Hippufu
Scorching Sun
Author: Kim You-jeong
Source: Yeoseong 11 (February 1937)
Deok-sun, a man of sturdy build, pulled his left sleeve with his right arm to wipe the beads of sweat off the bridge of his nose, and came to a dead halt at the Tongan crossroads. His face flushed red from the heat, he looked around. Because it was the blazing sun at the peak of mid-summer, passersby were only skirting around under the eaves on the other side. The ground was baked to a glare, kicking up clouds of suffocatingly hot dust whenever a car drove by.
Realizing that no matter how hard he looked, there wasn't a single relaxed face he could comfortably ask for directions, Deok-sun wiped his sweat with his sleeve once more. Then, with an awkward expression, he stood there blankly. Just then, he politely gestured to a young street urchin passing by.
"Hey, kid! Which way to the university hospital?"
"Go straight this way!"
Deok-sun turned north onto the road the urchin had pointed out with his chin and started walking again. With every step he took, the heavy A-frame carrier dug into his shoulders, and his buttocks were rubbed raw and sore from the heavy sweat pouring down his spine. Puffing out the burning heat from his insides, he trudged up the road. When he blew his nose with his thumb and wiped it on the waist of a nearby telephone pole, he felt a considerable heaviness in his chest. He wanted nothing more than to throw off the carrier right then and there and sprawl out in the green shade, but since he couldn't, he couldn't help but feel irritated. Furrowing his brow, he grumbled bluntly,
"Damn it! Why is this so heavy!"
He was about to spit this out, but thinking of how embarrassed his wife on the carrier would feel, he held it in. He just groaned inwardly until finally,
"Ugh, it's hot!"
By the time this lament escaped him, he could not go a step further.
Deok-sun set the carrier down under a willow tree by the roadside and flapped the back of his unlined summer jacket with both hands to dry his sweat. The windless street was practically scorching, and the sand upon it was baking hot. He looked up at the sky, but it seemed highly unlikely they would taste any rain. As he stood there smacking his parched lips, a water cart suddenly drove by with a clanging sound, splashing water on his feet, and only then did he feel a flash of reviving energy. He put his hand in his jacket pocket, took out his short bamboo pipe, and put it in his mouth to light a smoke, but he realized again that his flat tobacco pouch hadn't had a single pinch of tobacco since yesterday, and angrily shoved it back in.
"Is your bottom sore?"
Deok-sun looked back at his wife as he asked.
"I'm fine!"
His heart ached for his wife, whose eyes were welling with tears and who looked like she was half-dead. Her face, having not seen sunlight for two months, was withered and sallow, and seeing her frail body bobbing up and down on the carrier made him feel as if she might expire at any moment.
Deok-sun stared at his wife for a long moment.
"Aw, why are you crying?"
He glared, but she replied,
"They'll say they have to cut me open when we get to the hospital, won't they?"
"Cut? Do they just cut anyone open for no reason? They said they're going to study it."
He tried to reassure his wife as best he could. However, in Deok-sun's mind, whether they cut her or not was a matter for later; survival meant eating first.
"Didn't you hear what Gi-yeong's grandfather said?"
"Is it true that the hospital will pay us a salary and cure the illness?"
"Of course, would the old man lie? Yeah, right now, some Doctor Ito or whatever at the university hospital saw a fourteen-year-old Joseon kid who was bigger than an adult. He thought it was such a strange disease that he took him in, pays him a salary of ten won a month, and not only that, he feeds him and clothes him while studying him, isn't that what they say?"
"Then I suppose I'll be stuck in the hospital all day, every day."
"We'll have to go and see to know what'll happen."
He answered her confidently, but Deok-sun himself doubted whether it was right to blindly trust Gi-yeong's grandfather's words. Having not been in Seoul long since coming up from the countryside, he figured he couldn't know for sure how things worked in the city, so he had just managed to get a free medical examination ticket. Even so, they said the stranger the disease, or the harder it was to cure, the higher the salary would be. He was incredibly curious inwardly about how much this baffling disease of his wife's would be worth. If a child got ten won, would they give her about fifteen won? If so, it would be great because her illness would be cured, they would get to eat, and it would change their fortunes all around. He was building castles in the air like this when...
