From Wonso Pond (43 page)

Sonbi was certain that the supervisor was going call her in, and all day long she could feel her heart racing. She couldn't concentrate on her work, and her threads kept breaking. All the girls who had been close to Kannan were called in by the supervisor, even the girls in the neighboring rooms. But for some reason no one called Sonbi. This made her even more nervous. The whole dorm knew that she and Kannan had been close friends—even the supervisors knew that much—so anyone would have thought that she'd be the first person to be questioned. But as the day drew to a close, she still had heard no word from any of the supervisors, and she thought it all so strange that she started to feel very scared.

“I say good for Kannan! W hat's the use of being in here anyway?”

“You can say that again. But only the devil knows how she did it.”

“Who knows, maybe she fell in love with some man? Someone must have helped her escape, right . . . ?”

“Even if she had a boyfriend, though, how could she have climbed over a wall that high? And where would she have gone?”

Kannan had caused something of a sensation among the girls who discussed it as they ate in the cafeteria; they knew that even if the skies collapsed, they wouldn't be able to escape.

“Hey, Sonbi, I bet you know all the details. Kannan must have told you she was leaving. She did, didn't she?” It was the girl who was always joking.

Sonbi was afraid the girl had some way of knowing what had actually happened. Her faced flushed and she bent her head down. But after pretending to pick out a stone from her bowl of rice, she lifted her head up and smiled.

“Actually, just before Kannan escaped, she asked me to go with her. But since I like working here in the factory so much, I turned down her offer.”

All of them burst into a peal of laughter.

“The truth is, I'd be the first one to pick up and leave this place if I ever had the chance, that's for sure. I mean, why should anyone have to put up with this?”

“Well, I heard from Kannan that she wasn't getting along with Sonbi any longer. You want to hear what she said?”

Speaking with her mouth full, a girl with thin eyelids looked Sonbi square in the face. While at one time Sonbi would have blushed to hear such a thing, she now felt quite pleased that the factory girls had come up with this interpretation.

“Well, d'you want to hear about it, or not?” said the thin-lidded girl with a grin.

“Look, if you want to say something, just come out and say it,” exclaimed a long-faced girl. “Why try to torture us like this, reading into everything we say, when the most you're going to tell us is that the supervisor has the hots for Sonbi. Am I right? Well, why pretend it's such a big secret? Hell, the whole dorm knows that much.”

The long-faced girl spoke as though she wasn't interested in the slightest, and she continued to stuff herself with rice. Sonbi felt uncomfortable hearing “the whole dorm knows,” but her feelings were so confused that it would have been hard for her to explain herself. She forced herself to smile.

Once Sonbi came back upstairs from the cafeteria, the supervisor called to her from his office.

She could feel a lump in her throat. All the answers she'd spent the
whole night preparing in case the supervisor were to question her seemed to disappear into thin air. She didn't know what to do and just stood there blankly.

“Well, if you haven't done anything wrong, then what's there to worry about,” said one of her roommates beside her. Sonbi's legs were trembling.

Only after he called a second time did Sonbi get up to go. She made her way out of her room and rubbed her flushed face. She tried to calm herself, but her heart kept racing. She took one step forward, and then one step back.

“How will I ever be able to carry out my work here acting like this? I've got to be strong! I've got to make my lies sound convincing in front of them!” she thought. It was as though she were shouting these words to herself as she opened the door to the supervisor's office and walked inside.

The man took a drag on his cigarette, and smiled as soon he saw Sonbi. She stood silently, gathering all the courage she possibly could. He cleared his throat and started to speak.

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“Have you been sick recently?”

At the unanticipated question, Sonbi was unsure if she understood what he'd actually said. When she lifted her head just enough to look at him, she saw that it wasn't the Tiger Supervisor, with those hatefully shifting eyes, but rather Supervisor Ko, the one they'd all nicknamed the Clown. Sonbi's nerves were put somewhat at ease. Ko had less of an attitude. He may have joked around a little too much, but he was always quick to sense somebody's feelings. For this reason the girls treated him more kindly than any of the other supervisors.

