One Left: A Novel by Kim Soom

Author:Kim Soom [Soom, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Asia, Korea, Military, World War II, Social Science, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9780295747668
Google: 74lWzQEACAAJ
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2020-09-14T23:00:00+00:00

9

THE OTHER SIDE of the river was home, or so she thought. She never expected it would take five more years to get the rest of the way there.

A month’s walk brought her to P’yŏngyang Station, which bustled with passengers, job hunters, fortune-tellers, day laborers, beggars, and porters with back-racks. Her heart fluttered in anticipation of catching a train, and yet she was fearful.

Tagging after a rice-cake peddler, she begged him to take her somewhere she could work for meals.

The peddler considered her spotted, bony face and said, “Tell me, are you old enough to be having your period?”

“I’m over 20.”

He found her a place behind the train station, an eatery serving hangover soup and drinks. It was run by a hunchback woman with a dogged belief that her son, who had been drafted into the Japanese army, would someday return home. She was saving up to buy a house for the two of them. She herself received three meals a day and clothing but no payment. She and the woman slept in the room attached to the back of the eatery. She needed money to get home, but dared not broach the subject.

A month after she started working there she related her story to an old laborer who came every night for the soup. Skipping the part about Manchuria, she told him she had gotten on the wrong train and ended up here in P’yŏngyang instead of Taegu and to make matters worse had lost the bundle with her traveling money and so she was stuck here and unable to go home.

“Then you should go sell yourself.”

Which she took to mean that he was going to send her back to the comfort station. And so that night she took a few notes from the money belt the hunchback woman had taken off before going to the toilet, and rushed to the train station. There she caught the train to the capital, Kyŏngsŏng, and transferred to another train that she assumed was bound for Taegu. When she got off she found herself in Pusan instead.

A granny with her hair parted down the middle, the part looking like a line drawn by chalk, was plodding along but kept glancing at her. Finally she approached.

“No place to go, little baby?”

She registered the old woman’s use of baby.

“No.”

“Why’s that? Where’d you take the train, anyway?”

“I’m not sure—I can’t read, you see.” She couldn’t bring herself to reveal that she’d been at the comfort station in Manchuria.

“You sure you don’t have a place to go?”

“I swear.”

“Then how about going to my place to babysit and do some errands?”

The place to which she followed the old woman was a Japanese-built bathhouse. She looked after a seven-month-old baby and ran errands but received no payment there either.

Twelve years had passed, seven at the comfort station and five on the road. She didn’t know the address of her home, only the name of the locality, Kkamakkol. She asked at the bus station how to get there. It

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