Black Flower (27 page)

Yeonsu sat down on a bench by the street. Her legs hurt. She felt dizzy and hungry. A night watchman carrying a lamp glared at the first woman from Korea he had ever seen. She forced her sore body to rise and continued to walk toward the nearest pier. A savory aroma flowed out of a small alley nearby. It was a familiar smell. She turned her head. A red lantern hung in front of a restaurant. On the lantern were written familiar characters: “Cantonese Restaurant.” She pushed aside the red curtain before the door. Inside, an old Chinese man who looked as if he had once worn his hair in a pigtail, in the style of the Manchus, stared at her. Yeonsu could not understand his Chinese. In Chinese characters she wrote, “I’m hungry. Can I get something to eat?” They wrote back and forth for a moment and he disappeared. Soon he returned and served her hot rice and egg soup. She ate quickly, then a sudden fatigue washed over her. It was far too strong for her to resist. As soon as the owner came and cleared away the dishes, her head dropped onto the table.

As if in a dream, she saw a man moving violently on top of her. But she could not lift a finger. Then everything went black again.

Gwon Yongjun only realized what had happened when morning came. He was seized by rage and cursed his foolishness. She would go back to Yazche hacienda to find her son. Gwon Yongjun paid the innkeeper and called a tailor. When his suit was finished a few days later, he went to the train station and demanded a refund for his ticket. He was denied a refund. He hesitated for a moment. What good would it do to go back and kill her? He would spend the rest of his life in jail. And he wouldn’t be able to drag her back with him. That vicious woman. He poured out every curse he knew, and then he carefully searched the piers and the area around the station, just in case she was still in Veracruz. A few people said they had seen an Asian woman walking about alone. But no one knew where she had gone. A few days later, Gwon Yongjun boarded the train alone.

He arrived in San Francisco and stayed a week. Boats to Yokohama were not frequent. A week was too long a time to spend in a harbor inn. Gwon Yongjun went to Chinatown. It looked as if one of the Chinese markets he had heard of from his father and older brothers had been transplanted to San Francisco. The streets were filled to the brim with old men who practiced augury based on birds, acupuncturists, vendors selling the feet of brown bears and the teeth of Siberian tigers, ducks tottering about with their legs tied to fire hydrants, and the smell of stir-fried vegetables and meat, the fragrant aroma of licorice root wafting from herb sellers’ stands, and the nauseating scent of incense. As Gwon Yongjun ventured deeper into the alleyways, a feeling of tranquility seized him. A woman approached and grabbed his arm. She wore a fragrance that he had inhaled long ago. Men lay in rows, sucking on pipes with their heads turned languidly to the side. Opium. Gwon Yongjun took off his clothes. A woman washed him with hot water and laid him on a bed. Then she lit the opium and handed it to him. It was truly a simple affair. Without taking a boat to Yokohama, he could immediately return to his homeland. He met his father and mother, and he met his older brothers too. He could see Yeonsu slowly sucking on his penis, reassuring him that they made the right choice in leaving.

When he came to his senses, a toothless Chinese woman was kneeling and pouring tea. “Will you be going now?” she asked. Gwon Yongjun shook his head. Then he took a fistful of money from his pocket and gave it to her. “Let’s do it again.” The woman, whose feet had been bound when she was young, hurriedly shuffled out and returned with more opium. When Gwon Yongjun came to his senses again, the ship had departed. But he didn’t mind. This type of life was as comfortable to him as an old shoe. For the first time in a long while he thought of the cruel military officer in his uniform and smiled vaguely.

When Yeonsu woke up she was not in the Chinese restaurant but in a large house. An old Chinese man she had never seen before took out a piece of paper and wrote that he needed a concubine to bear him a son. Yeonsu calmly wrote that she already had a husband and a son and was on her way to find them. The Chinese took out a document and showed it to her: it recorded in Chinese characters the sale of one woman, Yeonsu. The old man pushed some silk clothes toward her. But Yeonsu stubbornly shook her head.

The old man forced himself on Yeonsu every night. But not once did he succeed in taking her. On some nights, two women would come in and hold down Yeonsu’s arms and legs. Even then the old Chinese could not enter her, and would collapse to the floor. The women beat Yeonsu until she was bruised and gave her tea when she woke. When Yeonsu drank the tea, she lost consciousness. It was like one long nightmare.