“Sonbi, you're looking a little pale. You should take better care of yourself.”

Supervisor Ko cleared his throat loudly, then looked at Sonbi's downcast face. Here was the girl that all his co-workers had been secretly feuding over! There was always something new about her beauty to appreciate. It was still up in the air whose hands she would fall into at the end of the day. His co-workers were all fiercely jealous of each other,
and while none of them had yet gotten their way with this one, they were all trying as hard as they could to curry her favor. That was why each one of them enjoyed doing dormitory duty and regretted having to go home in the morning.

“Take a seat. Come on, sit down.”

The Clown lifted up a chair and moved it over next to her. Sonbi sat down and smoothed out the folds in her skirt. She wanted him to get on with his questions about Kannan so she could answer them and get out of there. Whenever she found herself facing one of the supervisors she felt awkward, almost as though she were overcome by that same unpleasantness she felt when facing Tokho.

“So, Sonbi, you come from the same village as this girl Kannan who just escaped, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“You don't happen to remember anything she might have said to you before she left, do you?”

Sonbi knew that the Clown was sharp, and assumed that he was asking her these questions in full knowledge of what had actually happened. The color rushed into her face. She set her wits to work to come up with an answer.

“Well . . . I wasn't paying much attention to what she said, so I don't really remember.”

The Clown blinked his eyes several times.

“It doesn't have to be anything important . . . Let's say, for example, maybe she was complaining about how hard the work was in the factory, or how one of the supervisors was treating her badly?”

“I don't really remember.”

“Hmm.”

Staring at Sonbi's apple-colored cheeks, the Clown could hardly control himself. He felt hot all over: Damn, she's . . . He wanted to jump forward right now and sweep her in his arms. But he was afraid that if any one of his co-workers found out about it, he'd be reported to his superiors, which meant his own job might be on the line.

“Well, what do you think about Kannan leaving like that?”

Judging from how well-behaved she normally was, the Clown had no real suspicions about her. Besides, they were sleeping in separate rooms, so she probably didn't know anything about it, he figured. He'd called her in and was asking her all these questions, for no other reason
than to sit down with her face to face. He watched her expressions carefully in order to gauge exactly how friendly she was toward him.

“I believe her conduct was immoral.”

Sonbi just barely came out with these words that her heart did not own. The supervisor smiled at her.

“Well! Of course her conduct was immoral. No factory girl could get out of here on her own. She must have planned her escape with a man. And where could she have gone all alone, anyway? Did Supervisor Yi by any chance mention something to you?”

Judging from this, it seemed as though the supervisors were becoming suspicious of each other.

“Well, did he?” he pressed her.

Sonbi put her hand up to her mouth and coughed softly. Then she let out a soft sigh of relief, now that she was confident the supervisor wasn't suspicious of her.

“Why won't you answer me? Now, tell me, did he say anything to you?”

“Yes!”

“Oh, come on, you keep saying yes, yes, yes, without thinking about what I'm actually asking you. Now, tell me, did he ask you anything about all this?”

That pest, Supervisor Yi, had sure enough called her in several days ago and asked her something or other about Kannan, but since Supervisor Ko was pretending he didn't know this, Sonbi now wondered whether he had already compared notes with Supervisor Yi. Just then Sonbi suddenly remembered what Kannan used to always tell her: “Don't always look so sulky when you talk with the supervisors. You have to at least pretend to smile. That way you'll really keep them guessing.” Sonbi smiled, thinking how funny Kannan's comment was. Just then, they heard the sound of someone climbing the stairs . . .

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The supervisor now looked serious. “Hell, you don't know a thing about Kannan, do you? Go on, get out!”

Sonbi left as soon as the words crossed his lips. Once in her room, she could hear muddled voices coming from the supervisor's office. Her roommates stared at her, ready to hang on her every word.

“So . . . what did he say?”