"Hey mister! Try one of these melons."
A child sitting a little ways off with oriental melons spread out drew his attention. The long, fresh-looking melons were indeed the kind you'd want to peel and take a crunchy bite out of in the middle of the scorching summer heat. Deok-sun blankly looked over this melon and that, quickly remembering the four jeon in small change in his pouch, but the next moment, with steely resolve, he tore his eyes away, telling himself that was out of the question. That four jeon he had been clutching tightly since yesterday, thinking that with just one more jeon he could buy a pack of Huiyeon cigarettes—he would be less than human if he melted that away on melons.
"Hold on tight to the carrier!"
Deok-sun thought of that fifteen won as he hoisted the carrier and stood up again; for him, it was a walk full of overwhelming hope.
Deok-sun was waiting for his turn outside the obstetrics and gynecology department door, as the nurse had directed.
His wife, set down on the bench by her husband, slumped lifelessly, unable to endure her labored breathing. She clutched her absurdly swollen lower belly, grabbing her skirt with one hand, her gaunt head bobbing unsteadily with every breath as she gasped for air. Furthermore, seeing a patient being carried out of the operating room on a stretcher and the trash cans mixed with blood and pus was a sight more than enough to make her pale face tremble with fear.
"Don't be so scared. Even people on the brink of death walk out alive once they come to the hospital..."
Deok-sun said these things to comfort his wife, but in truth, he was no less anxious than she was. What on earth was his wife's disease? Was it truly such a bizarre illness that they would be paid a salary to stay? Could they cure her disease as if washing it away? He was fraught with endless curiosities and worries.
Lost in these thoughts while propping up his wife's upper body, Deok-sun's eyes were accidentally drawn to a cigarette butt lying next to a spittoon on the opposite side. He glanced around briefly, quickly scurried over to pick it up, put it in his pipe, and smoked it as he waited for his turn, but they simply wouldn't call him.
In this way, two hours passed in vain.
At about fourteen minutes past one o'clock, a nurse came out again and called out Deok-sun's wife's name.
"Yes, right here!"
Deok-sun hurriedly hoisted his wife onto his back and went into the examination room.
Two nurses rushed in, first stripping her clothes and pressing on her, and his wife shrank and trembled like a frightened rabbit. The stifling, pungent smell of medicine gave them goosebumps, and the gleaming medical instruments laid out on one side made them even more anxious. His wife trembled so pathetically that Deok-sun, standing next to her, couldn't help but feel embarrassed. He grabbed one of his wife's arms tightly and glared at her as if scolding her at home,
"What are you so scared of?"
Just as the clanking sound of instruments hitting a glass tray sent a chill down his spine,
"Since when has her stomach been like this?"
The nurse translated the chubby doctor's words.
"I don't know exactly, but..."
Deok-sun scratched his head like this and added, "It's probably been this swollen since last winter. At first, we thought it might be a baby, but it wasn't. If it were a baby, she would have given birth in ten months."
"Where in the world does a pregnancy last thirteen months?"
Realizing his mistake, he thought, oops, I shouldn't have babbled about a baby or whatever. Before the doctor could open his mouth again, he quickly added,
"Everyone says they don't know what kind of disease this is. They say they've never seen anything like it in their lives."
He threw in a few more words.
Deok-sun, realizing once again that whether they could change their destiny rested on this very moment, stared intently at the doctor's mouth, but the doctor with the gold-rimmed glasses did not open his mouth easily. After repeatedly pressing, tapping, and lifting for a while, he unenthusiastically went over to a basin, washed his hands, and said through the nurse,
"There is a baby in her womb; it tried to come out, but because the pelvis was too small, it died inside. If left as is, she won't last a week. Surgery is unavoidable, but I cannot guarantee a positive outcome. If you sign a consent form stating that the hospital is not liable if things don't go as planned and an unfortunate event occurs while cutting open her stomach to remove the baby, we will operate right away tomorrow."
The young nurse rattled this off without the slightest hesitation, and then asked,
"What will you do?"
"Well..."
Deok-sun, with a bewildered face, couldn't help but scratch the back of his head once more.