When she opened her eyes again she was in another Chinese restaurant near the Veracruz piers. Her head hurt. The baggage she had brought with her was gone. A short, fat man stared at her when she woke. He laughed smugly and gave her Chinese women’s clothing to wear. Then he held out another document. Unbeknownst to her, she had become indebted to this man for 100 pesos, and so would have to work for him. “What sort of country buys and sells people like this?” she wrote. “You must have been sold here like me once. This is not fair.” At that, they took away the paper and pen and never gave her another. From that day on, Yeonsu worked all day in the kitchen and served food. It was a large restaurant. The owner’s sons watched her so that she would not escape, and when night fell they locked the door to her room.

Most of the customers were Cantonese, and whenever they came they brought news. Through them, Yeonsu gradually learned about what was going on in the world. Her Cantonese improved more quickly than her Spanish. Seobi appeared before her eyes every night. She also wondered about Ijeong. Where might he be? She would have to return to the hacienda to find him, but she could come up with no way of leaving Veracruz. Gwon Yongjun was right: perhaps following him would have been the best thing to do. There were many days when she regretted her escape.

From time to time she even missed her younger brother, who had made a name for himself as a talented interpreter; her powerless father, who had spent years with his hand to his brow; and her mother, who suffered from depression and dreamed only of suicide. Thankfully, the restaurant owner, Jien, had no designs on her body. He seemed to have bought her without that in mind. But his wife, who had borne him many sons, never took her eyes off the attractive nineteen-year-old Korean maiden. Yeonsu made several failed attempts to escape. The Veracruz police caught her a number of times and returned her to Jien.

W
AITING FOR
I
JEONG
after his escape were heat, thirst, and yet more haciendas. It was a long way to the United States. It took money to get from the Yucatán to the northern border. He worked at haciendas here and there to earn money, and used that money to move forward. Contracts were for at least six months, and the conditions were better than they had been in the Yucatán. This was because there was no money to be paid in advance to brokers. Ijeong worked on chicle and sugar cane haciendas, and sometimes on henequen haciendas.

A few years later, he spread out a map of Mexico and calculated the speed at which he was advancing north. From Mérida to Ciudad Juárez, on the northern border, over four years he had gone 2,100 miles, which made it almost a mile and a half a day. During that time he met countless Mexicans. Life was pretty much the same everywhere: his people had been deluded to think that only the Koreans of the Yucatán were suffering. Petty farmers all across Mexico shared the same plight.

Every time he arrived at a hacienda he sent letters. Jo Jangyun at Chenché sent a reply from time to time. But there were no replies from Yeonsu. Dolseok, who was still living at Yazche, didn’t know how to read. The amount of time that Ijeong spent writing letters gradually decreased. He began to wonder if his love had been betrayed. His doubts consumed him and he became a more cynical person.

Having finally reached Ciudad Juárez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, he came up with a plan to cross into the United States. He was nothing more than a Mexican migrant worker with no entry visa. Crossing the border would be no easy task. He had to make doubly sure of everything. At one point he had procured from Jo Jangyun the address of an organization in Los Angeles called the Korean National Association of North America. As soon as he reached the border city, he sent a letter to them. A reply arrived immediately. They said that since the contracts for the Koreans in Mexico were nearing their end, they had been about to send two representatives to help resolve any legal problems. They would go straight to Ciudad Juárez, so he should wait there.

A month later, two men came to see Ijeong. One of them was Hwang Sayong and the other was Bang Hwajung. The two wore black suits and had their hair cut short, parted neatly and oiled. Bang Hwajung was an evangelist, and Hwang Sayong was in charge of affairs for the Korean National Association.

“The contracts end in one month, right?” asked Hwang Sayong. Ijeong was momentarily stunned. Had it been that long? “What is the situation like in the Yucatán?” asked Bang Hwajung.

“It’s been over three years since I left, so I don’t know what the situation is like now, but when we first arrived it was horrible beyond compare.” Ijeong showed them his cracked hands. “This is life on the haciendas. It is not only a problem in the Yucatán. There is no hope in Mexico. Only the hacendados fill their bellies, while the rest of the citizens suffer from hunger and hard labor. The citizens of this country are suffering, so there is no room for foreigners like us to squeeze in. We came to the wrong place.”

Ijeong looked at the map they had spread out. He marked Chenché hacienda, where Jo Jangyun was, and the haciendas where he himself had worked on his journey north. “You should meet Jo Jangyun first. Chenché hacienda is the biggest, and everyone follows him. But what is the United States like?”

