Silver Stallion Read online

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  White Badge

  First published in Seoul in 1986

  Translated from the Korean by the author.

  Copyright © 1990 by Ahn Junghyo.

  All rights reserved under International

  and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Published in the United States by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  1 Union Square

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  Ahn, Junghyo, 1941—

  Silver Stallion/Ahn Junghyo.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-939149-30-3

  1. Korean War,—1950–1953—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9520.9.A78S5 1990

  823—dc20 89-39219

  CIP

  Book design and composition by The Sarabande Press

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First American Edition

  TO DR. GEORGE SIDNEY

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  PART I

  THE VILLAGE

  PART II

  TEXAS TOWN

  PART III

  THE CHILDREN

  Part I

  THE VILLAGE

  ONE

  Old Hwang flung open the gate to usher the new day into his house. The sun had not come up yet and late stars glimmered faintly in the dawn-tinged eastern sky. He could tell by their positions that this was the fourth hour. He always woke up before the roosters; he was an old man and did not need much sleep.

  He took a bush-clover broom from the rice barn and started sweeping the courtyard. By the time he reached the stepping stones outside the gate, white streaks of smoke rose gently from the low earthen chimneys of the huts in the fields. The women inside were cooking the breakfast rice. Farmers trickled out of their homes one after another, each slinging a shovel or a long-handled hoe over his shoulder, to do some work before the first meal. This was the tranquil landscape the old man had watched from his gate at this early hour on summer days all his life.

  Then Old Hwang glanced over at the huge columns of dark smoke rising from the town. He frowned. High in the air above Phoenix Hill black clouds of smoke hung suspended like great chunks of frozen vapor. The air raid over the town had lasted for about two hours yesterday afternoon and the buildings near the railroad station were still burning.

  The farmers of Kumsan village had never considered that the war had anything to do with them. Until as recently as yesterday morning, in fact, they had hardly believed that a war was actually going on. Some of the villagers had seen Communists guarding buildings draped with red flags when they went to town to sell radishes or straw ropes. Nobody dared to go near the People’s Army soldiers armed with the strange Russian rifles. But the presence of those soldiers in town was the only visible evidence of war for the villagers, although it had been three months since this war had broken out. Some townspeople said the Communist Army had come to liberate the South and unify the divided nation; others that the Reds were nothing but bloody murderers who were determined to wipe out the southern half of the nation. Confused by these conflicting rumors, the villagers listened and nodded or shook their heads half-heartedly: “Whatever you say, whatever you say.”

  Old Hwang spat twice to ward off evil fortune in general and went back to the rice barn, muttering, to replace the broom. The old man was vaguely apprehensive. What was happening at the town might eventually affect his village, too, but he could not believe it.

  As he was drawing water at the garden well to wash himself, a sparrow twittered tentatively in the lone magnolia standing outside the earthen wall. He cleaned his teeth with salt and gargled loudly by the chest-high wall, watching the floating fog slowly recede across the rice paddies toward the river. He washed his face and sprinkled the used water in the narrow flower bed by the gate. Then he glanced again at the sky over town. Now he could see the smoke more clearly. It looked much dirtier now that the grayness of dawn had vanished from the sky.

  The old man shook his head, narrowing his eyes in displeasure. If something were to go wrong with Kumsan or the other nearby villages, he would be primarily responsible because he was the county chief. A generation ago, his father had been appointed chief both by the farmers in the county and the Japanese authorities in the town, although there had never been any official election. Nobody questioned the authority of the Hwangs, the wealthiest and most educated family in the West County for the last eight generations. If a perplexing dispute arose among the farmers on this side of the two rivers, they naturally came to consult the Hwangs, to obtain their wisdom and hear their judgment. Due to their high status, the Hwangs would be the first target if the Communists took control of the West County. The merchants in town said “listed persons,” those who had held public offices before the war, including policemen and village chiefs, had been arrested and even executed by the Communist cadres. Hwang had heard many incredible tales of massacre, but those tales made no sense to him and he refused to believe them. Such propaganda was liable to circulate in times of war.

  The old man heard the rooster give his hoarse morning crow beyond the stable. He went over to the pen. Hens cackled noisily and expectantly on their perch, flapping their wings, as he opened the rickety plank door of the wire cage. The chickens fluttered out of the door, passed around his legs, and flocked to look for stray grains of rice. The brash, multicolored rooster pranced audaciously a little distance behind his hens. The old man chuckled at the pretentious gait of the rooster, aloof and detached like a grave patriarch; he always liked the proud ones, men and animals alike.

  He entered the dusky hen house, which was fishy smelling from chicken droppings, picked up an egg from the straw-padded nest, and smiled. The egg was still warm against his palm and the smooth pleasant warmth of the eggshell reminded him of his grandson’s testicles, that always felt soft and reassuring to his touch. The egg made him feel much more confident and he decided to believe that the war would not affect his world after all.