Even if he didn't understand every word the nurse said, he caught enough of the gist. The words that his wife's life was in danger frightened him, but realizing it was merely a pregnancy—hardly a disease worthy of research—made him immediately downcast. Still, since things had already come to this,
"But we don't have anything to eat..."
"We'll admit her here and feed her, so don't worry about that..."
"By the way, um..."
Deok-sun hesitated, not knowing how to hide his embarrassment,
"Don't you pay a salary or something?"
"What salary?"
"You know, they say sometimes you pay a salary if you cure a disease here."
"Why would we pay a salary to cure your own disease?"
Because she snapped at him so bluntly, Deok-sun's face instantly turned bright red. Realizing his plan to turn their luck around was completely ruined, his starving stomach seemed to collapse, and he had no choice but to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead with his thick hand. However, since he had to save his wife's life anyway, he bowed politely and tried to plead,
"Then I'll bring her tomorrow, so please do something for her."
He tried his best to beg, but his wife, who had been lying there in a daze from the horrifying words up to that point, suddenly sprang up in a panic and shrieked with a shrill voice,
"I'd rather die than have my stomach cut open."
Seeing her face turn yellow, there was nothing more to be said. Perhaps letting her die the way she wanted was the duty of a husband. Utterly dumbfounded by his wife's state,
"Surely having surgery is a bit better than dying!"
To avoid seeing the nurse and doctor who stood there unable to hide their sneers, Deok-sun averted his eyes and heavily hoisted his wife onto his back and walked out. After putting her on the A-frame carrier, he bent down to lift it again, but what was this? It felt twice as heavy as when they had come.
Deok-sun was trudging down the road he had climbed up full of hope just a while ago, his steps now devoid of strength. Even without looking, the image of his wife weeping silently on the carrier was vivid in his mind. The learned doctor certainly knew more than the completely illiterate Deok-sun and his wife, so there was nothing he could do about the claim that she wouldn't last a week. Now, all that was left was to take her back to that gloomy, unheated room, lay her down, and wait for her to die.
Deok-sun wiped away the sweat dripping over his eyes with his fist and thought about the bleak future ahead of him. He had come to Seoul with high hopes, but he wasn't making a decent living, and now he was going to lose his wife as well. Motherfucker! This damn fate of mine, a pitiful sigh rose in his throat, but he bit down hard, turning it into a heavy breath.
As mid-day approached, the heat became even more fearsome.
Unable to bear his back that felt like it would completely blister over, Deok-sun set the carrier down in the shade of the tree where he had rested earlier. As he cooled his sweat, he quietly looked down at his wife, suddenly feeling remorseful for only making her suffer and never feeding her properly. Thinking that if he had known this would happen, he should have at least stolen a neighbor's chicken to feed her, he yelled gruffly,
"Stop crying! What do they know anyway!"
Then he asked,
"Do you want to try a melon?"
"I don't want a melon."
His wife, perhaps burning up inside from the heat, pointed at the iced water being sold in the shade across the street. With the money he had planned to add a penny to in order to buy cigarettes, her husband bought a bowl of iced water and even fed it to her mouth; feeling indebted, his wife drained it in one gulp. After finishing the bowl, when he asked if he should buy her another, this time she said she wanted to eat some Japanese cakes. Deok-sun, thinking this would be the last time, spent the rest of his money to buy three Japanese cakes. He stood for a long time watching his wife crunching on them, not even knowing to wipe her tears. But whatever crossed his wife's mind, she began to sob with the cake still in her mouth, saying,
"Please don't forget to pay back the two measures of rice we borrowed from your cousin."
Realizing this must certainly be his wife's dying wish, he replied,
"Alright, don't worry about that!"
"And explain the situation to Yeong-geun's mother and ask her to wash your clothes."
She spoke quite well for a moment, then contorted her mouth and began weeping silently again.
Deok-sun found her dying wishes so pitiful that tears welled up in his eyes, and he hoisted the carrier back on and stood up. Hurrying to lay her down and getting her at least one more bowl of porridge to eat must be the duty of a husband.
It was mid-summer, under a scorching sun hot enough to melt the ox horns on a saddle.