The calm fabric of the night was torn by a sound like an approaching thunderstorm. But the moon was still visible in the blue-black sky—it was the roar of engines that buried the music. People stopped singing and watched as army trucks rolled by, flying the Japanese flag on their hoods and carrying soldiers in the back. Suddenly, people were murmuring among themselves: “Japan is attacking Beijing. It’s finally happening.”
“China gave up Manchuria, but it will rouse itself for its mainland.”
“They’ve woken up the sleeping giant.”
“Shh, the birds and the mice have ears. Watch what you say.”
“It was bad enough as it is . . . A full-out war and we’ll likely all get killed.”
“What’s going on?” Jade asked, rapidly being pulled out of her dream world by the noises rushing around her. JungHo was saying something but his words were being drowned by the sirens. The yellow headlights of the trucks glared into her face and she closed her eyes once more. The only thing she felt sure of was the firm grip of JungHo’s hand, not letting go.
Part III
1941–1948
21
Purple Shadows
1941
WHEN JUNGHO ARRIVED AT THE BACK GATE OF THE OLD CHINESE RESTAURANT, an unfamiliar guard with a shaved head was posted outside.
“Password,” the guard said, crossing his arms over his vast chest. JungHo paused; he hadn’t heard that there was a new door policy.
“Nam JungHo,” he said at last.
“Ah, oyabun!” The numbskull—as JungHo called him in his mind—snapped to attention and bowed deeply from the waist. “Please forgive my ignorance!” He opened the door as wide as the hinges would allow, and the shorter man passed through.
The courtyard was unrecognizable from his boyhood years. The chestnut tree in the center had been cut down and YoungGu’s dog that had been tied to it had also died long ago. The disappearance of its howls and yelps left a strangely lasting void in the air, like a place on the wall where an old frame has been removed.
JungHo felt a sharp pang at this, more than he felt at the death of many humans—both the ones that had nothing to do with him, and others for whom he’d played a crucial role in speeding up the mortal process. He would not, would never, become a habitual killer; but he’d long believed that with the exception of very few individuals there was no one who was truly good and honorable. They lied, cheated, betrayed their friends, family, and country—then doubled back, then doubled back again, just to save their skins. When the government-general decreed that all Koreans had to change their names to Japanese ones, half the country had immediately lined up to cast aside what their parents and their forebears had passed down. They believed in nothing, he thought, if they could give up their own names so easily. His contempt for humanity was becoming more pronounced as the years went on, and even made him value his own life less. He took a deep breath to clear this thought; there was a side of him still that wanted to hold on to his little remaining innocence.
The courtyard was filled with people waiting in silence to barter their gold and jewels. At the top of the queue, YoungGu was seated in a booth, flanked by a guard on each side and receiving the supplicants one at a time. He had stopped running the restaurant when the war broke out and started buying goods from the provinces and selling them for an unspeakable price in Seoul. The army had long ago confiscated all the valuables they could, but somehow the heirlooms kept surfacing from inside silk-filled comforters and jars hidden under wooden floors. Once those ran out, desperate people brought land deeds and promises of repayment with staggering interest—JungHo knew this part without being told.
With a hand over his heart, YoungGu insisted to JungHo that he didn’t do any of this for money. It was something that had to be done, and it was better done by him, a man of the people, was it not? Nonetheless, he took to the black market business wholeheartedly, the way some people enjoy themselves and become more sharply alive during crises—those ambiguous spaces between clear life and death. To chaos, they reacted with a kind of meaningless sanguinity, unlike those limp-wristed intellectuals who lost their desire to keep on living. What other alternatives there were to these two modes, JungHo did not know. He noticed that YoungGu looked happier than in the early years of his marriage when the children were small and the restaurant was thriving.
Upon catching sight of JungHo, YoungGu waved away his subordinates, rose, and walked briskly toward him with open arms. He had lost some weight around his middle since the start of the war, but in a way that made him look younger and healthier. He was wearing a brown corduroy waistcoat over a clean cotton shirt and trousers, like a well-to-do pharmacist receiving helpless patients.