Chapters 25.26:In Front of the Teletypes

25
Decked with Chrysanthemums, 1972

One of the colleagues was inquisitive about me Dano: Where he had been, what he had been doing, how he had come to join them, and what he would do. He was not being hilarious about the food thing. He was being serious. Others concurred; They were not insinuating anything; They were just curious about Dano's job shift from an elementary school teacher to a newspaper "reporter." The proofreader was referred to as "reporter."

Dano defined his erstwhile experiences as a man of default, or a "default man." They wanted to know what he meant by a default man. He blandly explained to them the person in question as a human being who had made various attempts but achieved virtually nothing. His occupational journey after he had left pedagogical job for good in the year 1971 included a mineral water and insurance salesman. He did not dare mention his stunt in judicial examination, that is, the Korean version of Bar Exam.

There had been family accidents and catastrophes during the launching years of the 1970s. Ilseo, Dano's next immediate brother, had had his legs broken in a demonstration of a special alpine training course in the Nth Division in some place, the U.S. Armed Forces Korea. He had been a rock climbing instructor for the U.S. Army officers. Dano's sister, who had been born in Sun Valley after the Korean War, had left home to become a Buddhist nun.

Tschai, vulnerable to Dano's whims, had been thrown off guard on and off. Although inwardly terrified at first of all the unwholesome situation about her, uprooted and without resources, she had outwardly remained calm and composed. She had always gotten herself prepared to face the harsh realities by opening the seamstress' shop, lest "the spider should build webs on the mouths" of her family.

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Mrs. Euiseong Kim was a mystery to Tschai since Tschai had made an encounter with her after her marriage to Dano. The scene, in which her grandmother-in-law had been confined, was a shock to her because, although her grandmother on her father's side had also been suffering from Alzheimer's disease, nobody in the family had gotten her grandmother caged and nobody had ever thought of keeping their beleaguered elderly in captivity. What had shocked her more than anything else was that her unfortunate grandmother-in-law had recognized her at first sight. Tschai, who had been forced to live, albeit for the time being, at Oksan, had once stopped by to look after her grandmom, who, when seeing her, had brightened her face and astonished her with her sane recognition and the exact guess by saying "Have you been to the bazaar to buy salt?"

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On an autumnal night of October 1972, Dano's grandma had passed away with a great cry that could have torn the air into pieces. On that very day she had been uncaged. Dano had wondered why the sky didn't fall down. It had stayed bright and clear. The sky had been so studded with stars that it had appeared to pour them on earth. The chrysanthemums in the rear garden had been in full bloom and the moonlights on them had been shining blade sharp.

My cousins and me had had the coffin decked with the solemn flowers. I wondered aloud what had caused Grandma to shut down the gate to her memory. Grandma had stayed so sharp in her prime years that she had even composed sadonji, or the letter written on the scroll and sent to the parents of the bride or bridegroom as a token of gratitude or celebration.

To her darling grandson, Mrs. Euiseong Kim had been a best cook. She had had a good memory for various recipes. Any food material she had touched her hands on changed into a gourmet food. She had also been a great doctor having the profound knowledge of the alternative medicine. Whenever I had been sick, she had been on the prowl for medicinal herbs in the woods and mountain hills. On the starry night under the shimmering moonlight before the flower-decked coffin of his dear grandma, Dano had still wondered what kind of memory his grandma had tried to bury and flee from it. I endear so deeply to my grandmother that, in my mind's eye, she is always standing on the hill top waiting for the late- coming grandchild holding the lamp aloft.



26
Before the Teletype Printers, 1975~1980

Years were a bliss. The fleeting passage of time was a healing factor. The scars and traumas, which I had suffered in the sorrow over the loss of my grandmother, appeared palpable at first and then progressively got sunk in my mind scape.

My apprenticeship period of three months was over but my take-home pay envelope turned out thin still. My wife Tschai still went to her seamstress' workshop to supplement his low income so that our two sons, who hadn't gone to kindergarten or children's house or something, were left in their own brand actions of hazardous character. Naturally the apprehensive pair of us had always been on edge in our work places. Luckily enough, my two sons never brushed with the police.

I also volunteered to do the night shift work to lighten Tschai's toilsome burdens. As I was adjusted to the nightwork and developed familiar relationships with the other coworkers, I had the opportunities to go to the wire room upstairs, where the teletype printers were disgorging the articles, which was a really captivating scene.

It was surreal. No man at work seen. The printers themselves were rattling off words on the long scroll papers on which meaningful sentences were being formed which made eloquent paragraphs. The hues and cries of the disgorged articles were of catastrophic context: The Chun Doo Hwan clique, which had masterminded the coup in the year 1979, would incapacitate the civilian supremacy to establish the military dictatorship. The hues were suppressed and the cries were of course stifled by the intelligence agencies like KCIA. The foreign news articles were censored by them and the press of Korea at large collaborated with them by truncating or blacking out the articles at issue.

It was the seas over which I could hear the uproars of the decimated people and frustrating incidents. The bouncing beats of the teletypes at the wire room from time to time sounded to me just like Grandma and Mom pounding on the dadimidol, or the rock board used for spreading the dried laundry. It sounded at times a night-long gun battle on the hills of Sun Valley. Or air-splitting shrieks of the drowning refugees on the Cheongdo River. I fantasized over the teletype writers across the Pacific and Indian Oceans who were punching the desperate keys and warning the Korean people of an impending dictatorship by the Chun Doo Hwan coup cabals.
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The encounter with the teletype machine gave me a wonder, bordering on a shock. Two mechanical hands were at work but the body and the face were invisible. A ghost materialized, finessing typing human languages. The cling clang of typing sounds by the invisible human being gave me surreal imagination of people and things. It was not just a curiosity about the person across the seas who was now sending human messages but was a curiosity about the technology which was enabling the people to send meaningful messages across the seas thousands of miles away.

The mechanical noises evoked memories of which some had been pleasant and some others horrible. The nagging grandma and weeping mother materialized. They were pounding a long winter night away with the metronomic cadence on a rock board. Shrieks followed. The downpours beating on the tent. The tent leaking. The rains coming all night. Shaking the body all over with the chills from the leaks. "Help!" somebody drifting along.