Hippufu
Title: Older Brother (형)
Author: Kim You-jeong (김유정)
Source: Gwangup Joseon / Mining in Joseon (광업조선, 1939)
If the knife my father threw at my older brother had hit him squarely, he would have collapsed on the spot. Fortunately, however, my brother unexpectedly dodged it, and as the knife fell to the ground, I trembled violently. Fifteen years have passed since this old memory, but the impression has always remained fresh in my heart. When I am sad, when I am lonely, this is the very first arrow that pierces my body. It is an event of the past now, but having witnessed it with a young body not yet ten years old, how much must my heart have pounded? Standing beside them like a wooden post, I eventually burst into tears. My ability to express extreme shock and plea did not extend beyond that.
I do not know whether the fault of this miserable dispute between father and son lay with my father or my brother.
And I did not try to find out. I merely guessed that my brother had behaved recklessly, and my father, despite having enough wealth to cover those expenses without making a dent, would not willingly give a single penny. Our father, he was a blunt miser. He was also a wealthy man who had amassed hundreds of thousands of won in his generation. He must have guessed that his fortune would be squandered at the hands of his eldest son not long after his death, yet while alive, he spared every penny. The saying "He cannot spend the money he earned himself" must refer to this.
Not only did he refuse to provide for my brother's living expenses, but he also hated him as if he wanted to grind him up and drink him. He even issued a strict order for my brother not to show his face before him. He had only two sons. My brother and me; I am the second son, and he had his eldest son, my brother. Moreover, after losing our mother, whom he loved dearly, my father suppressed his erupting anger with sheer will and raised us young children single-handedly, but unfortunately, he ended up bedridden with a chronic illness he couldn't shake off.
He would sometimes hold me in his arms, shedding tears over his "motherless child," and then lose his temper, saying:
"Your brother is a bastard whose legs I will break."
He persecuted my brother with parental authority, but he couldn't have been happy about it on the inside.
The mere fact that he brought in my eighth cousin as a temporary adopted son—promising him a certain amount of land upon recovery if he nursed him well until the illness was cured—is enough to show the unsettled state of his mind. Friends earnestly advised him that mistreating his child would only lead to sorrow in his old age, but his attitude remained consistently unbending. As an answer, he would simply look at my face as I sat beside him and offer a bitter smile.
I would stare back and smile aimlessly, thinking he might give me money to buy Japanese sweets, but had I been a bit smarter, I would have readily understood his sorrowful plea, hoping that "when this child grows up, he will support me."
The contradiction in my concept of equating filial piety with unfilial behavior also arose at this time. Just because my brother troubled our father doesn't mean he was a scoundrel from the start. He was profoundly filial to a degree others could not match. Father had a lot of land. It required no small amount of effort to inspect the fields scattered all around and collect the harvest. Having lost his mobility to illness, my father entrusted all this labor to my brother. And my brother followed his will, carrying out the work without missing a single detail. Of course, walking two or three hundred ri and suffering for a month to diligently bring in the autumn harvest didn't earn him a single extra penny of reward. This was because my father was so strict that he would sit face-to-face with his son and check the harvest records to calculate the exact accounts.
My brother not only handled the household affairs as the head of the family, but once inside the house, he did not spare his body for the patient. He served him without leaving the patient's side for a moment. Deep into the night, he became a companion to the gloomy patient or comforted him with utmost sincerity. Sometimes, after dozing off briefly, he would startle awake, lift his head, and kneel up straight again as if reproaching himself. However, when the time came for human traffic on the night streets to cease, he would take me out toward the water trough well. Believing this well to be sacred, he would draw its clear water, place it on the sauce-jar terrace, and offer it as purified water. He was praying to the spirits so that our father's illness would be washed away as soon as possible. And the first one to open his eyes in the morning was also my brother. As soon as it dawned, he rushed straight to the Baewoo-gae market. Catering to the patient's lacking appetite, he would buy and bring in vegetables, fruits, salted seafood, or unusual side dishes. I was once severely scolded. It was winter and bitterly cold. Early in the morning, feeling the call of nature, I tried to come out of the inner room, only to see my brother just returning from the market, panting. Muttering that he had argued with a merchant, he was shivering as he placed a paper bundle filled with crunching ice on the wooden floor.