  When the Japanese had invaded, tens of generations ago, the Southern Pirates paid no attention to this remote village; it had no riches to loot. The Mongol horde plundered the country several decades later, but the Northern Barbarians did not notice this secluded region. Five centuries later, Japan colonized the country for thirty-six long years, but no Japanese, not even a single soldier or policeman, had ever shown up at Kumsan village. During this period of colonial rule, collection of tax and “war-supporting materials” such as spoons and washbasins and all sorts of metal objects was undertaken in the West County by Korean petty officials dispatched from town.

  The national liberation five years ago had not brought changes either. They were supposed to have been officially liberated from the Japanese Imperialists, but nothing actually happened. There was not a single incident of confrontation between the rich and the poor, the landowners and the peasants: The farmers lived on, without politics. They farmed the little land they had and produced what they needed for survival. Most were born in the West County, lived there and died there. Outsiders rarely moved into this unpromising land. At Kumsan village, time had simply stopped.

  For most West County farmers, the town of Chunchon was the only outside world they ever saw. They never bothered to find out what might exist beyond it. These out-of-the-way farmers were not much impressed by the news that an American general with the queer name of Megado, commanding thousands and thousands of the United Nations Forces, had landed at Inchon to liberate the South Korean people. The villagers thought nothing would be changed if they were liberated once more by the famous American general.

  Old Hwang did not believe it mattered too
much even if his county remained unliberated. There were many things the old man could not understand about war.

  Old Hwang chased the last chicken on the perch out of the pen and collected the eggs from the nests. He took the wicker basket hanging on the hook nailed into the clay wall and put the eggs, one by one, carefully into it. He brought the heavy basket to the kitchen, where his daughter-in-law, sitting on the rolled rush mattress, was burning pine branches and dry oak leaves in the oven hole under the cauldron to cook the rice, cradling her eleven-month-old son on her lap with her free hand. As white steam began to hiss out through the chink under the lid of the cauldron, she scattered the burning branches in the oven and covered the fire with ash. She removed the heavy wooden lid to see how well the rice was done. The rice was cooked just right and she replaced the lid; she had to wait half an hour longer for the compressed steam inside the cauldron to turn the grains palatably gelatinous. In the meantime, she had to prepare several side dishes. For breakfast today, she planned to serve parsley pickles, soybean paste soup and sweet potato cubes in sauce.

  Old Hwang stopped by the kitchen door which was smudged by old smoke stains. He cleared his throat so his daughter-in-law would be aware of his approach. She quickly examined herself to see that she was properly dressed before bowing to him with her eyes lowered.

  “Did you have a good sleep last night, Father?” She gave him the morning greeting.

  “I did, I did,” he said, offering the egg basket to her. “You have twelve of them this morning. How many are you going to sell today?”

  She laid her son on the pile of pine branches and came up to the door from the sunken cooking area to take the basket. “We won’t have anything left to sell today, Father,” she said. “Kangho’s mother promised to bring me a pair of cotton trousers for the child from the town. I already gave her ten eggs for the pants and she will come again this afternoon to collect another ten.”

  “Fine, that’s fine.” The old man cleared his throat once more to tell her that their conversation was over, and left.

  Young Hwang was stretching himself luxuriantly by the stable when his father coughed behind him. He turned back with an embarrassed smile. “Have you slept comfortably, Father?” he said.

  “Yes, my son. Going out to the field?”

  “Yes, Father. I want to finish weeding the sesame patch before sunrise,” the son said, removing the crossbar of the stable door. “I will take care of the broken dike after breakfast.”

  “You won’t need that animal for weeding the sesame patch, will you?” the old man said as Young Hwang herded the ox out of the stable.

  “Oh. Changsu’s father wants to borrow it this morning to remove the stump of a dead tree in his back yard,” the son said. “I told him you wouldn’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind,” the old man said. “Just tell him to bring us some jujubes when he harvests them. We’ll need many kinds of fruits for the autumn memorial service for the ancestors.”

  “I will, Father.” The son rolled up the sleeves of his mud-caked shirt to his elbows and drove the ox out of the gate, ordering the beast, “Iryo, iryo! This way!”

  Old Hwang watched his son and the ox hasten down the bank of the stream which ran down the middle of Kumsan village. He was proud of his only son and regretted that he did not have ten more sons like him because his first wife had died only two months after Sokku’s birth from too much flux, and his second wife had been barren.

  He sighed.

  Once more he glanced over at the dark smoke still rising from the town. This was a morning like any other, but he sensed an overshadowing gloom. Ever since the air raid, he had not been able to shake off the fear that today might not be like so many yesterdays had been.

  Laughing and chattering, five boys and a dog strode and hopped along the narrow winding path in the woods on General’s Hill. In the east the sun was just coming up to bleach the sky white with late summer heat; brilliant sun rays filled the air over the patterned rice paddies and quiet river as the last thin layer of floating fog burned off. The glimmering ripples of the river sparkled like powdered glass.

