A hosteller 1

                    A hosteller

                   I. enticers

                       

                         1.

When Moon was over 40s, he quitted his job of working for a local newspaper.

He concluded that the job prevented him from writing literary works of his own,

which was an irresistible yearning in his mind. Most probably his resignation

of the job was deeply related with two images hidden alive at the bottom

of his mind, which would turn up before his eyes, lingering about for a while

and run out of sight .One of them was the little sea, which used to ebb and

flow in front of his house in his boyhood, and the other, the corridor

of the sanatorium surrounded with the arborvitae woods where he had spent

4 or more years in his twenties.

 

A few weeks after he quitted the job, he took a bus, out of sheer desire

to saunter about by any seashore, bound for TongYung, a city and harbor 

of South Sea. He reached the city and walked alongside the quay, imagining 

alone that somewhere here in the South Sea here the lost little sea could stay

for a temporary rest,which had left him in his boyhood for a journey

to the wider ocean. Standing by the quay he inhaled the air and was allured

momentarily by the familiar sea smell ,infiltrating into his nose, to get on aboard 

a line bound for islands. So, he made a round tour through a few islands.

Next to  the South Sea, he went to the east side of the Korean Peninsular and

in succession, to the west side. Probably there must be in his mind

a hopeless yearning for the little sea lost while he was running by bus  

along the three sea sides

 

At the right moment when he faced with the South Sea  at the top of the YokJi,

the first Island he arrived at, the sea suddenly reminded him of tenor Ruciano

Favarotti's voice color, The light on the water surface was so dazzlingly bright

that  for a moment he could see nothing,feeling dizzy. For a moment ,

in spite of himself he almost collapsed on the earth, closing his eyes.

His dizziness of the moment might be caused by both sun beams reflected

on the surface, and the deep cliff under his foot. After a while he could see

the horizontal line afar dividing the sea with sky, with the ears given

toward the sound of waves breaking on the rock down the sheer cliff.

How enormous was the roar of the sound rising from down!  He stood still,

for a while, looking at the other black-colored islands as if half -circled  roofs

of cottages.

He saw the East Sea afar,with his eyes half-closed, in a bus running

along the seaside.The sea with the wild waves running past by him was

the color itself, in cobalt blue.The bus running by the seaside with the rhythmic

movement and sound of the engine gave him a sleepy rest. In the rocking bus 

what his eyes were heading for was not the sea in the present, but the seashore

in the past. The factual place he was passing by was meaningless to him

intoxicated by the sea in cobalt blue. For example, what was caught up

with in his half-closed eyes was not the seashore where he was, but a  pier

of Mukho harbor, which he was to reach in a few hours .

And while he stayed by Manripo, a well known beach of the West Sea,

he met the sea twice in a day, once in the middle of the sea at the low tide,

and the other time by the seashore at full tide. At the first sight of the void sea,

which showed up before him at the moment he took a corner of the winding

alley to the seaside, he let out a sigh of surprise .The emptiness of the sea

,with the end line of ebb tide flickering seen from afar, reminded him

of the little sea in his mind.

In his boyhood the house his family lived was adjacent to the seaside of an

inland sea which they called 'the little sea'. At that time every morning

the little sea awoke the boy. He used to get up listening to the sounds

of the little sea and step down to the front yard  to see the sea

right ahead. The stone wall at the end of the front yard kept the house 

where his parents and sisters and a dog named Badug lived with him,

from overflown by the sea water. Everyday he saw it ebbing and flowing.

The boy went to bed in Summer nights, hearing the sound of ripples

of the little sea and in Winter at dawn, gave his ears, with his eyes half closed

still in bed, to hear flocks of wild ducks flapping their wings. In Spring,

at high tide, he looked down, lowering his head over the rock wall, 

to silvery fish playing in flocks beneath the water surface and in Fall,

wet and windy afternoons,  he could smelled, through the open windows,

of seaweeds in the sea at ebbing. He usually went out, with Badug leading him,

to a playground in the middle of the village to meet boys in his age at play there. 