When I opened it, it was an unknown fish about the size of a yellow corvina. He threw off his overcoat and hat, ordered me to bring water and a knife, and fussing about, he personally gutted and washed it, placed it on a grill, and carefully roasted it while brushing it with soy sauce. He had younger sisters and a wife, but he claimed, "If those wenches do it, they'll just steal a bite, and since they do it carelessly, the patient won't be able to eat it." Sizzling on the grill, the savory smell of that unknown fish greatly whetted my appetite. I always shared a dining table with my father, so the slightly more appetizing food was mine. That day, too, I sat at the table and, even before my father took his spoon, I eagerly stuck my chopsticks into the fish I had been eyeing earlier and stirred it up. At that moment, catching a sidelong glance from my brother, who was sitting at a separate table glaring as if to kill me, I flinched. However, thinking, "Surely not, with Father right here protecting me," I hesitantly began picking at it again. A moment later, my brother drank a bowl of water and slammed the bowl down on the table, intentionally making a loud noise.
Since an elder was present, he couldn't scold me outright, so he was intimidating me with a bluff. Feeling both embarrassed and scared, my face turned bright red, and I sat there in a daze, unable to put the fish I had picked up into my mouth.
Catching on to this, my father laughed heartily and said:
"Go ahead and eat. Only when you eat well and grow up fast will my stomach be full."
He looked very satisfied. Of course, it could have been out of affection since I was the youngest son, but the laugh was probably out of pride in the utmost devotion of his eldest child, who was acting as his own arms and legs.
Idle money makes one an easy prey to debauchery. My brother fell into debauchery. If it's debauchery, it sounds a bit more noble to call even a vulgar thing "love". Let's just call it love for his sake. Around the age of eighteen or nineteen, he fell into senseless love.
He had married at fifteen, but it was a wife his parents had gotten for him, and he didn't like her face. He was studying Chinese characters in the guest room. During the day, out of fear of our father's strict orders, he stayed in the room pretending to study, humming half-heartedly, but when the night deepened, he would slip out. Then he would sneak back in at dawn to sleep. Of course, as for money, he had been pilfering little by little from the elder's pockets, making a lump sum to spend. Father was an elder as terrifying as an axe blade to his children. Sensing this behavior, he caught his son and beat him with inkstones, wooden pillows, and short bamboo flutes—almost anything he could get his hands on—until he nearly fainted. Furthermore, to prevent him from ever going out again, he locked my brother's clothes, shoes, and such in the guest room attic and padlocked it. Even so, through my brother's cunning methods, he managed to pull out clothes and shoes and roam the night streets again for a few days, but after losing our beloved mother and shortly after our father falling ill, he had no such luxury of time. Outside, he took over his father's affairs; inside, he nursed his illness, fulfilling his filial duties without a moment to rest, so the neighborhood buzzed with praise for this unprecedentedly filial son.
The illness deepened day by day. A full year passed since he took to his bed, and as the dry leaves rustled and fell once again, both the patient and the caregiver couldn't help but feel a tedious sorrow. Then one day, my brother knelt respectfully beside the bed and opened his mouth, saying, "Father." He stated the necessity of remarrying anyway, even for the sake of his father's illness, claiming that his current wife was foolish, an idiot who didn't know how to serve her parents-in-law, and it would be better to send her back to her maiden home. At that time, Father put on a serious face, scrutinized his son's face once more, and simply said, "No." He said, "Not while I am alive." Although Father had also involved himself in numerous affairs in his youth, he basically ordered his son to correctly pronounce it "barampung" even though he himself lisped it as "ppattamppung." I only found out later, but by this time, my brother had already secretly gotten engaged to a maiden from a certain family and visited her whenever he had the chance. Deceiving them that he was still a bachelor, and being the son of a rich man with good lineage, they had readily accepted him. Then they pressed him for the wedding ceremony, and aside from needing the elder's permission, the primary issue was a lack of money, which made my brother anxious. Father loved his son and worked him like his own body, but when it came to money, he was completely transparent. Even a single penny spent on household expenses had to go in and out through his hands, and he made it a rule never to entrust his children with ample money. Here, my brother made a bold decision. It seemed that filial piety only shines when money is involved. For four days from that day, my brother's face was not seen at home. As the son who even cleaned up his feces and urine in the room left his side, the patient was uncomfortable and occasionally got angry, and consequently, we young ones sensed that a tragedy would soon occur and secretly worried ourselves sick.
It was around dusk on the fifth day. I was strangely surprised to see my brother staggering in through the gate, drunk. Such manners in front of an elder were something I hadn't seen in years. The patient was in the main guest room, but my brother went into the inner room and acted out, staggering and throwing a drunken tantrum. He then gathered the family members in front of him and mixed the opium he held in his hand into a large bowl full of liquor.
