Читать книгу Magnolia - Agnita Tennant - Страница 11

Chapter 3

Sisters

In the shadow of a large apple tree, sitting on a straw mat, my sister, Sŏnhi and I were playing at being grown-ups. She was six, two years older than me. She was always the mother and I had no choice but to be the father. While she prepared the dinner, mixing up clay, bits of flowers and leaves, and chopping up raw apples that had fallen off the tree, and arranging them on the dinner set, I sat behaving myself, stroking a dust pan and pretending it was a briefcase. I even remembered to cough lightly as if clearing my throat.

‘Dinner is ready.’ She brought in a wooden board loaded with plates and bowls stuffed with pretty ‘food’ not a scrap of which was edible.

‘You must say “it looks good”.’ She kept instructing me. As I said it I pressed my lips tight so as not to show a smile. The new tea set that father had brought with him from Seoul yesterday was very pretty and came in very handy, but I was dying to have done with this tiresome dignity and run wild.

‘You must say, “It was delicious”. Don’t you know how to be dad? Shall we swap it now, and you be the mum, and I’ll show you how to do it properly.’

‘Oh, no thank you,’ I said to myself, ‘I’ve had enough of being grown-up.’

When the long, long summer day was over and the sky in the west was blushing deep it was time for the real dinner. Round the corner of the house, mother appeared carrying the baby strapped on her back.

‘Come on, dears, dinner time. Go and wash your hands first.’ Her voice was so gentle. I don’t remember her face ever showing anger. While Sŏnhi packed the play set, I shook dust off my skirt and ran off to the cowshed where my father was giving out some instructions to the workers.

‘Father, dinner is ready.’

‘Righto!’ said he. I made a mental note of the expression for tomorrow’s dinner with Sŏnhi.

Holding my hand, father almost dragged me to the bubbling spring, where squatting down he washed my face and hands vigorously. I wished he would not let the soap suds get in my eyes. It hurt.

The large round table was out in the middle of the living room because all the family was together tonight. My father had taken a job with a newspaper company in Seoul and was away most of the time these days, leaving the running of the huge orchard virtually to mother. Then, insisting that children should be educated in the capital, he had transferred my elder brother, Hyŏngsŏk, to a reputable school there. When he left home we had all cried, and the house felt empty for a long time. Yesterday he came home with father for the summer vacation. He received a hero’s welcome, and he lavished presents from Seoul on the family.

‘Hyŏngsŏk’s no ordinary chap,’ my father said. ‘You should see the way he sticks at his studies. This term he’s missed being top by one point, but it is not the sort of thing one expects of a boy straight from the country.’ Father looked proud.

‘School work is important,’ said mother, ‘but what about his health? He looks so much thinner.’

‘I know, he’s gone thin. It was his first time away from home. His uncle and aunt are really so kind to him, but he’s been homesick, especially at the beginning.’

‘Hyŏngsŏk, did you miss me?’ Mother stroked his head, and turned away her tearful eyes. ‘Still you have got two more years to work hard, and then the year after that you ought to get into Kyŏng-gi High school, oughtn’t you? That is your father’s wish.’

Father had been a Kyŏng-gi boy himself, but he got involved in the nationwide protest march of 1919 against the Japanese annexation. He was suspended from school and put in prison. After his release he went to Japan and continued his study at Waseda University, and he cherished the one wish of seeing his own son at Kyŏng-gi.

‘Next year, I think, we ought to move Sŏnhi to Seoul as well,’ said father. ‘I have been thinking about it a lot. For the children’s sake we must eventually settle in Seoul ourselves. To do that, this orchard will have to go. It is hard work for you as it is now.’

‘Is Myŏngsŏk asleep?’ He changed the subject.

‘Yes.’ Mother’s voice was low.

Myŏngsŏk, just over two was asleep at one end of the room. When the supper table was taken away, the kitchen maid brought in a large wicker basket laden with sweet melons. They were bright yellow, the skin smooth and thin. Putting aside the sweetest looking one for father, mother said, ‘Children, take your pick.’ My brother picked out a big one, and so did my sister. Not being a big eater I picked up the smallest and yellowest.

‘Let’s see who’s got the sweetest,’ said father. ‘They say that one who is good at choosing a sweet melon is also good at choosing a spouse.’

‘Taste mine,’ ‘taste mine, too,’ we all held out our melons to father. Sampling a bit off brother’s he said, ‘It’s very sweet, ‘and then to Sŏnhi, ‘This is very sweet too.’ Lastly taking a bite of mine, he said, ‘Look, this is the sweetest. She has the right way of choosing – you taste, mother.’

‘Um, it’s delicious. She was the last to choose, and picked the sweetest!’

‘Let me try,’ ‘give us a bite,’ my brother and sister begged me. Proudly I handed my melon to my sister, ‘You have two bites,’ I said, and then to my brother, ‘No, you can’t have any,’ pouting.

‘Why?’ They all looked at me.

‘Are you sulking about something, darling?’ asked mother with a smile.

‘You wouldn’t let me stay with you.’ I gave my brother a sidelong glance pretending I was still angry. They all burst into laughter.

‘Silly idiot. It was all because you were making such a fuss about nothing.’ He explained what had happened.

‘This afternoon we went into the orchard to see how blackberries were doing. We saw this gorgeous dragonfly darting about. She kept pestering me to catch it for her. If I’d had a net I would have, but without one how could I? She started being silly and crying. I told her to go home. I’d forgotten all about it.’ Once more they all laughed.

‘She was sitting on the ground, crying, so I coaxed her and brought her home, mummy.’ Sŏnhi explained her part in the drama.

