vastness but not the sky’s altitude. Such a cold fish! He and Tok-chae used to tease her and make her cry and Tok-chae had married that girl.
“How many kids?”
“The first is arriving this fall,” he says.
Song-sam had difficulty swallowing a laugh about to explode in spite of himself. Although he had asked how many kids Tok-chae had, he could not help wanting to burst into laughter at the image of her sitting down, with a large stomach, one span around. But he realized this was no time to laugh or joke over such matters.
“Anyway, it’s strange you did not run away.”
“I tried to escape. They said that once the south invaded, no man would be spared. So men between seventeen and forty were forcibly taken to the North. I thought of evacuating, even if I had to carry my father on my back. But father said no. How could the farmers leave the land behind when the crops were ready for harvest? He grew old on that farm depending on me as the prop and mainstay of the family. I wanted to be with him in his last moments so that I could close his eyes with my own hand. Besides where can farmers like us go, who know only living on the land?”
Last June, Song-sam had to take refuge. At night e had broken the news privately to his father. But his father had said the same thing! Where can a farmer go, leaving all the chores behind? So Song-sam had been haunted by thoughts of his old parents and the young children, left with all the chores. Fortunately, his family was safe then, as now.
They crossed the ridge of a hill. This time Song-sam walked with his face averted. The autumn sun was hot on his forehead. This was an ideal day for the harvest, he thought.
When they reached the foot of the hill, Song-sam hesitantly stopped. In the middle of the field, he spied a group of cranes that looked like men with white clothes bending over. This used to be the neutralized zone, along the Thirty-eight Parallel. The cranes were still living here, as before, while the people were all gone.
Once when Song-sam and Tok-chae were about twelve, they had set a trap here, without the knowledge of the adults, and had caught a crane. They had roped the crane, even its wings, and had paid daily visits, patting its neck and riding on its back. Then, one day they overhead the neighboors whispering. Someone had come from Seoul with a permit from the governor-general’s office to catch cranes as specimens or something. Then and there the two boys dashed off to the field. That they would be found out and punished was no longer a weighty concern; all they worried about was the fate of their crane. Without a moment’s delay, still out of breath from running, they untied the crane’s feet and wings. But the bird could hardly walk. It must have been worn out from being bound.
The two held it up in the air. Then, all of a sudden, a shot was fired. The crane fluttered its wings a couple of times and came down again.
The two boys could not take their eyes away from the blue sky into which their crane had soared.
“Hey, why don’t we stop here for a crane hunt?” Song-sam spoke up suddenly.
Tok-chae was puzzled, struck dumb.
“I’ll make a trap with this rope; you flush a crane over here.”
Having united Tok-chae’s hands, Song-sam had already started crawling among the weeds.
Tok-chae’s face turned white. “You are to be shot anyway”- these words flashed through his mind. Pretty soon, a bullet would fly from where Song-sam has gone, he thought.
Some paces away. Song-sam quickly turned toward him.
“Hey, how come you’re standing there like you’re dumb? Go flush the crane!”
Only then did Tok-chae catch on. He started crawling among the weeds.
A couple of Tanjong cranes soared high into the clear blue autumn sky, fluttering their huge wings.