My younger sisters were terrified and lunged at him to snatch the drug away, but unable to withstand his ignorant fists, they were beaten several times and could only stand crying and watching helplessly. Having completely dissolved the drug in the alcohol, he lifted the chamber pot and hurled it onto the main wooden floor with a loud crash, then solemnly called out our father's name.
And declaring, "I am dying in my precious youth because of you," he sobbed loudly. In the past, he wouldn't have escaped sudden death by an axe blade without a word, but not only did he look down on a patient who had lost his mobility, but his attitude also had the momentum to overpower the elder. However, perhaps a small cabinet in the guest room was smashed, as along with a crashing sound, a roar exploded: "Die right now, you bastard." Whether this voice still held authority even over him in his drunken state, he rolled his eyes glaringly, and eventually began grabbing his younger siblings one by one and beating them. "You wenches, I'll kill you all and then kill myself," he yelled, gritting his teeth and striking them, turning the house upside down with the sound of crying. Since they were the daughters the elder cherished, and since the patient always desired quiet, there could be no better means of retaliation against him. And thinking about it now, we might have been taking the blows meant for the elder. As my sisters' heads bled and their clothes tore under the beating, I was terrified, ran to my bedridden father, dug into his side, and trembled. Father was flushed, his eyes like an angry snake's, groaning loudly. His bony chest heaved. The sorrow of suffering from a demon-like illness was great enough, but having lost the very son he trusted above all, his tragic feelings must have been immeasurable. Holding back tears, he gently grasped my hand and pleaded with me to carry him and put him in the inner room. But I was too small for that. I merely trembled at the thought of being beaten by my brother.
Somehow, that day passed without further incident. It seems he tried to bluff in the posture of an eldest son to see if money would come out, but when things didn't go as he thought, he sulked, kicked the medicine bowl away, and left. According to rumors heard later, he took out a loan, they had some sort of wedding ceremony among themselves, rented a small house, and started their newlyweds' life. My older sisters visited that place from time to time. And thinking of our father crying in sickness, they earnestly urged him to return to his embrace, but he never listened and instead beat his siblings and sent them away again and again.
"Where did you get this?" My father's temperament was different from ours. He usually liked playing Go. At night, he would quietly bring in friends and bet hundreds of won on Go games. When he wasn't doing that, he went out frequently at night. In his words, he enjoyed womanizing and ruined his health doing so. They said he drank a lot too, but I never saw it directly, probably because he was sparing with his money. Also, his fortune-telling was quite peculiar. He would shake and drop four brass coins, solve them with his arms, and judge the fate laid out before him with such skill that I witnessed marvelous things several times. However, when it came to accumulating wealth, he spared no effort. Not only in the early days, but even after piling up money, he never draped a single piece of silk over his body, and only put out a few dozen cents for a day's side dishes; the real money he held tightly and managed himself. Even after falling ill, saying that eating away without income was the path to ruin, he ordered that seven hops of mixed grains be added every morning and evening to make millet-heavy rice, or had porridge made. And if there were a few more side dishes, he wouldn't eat them and would just send the dining table back out. With the money he scraped together to the bone like this, he fretted over his daughters' fates every time he married them off, and ultimately lost even his son. Perhaps he knew this, as Father cried with a sad face every day.
Every time his son occasionally came and caused a ruckus on the surface before leaving, he would raise his skinny fist while lying down and strike the air, shouting a single phrase:
"You bastard to be killed, you bastard to be killed."
Consequently, the illness worsened due to his deep-seated anger. After half a year passed like this, my brother must have regretted his sins, as he came back one day looking crestfallen. He placed a bowl in my hand, telling me it was highly effective restorative medicine for the illness and to give it to Father. I took it, placed it before the patient, and relayed the reason. The patient held it in his hands, looked at it for a long while, and then said, "That bastard mixed poison for me to eat and die," and poured it right into the chamber pot. Hearing this, the son went back crying. I still don't know whether this was medicine or poison, but it was a fact that because of the patient, my brother had intentionally procured a few pregnant soft-shelled turtles and sincerely boiled them down. A few days later, he came again with a guilty face. He went into the kitchen, trimmed about ten sticks as thick as fire pokers, held them respectfully in both hands, and went before our father. However, he couldn't bring himself to enter the room, but just pressed himself closely against the guest room threshold and hesitated. Eventually, he burst into tears doing so.
"Father, please kill me with these sticks," he begged and pleaded.
No answer. Whether he did it ten times or twenty times, there was no answer at all. He must have repeated the exact same words, crying and begging for about an hour. From the room, finally:
"I don't want to see you, step back," the patient replied abruptly with a single phrase.