Bang Hwajung said, “I don’t think it is as bad as here. There is a shortage of workers in California, so the wages have gone up a lot. But you will still have to live as a day laborer. A few of our brethren have opened small shops, but these are exceptions to the rule. If you have nothing special to do, how about returning with us to the Yucatán?”

“No. I must go to the United States.” The twenty-year-old Ijeong spoke resolutely and offered them a drink. But they declined, being faithful Baptists. The next day, they set out on the long road to the Yucatán.

J
O
J
ANGYUN RECEIVED
news from Kim Seokcheol and Seo Gijung, who had been released early and gone to Mérida, that the representatives of the Korean National Association had arrived in the port of Progreso. That day happened to be Sunday. As the representative of the Protestants on the hacienda, Jo Jangyun asked the overseer for permission for them to leave. The overseer secured his assurance that he would take responsibility for their return and then gave his permission. This was the normal weekly procedure when the Protestants gathered at a house in Mérida for worship, and at times as many as seventy or eighty of them attended from various haciendas. Ignacio Velásquez hated Protestantism as much as he hated shamanism, but since their contracts were about to expire anyway, he and the other hacendados allowed the Protestants to go out on Sunday as long as there was nothing else happening.

When Jo Jangyun went to Mérida, he found that Bang Hwajung and Hwang Sayong had already arrived. The people gathered there were glad to see the visitors, grabbing their hands and bemoaning their own plight. In their neat black suits, the two men looked strong, unlike the Koreans of the Yucatán. They left a deep impression when they spoke in fluent English with the American Baptist missionary who had come out to greet them. The Yucatán Koreans felt pitiful compared to them. Their faces were so blackened that they looked like Jamaican slaves, and their cracked hands looked like wood that had been sawed.

“What is the most pressing matter?” Bang Hwajung asked Jo Jangyun. Jo Jangyun spoke without hesitation: “First, that we receive the one hundred pesos in compensation that is due when our contracts expire.” Hwang Sayong cut in, “Let’s see the contract.” Jo Jangyun and Kim Seokcheol handed him copies of their own contracts. It was only after some time that Hwang Sayong was able to find the sentence, written in small print, that said they would be paid one hundred pesos. “Good, let’s give it a try. We will need to hire a lawyer.” Jo Jangyun said, “We don’t have that kind of money.” Hwang Sayong laughed. “The money will come from the Korean National Association. In return, when you are released, you will all have to join and pay your dues.” Everyone’s faces grew brighter.

The next day, Bang Hwajung and Hwang Sayong went to the city hall, across the street from the cathedral, secured a list of registered lawyers, and hired one from a nearby office. With this lawyer, they sought out each of the hacendados who were trying to avoid paying the one hundred pesos and negotiated the matter.

A few days later, after Jo Jangyun had gone back to the hacienda, the Deva King, Kim Seokcheol, said, “There is another important problem.” “What is that?” asked Bang Hwajung. Kim Seokcheol brought two Koreans to them. They called themselves Shin Bonggwon and Yang Gunbo. They had married Mayan women and had children; they asked to be able to bring their wives and children out from the haciendas with them. They said that there were many others in a similar position. Shin Bonggwon’s wife had had three children during those four years. “My, you’ve been prolific,” joked Bang Hwajung, but they did not laugh. Bang Hwajung and Hwang Sayong never once thought the matter would be difficult or serious. They couldn’t imagine that anyone would not be allowed to bring his family. They made up their minds to meet with the hacendados and settle the matter. “Who would be best to visit first?” Those who knew the situation in the Yucatán recommended Don Carlos Menem of Chenché hacienda.

Yet Don Carlos Menem was unexpectedly obstinate on the issue. It was not so much that his attitude was resolute; he just did not believe there was any need to discuss it. He simply laughed. “Children born on a hacienda belong to the hacendado. To whom does the woman belong? To me, the hacendado. Now this woman has a child. So to whom does it belong?” Bang Hwajung said, “In our country, we consider the child to belong to the father.” Menem lit his cigar. “This is not your country. And would you be able to prove that he is really the father of that child? Do you know why a child is given the father’s family name in all the countries of the world? Because only then will fathers believe that the children are theirs and feed, house, and raise them. The family name is the social answer to a father’s mistrust. The only thing that is certain is that the mother gave birth to the child. On the haciendas here, the identity of the father is uncertain, unclear, and unnecessary. Go back and ask in Mérida. The law is on my side. The law does not like such vagaries.”