  In the north, the Soyang River skirted the foot of Phoenix Hill and meandered down the sandy plain like a giant turquoise serpent to define the eastern edge of West County. The North Han River branched out from the main body of the Soyang River a little upstream from the Kumsan ferry and then the two streams joined again forming a long cucumber-shaped island. Then the river disappeared into the V-shaped Kangchon valley. Phoenix Hill looked like a volcano now with dark smoke from the bombed buildings slowly rising high above its peak, but the boys were too engrossed in their expedition to notice anything beyond the dew drops shimmering like crystal beads at the tips of the pine needles along the mountain path.

  The boys were cheerful because the sun was bright and the mountain air was crisp and, above all, because they were on a special expedition this morning to search for the Secret Cave. This was not the first time that the Kumsan boys had come to this hill two miles away from their village to search for the legendary cave. They searched this hill several times every year but so far had never succeeded in discovering the mythical cavern underneath a huge white rock where a great general had been born twenty generations ago. Almost all the farmers of Kumsan, Hyonam, Kamwa, Charcoal and Castle villages had come here in hopes of finding the cave at one time or another in their childhood when they had been young enough to believe in fairy tales about egg goblins and tobacco-smoking tigers. But nobody in the West County had located the secret cave yet. The Kumsan boys were determined to be the first; Kumsan was the village located nearest to General’s Hill and the boys believed that the hill, along with the legend, naturally belonged to them.

  The legend said that long long ago in the ancient days of the Chosun Dynasty, savage Mongols invaded the country, burned all the beautiful palaces and Buddhist temples, killed the valiant Korean warriors in droves in one fierce battle after another, and destroyed all the great cities as they marched on the capital city of Songak. At this time of impending crisis for the kingdom, the benevolent mountain spirits sent a seven-foot-tall general to this world to save the distressed king and his doomed people. This general was not born as an infant but as a fully-grown man with a three-foot-long beard cascading down his chest. His birth cry was so thunderous, the legend said, that more than ten mountains around the town collapsed while heaven and earth trembled alike in fear at the terrific bellow. At the very moment when the general flew out of the pale bleached rock, a thunderbolt shattered the frozen air into a thousand pieces and a silvery stallion with a dazzling crystal mane leaped out from the lush eastern gulch of Phoenix Hill. The silver horse galloped across the sky, over patches of rainbow-colored clouds, toward the awaiting general, who soared up into the air to mount his steed. After a deafening war cry, they galloped to the royal city to defeat the Mongols and rescue the besieged king. At each stroke of his tremendous weapon, three thousand enemy fighters fell dead before the general, like falling leaves before the autumn wind. It took only one afternoon for him to save the whole nation with his mighty sword.

  For West County boys, the most fascinating part of this legend was that the white rock and the entrance to the cave were instantly covered by bushes and vanished from sight when the general left for Songak. The farmers were told by their parents, generation after generation, that the cave entrance would open again if the nation faced another major crisis that required the return of its savior, the general on the silver stallion. He did not return when the Japanese invaded and enslaved the Koreans for four decades. Perhaps that was not a big enough crisis, or the general might have been taking a very long nap at that time. Now there was a big war going on all over the country. Surely this was the time for the general’s return. Maybe the cave entrance had already opened somewhere in the gulch, so the general could ride out to attack the enemy.

  The Kumsan boys had set out with high hopes that morning because a week earlier a woodcutter from C
astle village said he had found a deep pit hidden under entangled tendrils and dense foliage in a steep ravine near Eagle Rock. It might be the entrance to the legendary cave. The woodcutter said he had also seen a part of the white flat boulder beneath the heavily intertwining leaves and branches in the pit. The Castle village boys were planning to go with the woodcutter to explore the pit soon. The Kumsan boys wanted to be the first to find the cave.

  A short procession of five boys and a dog climbed the ridge and picked their way along the narrow, winding path. The dog was considered a member of the gang because it always accompanied Mansik, the boy who lived at the Chestnut House.

  The sun was blazing yellow high in the sky when the five exhausted boys and the dog began to plod down the western ridge of General’s Hill along the weedy pathway. They rounded a wide, dark brown boulder partly covered with moss and creepers, burrowed into tall weeds, and then appeared again at the other side of an acacia bush. Chandol, the tallest and strongest boy among them, was in the lead while Mansik and his dog trailed in the rear.

  “We’ve been walking through the woods for four hours now, but where is the cave?” complained Kijun irritably. The stocky, short boy obviously found it very difficult to climb up and down the ridges as fast as the other boys did, and then push his way through the intermingling arrowroot tendrils and mulberry bushes that thrived on the crags among the pines. “My legs are so tired. Let’s take a rest.”

  “You want to rest every five minutes,” said Chandol impatiently, pushing an oak branch aside and stooping to pass under a low-hanging knotty pine bough. “If you can’t walk fast enough, you’d better go home.”

  “I don’t want to go home alone,” said Kijun, still petulant but somewhat intimidated. “Let’s all go home. It’s almost noon and we’d better go and have lunch.” But he immediately realized that he had put his foot in his mouth. Among the five boys, only Kangho and Kijun were sure to have lunch if they went back home; the other boys often skipped a meal because their families could not afford the noon rice every day. He quickly added, “The cave is not in this gulch. I know for sure that it’s not here. We’d better go home instead of wasting any more time.”