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  • Chigimi
  • Kim Saryang
    Translated by Yoon Jeong Oh (bio)

I am a lonely person who misses people much by nature and cannot bear even a moment without people. If I were to meet anyone for the second time, I would tap on his shoulder, laugh loudly ha-ha, and even poke his tummy if he is a fatty. I made a fat, high-ranking official angry that way once. Indeed, I am acquainted with people from ministers to coolies. I know their wives even better because I am a "mop seller," a kuzuya1 in the dialect of this town. But kuzuya is no more than a means of earning a living. I am a respectable artist. A man who studies painting. But since I was reproached by the high-ranking official, I cut off the whole acquaintanceship with the officials. That is to say, I broke off business relations with them. Because I despise those who despise me. In fact, there is not even a single person who would understand my feelings. There is no one I can tap on the shoulder. That makes me lonely. I am so lonely. This feeling of loneliness encroaches on me regularly and unexpectedly. When that happens, I miss people so unbearably like when an opium addict craves opium. But I see no one to hug. Then I sling a bag over my shoulder and go to Shibaura.

The Shibaura coast is full of Chosŏn people. Most of okinakashi,2 who work to unload cargo (mostly coal) from different regions, are Koreans. Everyone goes out in the neighborhood around two or three [End Page 371] in the morning and the evening, wearing a dark happi3 with their hair tied with a towel or putting on a toriuchi4 or a rough twine hat. And any hanba5 the size of ten tatami overflows with a good crowd of forty people. Like heaps of potatoes or stacks of coal, they are covered with blankets that look like piles of rice straw starting at eight o'clock at night and growl in their deep sleep. Because they go out to work at three in the morning and come back after three in the afternoon. Their night comes early since over twelve hours of hard labor must begin early before dawn. There are about six hundred okinakashi who do this kind of work. Nevertheless, there is no way that they are all my friends. They never even notice someone like me. If you rashly tap any guy's back in passing here, he will go, "What's wrong?" and slap your face right away. You might even get wrapped and dumped without any trace in the Pacific Ocean. In fact, these guys call the sea here the Pacific Ocean instead of Tokyo Bay and call the wind an American wind. If anyone happens to step on a toe of a sleeping guy in a hanba by accident, he could easily lose his life at the American fist. That is why it is hardly possible for me to have made many friends in a place like this. I only have one friend who is an old man whose name is Chigimi. I miss this old man all the time, and when I miss him, I lose patience and trudge along to drop in on him.

Chigimi is an opium addict who is already sixty years old. As tall as nine ch'ŏk,6 he staggers in the fierce American wind as if to be broken. But Chigimi always bustles about with his two fists on his chest, breathing heavily like a marathon runner. Truly if this life were a marathon, he would be the one already reaching the end, totally weary and tottering. Rushing around, he mumbles chigimichigimichigimi, and no one understands what it means. Because of this he was named Chigimi, though he must have had his own name in the beginning. Chigimi himself now thinks that his name was originally Chigimi. This Chigimi also misses me all [End Page 372] the time except when he craves opium to the point that he runs out of breath. In truth there are times when he...

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