AS A BOY READING THE CLASSICS by Confucius and Mencius, HanChol had been taught that life was a road. Walk the straight line, go the way of the gentleman, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, they’d said. But now, he knew that life was actually a wheel. It could take you places if you were smart about it. If you were foolish or merely unfortunate, it could crush you. Between those two extremes, most people labored to push the wheel along. Even what they thought of as respite or pleasure, such as eating or sleeping or fucking or having children, was just rolling the wheel forward without being conscious of it. They only truly stopped when they died.
HanChol once had a dream of his old rickshaw, its oversize wheels spinning faster and faster. His heart was pounding because he had to run to keep the wheels turning. But also, the wheels were just behind him and he had to sprint to avoid getting crushed. Then he entered a cave at the foot of a mountain and the wheels disappeared. A bird appeared by his side and he knew it was a friendly guide. He followed it through the pitch-black underground tunnel, and when he came out on the other side, he was in a valley suffused in a halcyon glow. He woke up feeling as though he were still bathed in golden light, blessed by an unknown power.
Sometimes, when some extraordinary event occurred, the wheel turned on its side and spun in order to determine everyone’s fates. At the end of the war, it slowed down and eventually stopped, showing who would win and who would lose.
As HanChol sat in the crowded courtroom waiting for his father-in-law, he reflected on the wins and losses of his own life. Just before the war, he’d become the owner of the biggest auto garage in the entire country. Even after the war started, he had benefited from the influx of military trucks that needed repairs. But just a year later, the Japanese confiscated his garage overnight and melted down whatever metal that could be found inside. In the last throes of the war, HanChol had nothing to do except live off of his father-in-law’s seemingly untouchable wealth and privilege. He was mortified and ashamed of being so dependent, but SeoHee always reassured him that nothing made her father happier than seeing his children safe and sound. He, HanChol, was also a son, not a son-in-law.
When the war ended and Korea was liberated, HanChol set immediately to the task of rebuilding his garage. He was determined not to ask his father-in-law for support—and surprisingly, help came from where he least expected. His Andong relatives reached out to him with the news that his father’s first cousin had died without heirs or younger brothers. He, HanChol, was the closest living male relative to that bloodline, a prosperous one heading an estate of nearly ten thousand suk of rice a year. All HanChol needed to do to claim it was to be formally adopted by the cousin’s widow. With his own mother’s blessing, HanChol became the son of a woman he’d never before met and used his new income to rebuild his company. He had even grander ambitions than before. Not only would he repair cars, but he would also find a way to produce them from scratch. Now that he’d survived the war and become stronger, HanChol was even more irrevocably convinced of his abilities. On the whole he tried to remain as humble and meticulous as he’d always been, but the gleaming black eyes framed by energetically raised eyebrows betrayed his new confidence.
His father-in-law, however, had found a different sort of change at the war’s end, HanChol thought as he caught sight of Kim SungSoo entering the courtroom between two policemen. SungSoo was wearing one of his fine wool suits rather than a white hanbok robe that other defendants preferred. He looked distinguished and proud with his full head of silvery white hair. The people whispered and clicked their tongues in disapproval, but SungSoo didn’t seem in the least bit concerned.
“All rise for the Honorable Judge ___,” someone announced, unseen behind rows of black and gray heads. The judge was an unexceptional-looking old man in jet-black robes, which shocked some ignorant peasants in attendance for bearing too great of a resemblance to mourning clothes. Rising and sitting back down with the crowd, HanChol noticed how he wasn’t in the least nervous for his father-in-law and lashed himself with a tiny flick of guilt.
The judge called upon the prosecutor, a young man in a dark pinstripe suit. The charges against Kim SungSoo were long and grave: the defendant was a lifelong Japanese collaborator, whose uncle was made a count by the abominable Governor-General Ito Hirobumi himself. Kim’s father avoided his estate being confiscated by colluding with the Japanese. Kim himself was no better, being close friends with the police chief of Jongno station, Japanese military men, and the like. He supplied the Japanese army with funds almost until the day of the surrender. That was the sole reason he had managed to survive the war unscathed. The prosecutor spoke with genuine emotion, shaking his fist in the direction of the defendant—whose head was proudly erect—and the spectators clucked their tongues even louder. “These bastards must all be put to death by quartering,” said a thick rustic voice somewhere in the middle of the room, rather loudly so all could hear. People around him murmured in agreement.
It was clear that the courtroom was against Kim SungSoo. But HanChol still felt no fear on behalf of his father-in-law, the grandfather of his three children (SeoHee was at home, heavily pregnant with the fourth), the man who had raised him up from abject poverty.
The judge called forth Kim SungSoo’s lawyer, a plump and pale man wearing thick round glasses and a purple bow tie. He looked around contemptuously at the audience before beginning.