Sonbi took out her bedding and spread it on the floor. “What do you mean, what did he say? It's always the same old story.”

“Well, aren't you coming to night school?”

“No, I'm not feeling so well.”

“What's the matter?”

“I don't know . . . I'm just really tired.”

Seeing that Sonbi was in such low sprits, the others assumed the supervisor had given her a horrible scolding. They all left the room with fear in their eyes: would the supervisor call them in, too?

Sonbi felt sick. She couldn't remember how long she had felt like this, but whenever she tried to relax, she felt chills throughout her body and her forehead broke out into a terrible sweat. When this happened, she couldn't stop thinking about the heated floor she'd once slept on. That grass hut where she and her mother had once lived together! Stoke the fire with just a half a bundle of wood and how toasty warm it would be . . . If only she could snuggle under the covers and sweat out her cold on a heated floor like that. In no time at all she'd feel as good as new.

She fell asleep for a while, then awoke at some point to find a full moon shining in through the glass window. She wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead and lay back down facing the moon. Judging from what the supervisor had asked her, she was fairly sure that he wasn't suspicious of her. But while she was relieved of much of the anxiety that Kannan's escape had caused her, she now bore on her shoulders the heavy burden of her mission, and she was overwhelmed with the almost impossible task of carrying it out. Everything that Kannan had taught her flashed into her mind: the factory cells, the organization guidelines, the way she'd have to be in contact with comrades on the outside, the secret way of distributing leaflets and other notes that came from the outside. Oh, if only Kannan had waited just a little longer before she left, I wouldn't be in this mess, she thought, after trying for a while to make sense of it all. But had Kannan even made it out safely? And what could have happened out there for Kannan to be called out so suddenly? Maybe some of them were arrested, she thought, struck with a keen sense of unease. And what kind of people were these comrades of hers, anyway, who she hadn't even met yet? Were they people like Ch'otchae? Maybe Ch'otchae was one of them? But judging from the time she'd seen him on her way to Wolmido, Ch'otchae seemed to be
working as some sort of day laborer, instead of in a factory. Most likely he had never met one of the leaders . . . Sonbi assumed that Ch'otchae was simply trying to keep himself busy, and hadn't yet found the path which would lead him out of the darkness. And when Sonbi thought about Ch'otchae in this way, she wanted to meet him more than ever. More than anything she wanted to bring him into class consciousness. She knew he was likely to become a fearsome fighter, far stronger than anyone she knew.

While Sonbi couldn't be certain, she wondered if this had something to do with that fact that Ch'otchae had suffered bitter moments in his past that were incomparable with her own. Was he still stealing from people? But when she thought about it, she clearly understood why he had started stealing to begin with and how this related to his being the son of a prostitute. She wanted to meet Ch'otchae as soon as possible and to teach him to fight alongside the masses, not just act as an individual.

Could he still be in Inch'on? Maybe he's gone off somewhere else? And why on earth was I so scared of him back in the countryside? As Sonbi's thoughts raced on like this, she remembered once again how she'd tossed away the sumac roots Ch'otchae had dug up for her, and yet stashed under her bed Tokho's money. Looking down at herself now, she felt so ashamed, so mortified, that she could feel cold sweat running down her back. But that wasn't the least of it! Hadn't she wept when Tokho had stolen her virginity! Hadn't she wished she were dead time after time! How utterly childish of her and how stupid she had been! The Sonbi who had once looked into Tokho's eyes and cried “Father! Oh, Father!”—that Sonbi was no longer the person she was now. And with this thought, so too came another: that of her own father's death, about which she had always held suspicions. Granny Sobun was right! Sonbi jumped to her feet hardly knowing what she was doing. A sharp pain ran through her fingers. She pressed them up against her cheeks. Having barely managed to escape from Tokho, here she was in the clutches of human beings far more terrifying—she could feel this in her bones. But the Sonbi of today was no longer that Sonbi of the past . . . she wanted to cry this out at the top of her lungs.