But my brother had no choice but to retreat crying, just as he had stood there crying. He never came again. Who wouldn't have love for their child, but his behavior was too detestable and made one shudder. The surging indignation, along with the sorrow of losing one arm, became the motive for taking in an adopted son at this time. The adopted son of another bloodline was a farmer brought up from the countryside, who, thinking of becoming rich later on, braved all hardships—brewing medicine, cleaning up urine and feces, running errands—and served the patient with more filial piety than a biological child.
Of course, at that time, he couldn't have dreamt that he wouldn't receive a decent penny from that son after the patient died.
Although they had deceived people into thinking he was still a bachelor and muddled through a so-called marriage among themselves, as they struggled with living expenses, my brother was anxious that his secret would burst open. Of course, food provisions were supplied, but following our father's orders, one doe of white rice was mixed with one doe of millet and sent. That was it; he was absolutely uncompromising about providing a single copper coin in cash. My brother received that rice, sifted it, pulled out the millet, and turned it back into white rice to sell. With that money, the couple consumed the food they wanted to eat, tobacco, and sundry items. Hearing this rumor, our father scolded them not to send it anymore from then on. Judging by the detestable nature of a child who rebelled against his father, he would have broken his legs on the spot, but since doing even that much would be difficult if not for him, and moreover, thinking, "What luxury would that bastard enjoy doing that?", he seemed to have become furious. The physical combat between father and son began here. His lifeline cut off, my brother would occasionally run over and pressure me. He would drag me around the corner of the wall, put his mouth to my ear, and whisper:
"I'll buy you Japanese sweets later, so sneak to the head of Father's bed while he is sleeping, open his bag, and take out the savings book and his seal."
At that time, his clothes and complexion were shabby, stained with poverty. Let alone the son of a rich man, his appearance didn't even match that of a friend from a sordid hovel, so the resentment of not being able to freely use the wealth that was rightfully his to inherit must have been immense. When I brought them as he asked, he would perk up, pat my head, take me to buy Japanese sweets, and after finishing his business, he would give back the bankbook and seal and have me sneak them back into the place they were kept. Those Japanese sweets were longish with a dark yellow background and a few quilted lines drawn on them, and I really liked them. Lured by that taste, I was eventually severely punished by my father. Next, my brother came and badgered my younger sisters. Raising his fist or a club, he would indiscriminately beat them until they cried, and then hurriedly take away the few pennies left for side dishes.
He originally had a delinquent temper. Amid his frenzy demanding that we appease only him, we suffered many bruises from his fists. Since he already hated the elder for fear of losing the inheritance that should rightfully be passed down to him because of the adopted son, and even more so since he wasn't supplied with ample food, he became fully venomous. It was a hot summer day, and around sunset, he charged in sweating profusely. The patient lay in the inner room, and a year passed turning him into a living corpse with only bones left, refusing to pass away.
The living people nursing him were also on the verge of collapsing. My brother, who used to come in fiercely, had lost his energy due to the long illness. He stood right in front of us, gathered on the wooden floor, glared at us one by one with axe-like eyes, and snorted. Seeing the sign that we were going to be beaten again, we worried internally about who would be hit first today. He hastily went into the kitchen. The sound of opening the cast iron pot lid was heard, followed by a roar of "Are you the only ones stuffing yourselves?" and a tremendous clanging of metal. From the room came a tragic shout of "You bastard." The air in the house, which had been wrapped in a gloomy atmosphere, suddenly became lively. Excited by this noise, my brother chased after my third oldest sister, who was fleeing towards the backyard, to beat her. The charge was her anger towards the elder, or the fact that she hadn't secretly provided him with food even by deceiving the elder. The sister ran one lap around the backyard and, with no other choice, leaped onto the wooden floor in one breath. She opened the door to the room where the elder was lying down, perhaps thinking, "Surely not here," but my brother unhesitatingly jumped up with his shoes on, kicked her in the waist four or five times, and knocked her over.
And yelling, "You wenches eating all by yourselves," he grabbed the next sister by her hair, dragged her jarringly to the edge of the floor, and rolled her down below the stepping stones, making her terrified cries startle our ears. Since the situation was such that even the elder would be struck if he just closed his eyes, I took refuge next to my father with my eyes wide open.
The patient lay silently, shedding tears. He gritted his teeth so hard that one couldn't tell whether he was crying or laughing, then quietly scoffed and struck his pillow with his fist; seeing this, I invited tears without knowing why. Troubles are troubles, but his sorrow, only he would know. He grabbed the hand of the adopted son sitting next to him and ordered him to carry him on his back and place him out on the wooden floor.
