“Cranes”

“Cranes” “Cranes” Written by Hwang Sunwon Background: This story takes place at the end of the Korean War (1950-1953), a civil war that pitted the Communist government of North Korea against the more democratic government of South Korea. At the end of World War II, the Korean peninsula had been divided along the line of the 38 degree North latitude, commonly called the 38th parallel. During the Korean War, intense fighting along this border shifted control of nearby villages back and forth between the North Koreans and South Koreans. One of these villages is the setting of "Cranes". The northern village lay snug beneath the high, bright autumn sky, near the border at the Thirty-eighth Parallel. White gourds lay one against the other on the dirt floor of an empty farmhouse. Any village elders who passed by extinguished their bamboo pipes first, and the children, too, turned back some distance off. Their faces were marked with fear. As a whole, the village showed little damage from the war, but it still did not seem like the same village Songsam had known as a boy. At the foot of a 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, climbing up my chestnut tree again!" The old man must have passed away, for he was not among the few village elders Songsam had met. Holding on to the trunk of the tree, Songsam gazed up at the blue sky for a time. Some chestnuts fell to the ground as the dry clusters opened of their own accord. A young man stood, his hands bound, before a farmhouse that had been converted into a Public Peace Police office. He seemed to be a stranger, so Songsam went up for a closer look. He was stunned: this young man was none other than his boyhood playmate, Tokchae. Songsam asked the police officer who had come with him from Ch'ont'ae for an explanation. The prisoner was the vice-chairman of the Farmers' Communist League and had just been flushed out of hiding in his own house, Songsam learned. Songsam sat down on the dirt floor and lit a cigaret. Tokchae was to be escorted to Ch'ongdan by one of the peace police. After a time, Songsam lit a new cigaret from the first and stood up. "I'll take him with me." Tokchae averted his face and refused to look at Songsam. The two left the village. Songsam went on smoking, but the tobacco had no flavor. He just kept drawing the smoke in and blowing it out. Then suddenly he thought that Tokchae, too, must want a puff. He thought of the days when they had shared dried gourd leaves behind sheltering walls, hidden from the adults' view. But today, how could he offer a cigaret to a fellow like this? Once, when they were small, he went with Tokchae to steal some chestnuts from the old man with the wen. It was Songsam's turn to climb the tree. Suddenly the old man began shouting. Songsam slipped and fell to the ground. He got chestnut burs all over his bottom, but he kept on running. Only when the two had reached a safe place where the old man could not overtake them did Songsam turn his bottom to Tokchae. The burrs hurt so much as they were plucked out that Songsam could not keep tears from welling up in his eyed. Tokchae produced a fistful of chestnuts from his pocket and thrust them into Songsam's...Songsam threw away the cigaret he had just lit, and then made up his mind not to light another cigaret while he was escorting Tokchae. They reached the pass at the hill where he and Tokchae had cut fodder' for cows until Songsam had to move to a spot near Ch'ont'ae, south of the Thirty-eighth Parallel, two years before the liberation. Songsam felt a sudden surge of anger in spite of himself and shouted, "So how many have you killed?" For the first time, Tokchae cast a quick glance at him and then he looked away. "You! How many have you killed?" he asked again. Tokchae looked at him again and glared. The glare grew intense, and his mouth twitched. "So you managed to kill quite a few, eh?" Songsam felt his mind becoming clear of itself, as if some 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." Tokchae did not reply. "Speak up. What was your mission?" Tokchae kept walking. Tokchae was hiding something, Songsam thought. He wanted to take a good look at him, but Tokchae kept his face averted. Fingering the revolver at his side, Songsam went on: "There's no need to make excuses. You're going 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 a hardworking farmer and one of the poorest. If that's a capital offense, so be it. I'm still what I used to be--the only thing I'm good at is tilling the soil." After a short pause, he added, "My old man is bedridden at home. He's been ill almost half a year." Tokchae's father was a widower, a poor, hardworking farmer who lived only for his son. Seven years before his back had given out, and he had contracted a skin disease. "Are you married?" "Yes," Tokchae replied after a time. "To whom?" "Shorty." "To Shorty?" How interesting! A woman so small and plump that she knew the earth’s vastness, but not the sky's height. Such a cold fish! He and Tokchae had teased her and made her cry. And Tokchae had married her! "How many kids?" "The first is arriving this fall, she says." Songsam had difficulty swallowing a laugh that he was about to let burst forth in spite of himself. Although he had asked how many children Tokchae had, he could not help wanting to break out laughing at the thought of the wife sitting there with her huge stomach, one span around. But he realized that this was no time for joking. "Anyway, it's strange you didn't run away." "I tried to escape. They said that once the South invaded, not a man would be spared. So all of us between seventeen and forty were 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 we farmers leave the land behind when the crops were ready for harvesting? He grew old on that farm depending on me as the prop and the mainstay of the family. I wanted to be with him in his last moments so I could close his eyes with my own hand. Besides, where can farmers like us go, when all we know how to do is live on the land?" Songsam had had to flee the previous June. At night he had broken the news privately to his father. But his father had said the same thing: Where could a farmer go, leaving all the chores behind? So Songsam had left alone. Roaming about the strange streets and villages in the South, Songsam had been haunted by thoughts of his old parents and young children, who had been left with all the chores. Fortunately, his family had been safe then, as it was now. They had crossed over a hill. This time Songsam 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, Songsam gradually came to a halt. In the middle of a field he espied a group of cranes that resembled men in white, all bent over. This had been the demilitarized zone along the Thirty-eighth Parallel. The cranes were still living here as before, though the people were all gone. Once, when Songsam and Tokchae were about twelve, they had set a trap here, unbeknown to the adults, and caught a crane, a Tanjong crane. They had tied the crane up, even binding its wings, and paid it daily visits, patting its neck and riding on its back. Then one day they overheard the neighbors whispering: someone had come from Seoul with a permit from the governor-general’s office to catch cranes as some kind of specimens. Then and there the two boys had dashed off to the field. That they would be found out and punished had no longer mattered; all they cared 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 weak from having been bound. The two helped the crane up. Then, suddenly, they heard a gunshot. The crane fluttered its wings once or twice and then sank back to the ground. The boys thought their crane had been shot. But the next moment, as another crane from a nearby bush fluttered its wings, the boys’ crane stretched its long neck, gave out a whoop, and disappeared into the sky. For a long while the two boys could not tear their eyes away from the blue sky up into which their crane had soared. “Hey, why don’t we stop here for a crane hunt?” Songsam said suddenly. Tokchae was dumbfounded. “I’ll make a trap with this rope; you flush a crane over here.” Songsam had untied Tokchae’s hands and was already crawling through the weeds. Tokchae’s face whitened. “You’re sure to be shot anyway”—these words flashed through his mind. Any instant a bullet would come flying from Songsam’s direction, Tokchae thought. Some paces away, Songsam quickly turned toward him. “Hey, how come you are standing there like a dummy? Go flush a crane!” Only then did Tokchae understand. He began crawling through the weeds. A pair of Tanjong cranes soared high into the clear blue autumn sky, flapping their huge wings. Translated by Peter H. Lee