‘She’s like that,’ said mother to father. ‘Sometimes she brings up some little thing that had upset her ages and ages ago, and goes on and on about It. I don’t know why she does it.’

‘Because she’s a clever and sensitive girl, that’s why. Mark my words, she will be somebody when she grows up. Look at the way she has chosen that melon.’ He laughed and I was instantly happy.

‘It’s thanks to Sŏnhi that I’ve kept my sanity. She’s so good and never causes any trouble. She’s so reliable and practically looks after Sukey. I am sure I don’t know what Sukey will do if Sŏnhi goes.’

‘Let’s have a song contest. Come on, who would like to start?’ Father thus changed the atmosphere.

‘Hyŏngsŏk, you go first,’ said mother as she patted my brother on his shoulder, but he seemed suddenly to have gone shy, or feel that he was too old to do such things.

‘No, not me. But mum, you do it, with dad. Your favourite, “I wandered today to the hills, Maggie...”’

The melody of ‘The Song of Maggie’ had been deeply rooted in our minds since our infancy along with the gentle voices of mother and father. Even now I feel like crying when I imagine them, young and in love, singing it together as they dreamed of their future, happily married, bringing up a brood of happy children.

Sŏnhi and I stood against the wall and sang ‘Clementine.’ Father clapped loudly and praised us. ‘They’ve got good voices just like their mother. I have a mind to send then to a music school!’

Then all the family sang together a song from the gramophone record:

The sun has gone down from the top of the hills,

‘Caw, caw’, cawing the crows are homewards too.

We’ll meet again tomorrow, till then adieu,

Let us to our mama’s welcoming arms.

Join hands together and stand in a ring, then

Let them go at one, two, three.

Bow your heads for a goodbye now,

Let us to papa’s welcoming lap.

As the last song was coming to a close, Myŏngsŏk woke from his sleep and joined in the fun, keeping the rhythm with his hips while rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. His rosy cheeks were dimpled and, fully awake, his eyes were like two bright stars. We adored him. Now joined by the youngest member, the family fun gained a new momentum. Myŏngsŏk liked music. When in a good mood he would go on singing to himself making it up as he went along, picking up bits from here and there from the family songs, the gramophone, or the labourer’s singing, keeping time with his head. This particular evening, he sang his latest song in which some mysterious words recurred. Mother interpreted them:

Daddy’s train’s gone away, chuff, chuff, chuff,

The toffee man went away and never, never, never comes again...

‘What a clever boy!’ Father gathered him in his arms and said, ‘That is a very good song. His rhythm is right and a good tune too.’

Suddenly there was a commotion outside the door. Opening it, we saw in the courtyard, Samsu, a casual worker from the village, blubbering.

‘Please come and save her, sir. My wife, she is dying. She’s been whimpering with tummy ache since lunch. Thinking it’s the old worms playing up again, I let it be, and now she’s...’

My father cut him short.

‘Is it upper or lower stomach? Has she been sick? Is she hot?’ He told mother to fetch the first-aid kit while he put on his shoes.

‘Let’s go and see.’ They disappeared round the bend into the darkness.

On both sides of the house were paddies and beyond them the vast orchards. At the far end of the front yard and behind the house grew all kinds of fruit – peaches, pears, persimmons, plums, grapes, dates, chestnuts and walnuts.

The village was called Sapsuri. The village and its surrounding countryside in Kangwŏn Province, now a part of North Korea, was to my father, his kingdom and Utopia. He had built up this community with his blood and sweat, and youthful idealism to practise his passionate patriotism.

When he came back from Japan with his hard-won graduation certificate, he found his country, now a Japanese colony, a difficult place to find a job that suited him. Besides, young intellectuals like himself were under constant police surveillance. After a long, frustrating search for a job, he had decided to serve his country by living amongst the uneducated farming folk and enlightening them. With all his inherited money he bought a hundred acres of land here and developed it into a flourishing orchard and farm.

He started night classes and taught ignorant people to read and write. Over the years he had become a sort of sage. He was a friend, teacher, scribe and solicitor, and a mediator when there was a row. He even treated minor ailments.

When he made up his mind to forsake his Utopia, it must have been a heart-breaking decision for him. He could do it only because, to his mind, the education of his children was a matter of highest importance.

The day came when my sister, Sŏnhi was to be taken away to Seoul. When we set out in the morning to see her off there were six of us, the whole family, but after we had said goodbye to my father and his party at the eastern gate of the village, there were only three of us on our way back home, mother, Myŏngsŏk and me. Many nights I went to sleep sobbing, and then pitiably cried out in my sleep calling, ‘sister’, or ‘I want my Sŏnhi,’ making my mother weep.

One day I wandered off by myself to a place where I used to go with Sŏnhi to play. It was where the look-out shelter was in the middle of melon plantation. A four-feet-square platform with straw roof was propped up on four wooden stilts. You climbed on it by a ladder left there slanting against the side of the platform. As I climbed the steps of the ladder, I longed for Sŏnhi so much that I thought my heart would break. Even now I vividly recall the sensation – a first taste of sorrow in my life. The next thing I knew was that I was lying in bed back at home, conscious of the presence of some women around me.

‘If it wasn’t for the thought of Sŏnhi how could she dare to go off that far on her own?’

‘They really are a peculiar pair, aren’t they? I’ve never known any girls quite like these two.’

‘Since Sŏnhi went away, I just can’t relax for a minute for the worry of this child...’ It was mother’s voice. I opened my eyes and saw her two large sad eyes looking down into mine.

I must have had slipped off the ladder. Apparently a village woman found me lying on the ground unconscious and brought me home, carrying me on her back.