The playground was where at the harvest season the villagers used to thresh

grains and stack hay. And also at Lunar New Year or Full Moon Harvest Day

they flocked to enjoy Yut game, one of the traditional games ,drinking and dancing.

There was another playground to attract him and his dog.

The playground was a part of the seaside bank about 30 yards away

from his house and the place was haunted by a peddler hauling a handcart ,

with Yeot sticks to sell on it. When he appeared making a familiar sounds

of scissoring to the boys, most of them ran to somewhere and soon returned 

to his cart, with pieces of copper wire, old books or empty bottles grasped

in their hands to exchange with Yeot sticks .Every boys in the village liked

the peddler. Believe or not, the boy at the time had a dream:

to be a free tramp like him someday. 

The boy often slipped out of his house in the evening to go to a hut 

without the knowledge of his mother. In the hut lives a man, half blind and

unmarried, named Myunggu in his thirties. The hut is a hideout

where in the evening several youths of good-for-nothing got together

for playing 'flower cards', a Korean traditional card game. The man always

was delighted to see the boy, who never came without something to please him,

say, pieces of cigarettes or couples of red-ripe persimmon put in the pockets,

The boy easily got tempted by the hut owner telling old tales to him.

'Alibaba and 40 thieves' he loved was heard at first in the hut. 

one of his favorite among the many tales the uncle told him was

a ghastly story about a school boy. who stole out of the school dormitory

every dead night around 1 o'clock to the cemetery located at the back hill

of his school and turned back unobserved ,after a while to his bed,

with blood stains on his mouth.

Every day the little sea approached the rock wall at the end of the yard 

of the house to meet the boy. Sometimes In the late morning ,

sunny and warm, the little sea looked like Badug's sleepy face and

another time at the tide of ebbing, it reminded the boy of seagulls 

whirling around above over his head. 

The little sea never stayed still at one place. It waited for the boy

to return home from school or the playground ,moving in waves

against the upper part of the stone wall .Sometimes the boy got up

at dawn to find it playing with wild ducks diving up and down

afar at the edge of the mud flat of it at low water tide.

Now and then it seemed to sleep quietly under the rock wall, and

listening to the sound of the breeze blowing on the forest of reeds

along the left seaside it abruptly awakes to run farther and farther 

form the boy.

One day in the little sea at high tide appeared a whale, called Mulchi

by the villagers, The sea was delighted at the very rare visitor,

which appeared after a long  absence. Then this time the appearance

of the exotic whale turned out to be not a usual thing to the little sea,

as its appearance provided a momentum for the little sea for the first time

to have a strong curiosity beyond the horizon out of the narrow inland sea.

The boy has never seen  Mulchis before .However, he know  that

 the giant whales making a rare visit to the little sea are  on friendly terms

with human beings, in particular, boys in his years,

The little sea used to think it natural  to lead its living within the boundary

of the inland sea, repeating  its routine tide of ebb and flow .

Then Mulchi's unexpected appearance caused him to realize

that there could be other seas beyond the horizon, wider and deeper

than itself.

Usually the little sea, free and amiable, the boy imagined, 

liked to make friends with humans and dogs. Then unexpectedly it once 

turned mad and brutal at the time of Saraho typhoon ,hitting the house

heavily destructed and Badug lost in the sea.

Since then, the little sea came to undergo a delicate change. In a way

the little sea, at tide of ebbing, gazed beyond the horizon to the remote 

open sea. However, the boy seemed to be unware that the little sea would

risk making a long journey far to the open sea where the exotic whale

was sure to come from. 

The older the boy got, the farther the little sea went out. Actually it 

stepped back further and further from him before he noticed it. one day,

at the time of ebb ,the little sea gave its ears to the sound of the wind 

coming from outside and gazed at the exit of the water way 

on the right side, Then the boy was unaware of it.