The adopted son just bowed his head in silence. This was because he worried that doing so would not only worsen the illness but also create a bloody scene in the house. However, disobeying the patient's will was not his duty. When the command was issued for the second and third time, he reluctantly handled the patient gently and piggybacked him onto the wooden floor. The patient sat crouched with his two legs drawn up and glared at the son who stood blankly in the yard waiting for the outcome. This was the first time in two years he was facing that son head-on. Overcome with energy, he blurted out, "You bastard!" and then, weakened by the terrible disease, he wagged his chin and coughed violently for a long time before saying:
"Are you trying to eat me alive?"
And he slumped backward, exhausted.
He rocked his body back and forth, panting. The grudge knotted in his heart was immense, but unable to speak except for opening and closing his mouth due to his illness, he looked to be in great agony. However, realizing that a large kitchen knife lay beside him, he abruptly picked it up and threw it at his son with all his might. Had it hit his shin, it certainly would have committed murder, but fortunately, the knife lost its force at his son's toes.
At this moment, the daughters hugged their father from front and back, pleading, "Father, please kill me," and buried their heads in his chest, resulting in a sudden burst of wailing. The son in the yard merely stood in a daze with his head bowed, glared intensely at the adopted son next to the patient, and left. Yet, if he had guessed that he would be able to enjoy the luxury of wealth in just a few days, he wouldn't have been so resentful...
Not long after, Father passed away. It was late at night, and raindrops were drizzling down.
When they sent word that he was drawing his last breath, my brother dashed in like an arrow in a rickshaw, accompanied by his wife, started wailing from the gate, and when he embraced our father's head, he knew nothing of the world.
Sobbing, he begged profusely to be forgiven for his past sins. The patient showed a somewhat relieved look on his dry face, left a few words of his will, and became a corpse. Once one lets go of their stubbornness, it's usually the case that father and son align; having considered him lost forever, his son returning before him seemed to put his mind at ease. And it was also at this time that my brother's filial piety blossomed.
In his urgency and panic, he tried to cut off his finger to offer his blood (danji) and bit his own finger with his molars, but it only crushed and the bleeding was unsatisfactory, so he then placed his finger on the ironing stone and smashed it with a wooden club. As a result, his finger only swelled up tightly, causing him to suffer for days, the blood merely trickled, and it produced no effect whatsoever. Not knowing what was going on, I just stared blankly at the corpse, crying, and occasionally gave sidelong glances at my new sister-in-law. After crying sadly while massaging her father-in-law's corpse in broad daylight—someone she hadn't seen before—she ordered my brother to straighten the corpse's twisted legs. Her husband obeyed. If I had known then that my youth and my future path would follow my father's corpse, I would have held onto him and cried continuously for a month or two. But I was an ignorant child who knew nothing of people. Sorrow was sorrow, but my father's annoying funeral affairs bothered me endlessly. This was because my brother and I handled the morning ceremonial food together, but I was in charge of the evening ceremonial food alone. If I didn't stand alone wearing mourning clothes, leaning on a bamboo staff, and crying out loud—even if forced—I would instantly receive a club beating from him for the sin of disrespect. Meanwhile, unable to manage his excessive wealth, he would wander the night streets, and by dawn, he would come in dead drunk with a new woman by his side. Grasping a fortune and becoming the head of the household, he enjoyed every possible pleasure, but one day, he frowned. Neglecting to count the bundles of banknotes in the iron safe, he discovered that five 10-won bills had gone missing. In the morning, after wailing at the mourning shrine, he went into the inner room and summoned our second oldest sister, who had already married and left home. Then, an order was issued that no one else was to come anywhere near them. He closed the room door tightly, muttered for a long time, and then—this wasn't the sound of beating, it was definitely the sound of killing. A fainting scream of "Aegagaga" was heard, followed by gasping and panting groans, and then "Aegagaga" again. Checking later, the unfortunate person who went to prepare the sacrificial food for our father's first and fifteenth-day rites the previous night was this sister, and under the suspicion that she might have diverted that money elsewhere during this opportunity, she suffered such torture.
At first, they stripped her naked leaving only her skirt, searched and shook out all her clothes one by one, but when the money didn't turn up, he immediately flipped her over, kicked her, and beat her, erupting in fury. Still, he didn't obtain any clues, so how could the third, fourth, and youngest sisters, not to mention our sister-in-law, the maidservant, or even young me, escape that torture?