A quotidian tale of a young man and his sow in the idyllic Korean countryside is not all that it seems. Translator Young-Ji Kang captures the disquieting undertones that pervade Yi Hyosŏk’s writing, as we learn of our main character’s growing discontent with his little Puni and Little Sow. This Translation Tuesday, become a spectator to the breeding grounds, meander through the market, and follow the railroad tracks.
The ruins of a fortress wall, a willow crowned by a magpie nest, a squat beryl blue sky. Below, a hutch containing a rabbit that in color is white but whose huddled form and spiky fur give it the appearance of a hedgehog. The onshore wind sweeps over the fields, tickling the crab-apples before swirling through the barley field where the breeding grounds still sit under a layer of snow, to buffet the pigsties.
Beside the pigsties, exposed to the wind and squealing at the top of its lungs, a sow is tethered, each splayed leg to a stake. Around those four stakes stalks the stud boar, its livid maw frothing, and then up go its front legs and it mounts. The sow, resembling a turtle pinned beneath a dark boulder, shrieks and wiggles frantically, dislodging the boar. Ever ready, the boar begins stalking again. From the sties all around comes the squealing and bellowing of mating pigs—it’s a raucous afternoon at the breeding grounds.
A crowd has gathered to cheer on the boar, but after witnessing half an hour of wasted effort, they begin to stir. And then one last time the boar comes crashing down on the sow—the stakes snap clean off, and the sow manages to slip free and scamper off.
“Poor little runt,” chuckles one of the breeding-grounds handlers. “Like trying to mate a hen with a bull—it’s unnatural, I tell ya.”
“Yeah,” says a farmer. “She must have had the scare of her life.” So saying, the farmer goes out behind the pigsty and corners the sow.
“I had her serviced here last month, I guess it was, but nothing happened,” says Shigi, the color rising on his face. “So here we are again.”
“Even animals have to be old enough to know better, but your sow’s still way too young.”
At the farmer’s words, Shigi gets even more red in the face. “Goddamn animal!” he mutters.
And if that were not enough, the annoying beast has broken free and is once againrunning loose. Humiliated, Shigi flares up and gives chase, the farmer close behind. One of Shigi’s rubber shoes comes off in the muck and his pants begin to slide down.
At last he manages to grab the tether circling the sow’s midsection and out of pique yanks it hard, bringing the sow up short. He whips the animal furiously with the tether, and the young sow wiggles and jumps every which way, squealing all the while. Yes, he will surely feel remorseful later on for lashing the pitiful beast, the family’s lifeline for the farm year in that the proceeds from its sale will cover their first tax payment of the year as well as keeping them stocked with provisions until the early-summer potato harvest. But losing face in front of the stand of onlookers is too much for him to bear, and he takes out his anger on the pathetic animal.
“C’mon, let’s give it another try.” After re-setting the stakes and ramming them in, the farmer beckons Shigi.
This time, Shigi and the farmer tether the terror-stricken creature to the stakes all the more securely, then position the wooden lever beneath the sow’s belly so that it’s suspended in air and can’t budge.
Shigi feels the boar’s hairy body as it squirms and paces, and then the moment he steps back, the boar charges the sow like a piston on a coal-fired locomotive, a lusty bellow issuing from its crimson maw. At the throat-rending squeals of the helpless sow, the onlookers’ laughter is stilled—for the moment their jokes are forgotten.
The image of Puni flits through Shigi’s mind and he looks away.
Where could she be, my little Puni?
If you’re a farmer and your second tax payment comes due before you’ve even paid the first one, what better way to supplement your income than a pig? Put a year of heart and soul into raising a pig, and in return you’ll have some extra cash above and beyond the money for your taxes. Well aware of a pig’s usefulness, Shigi had scraped together one copper at a time and followed in the footsteps of his townspeople by getting himself a pair of newborn pigs from the breeding grounds. That was last summer. That sleek jet-black pair of piglets were dearer to Shigi than any human being and so in the beginning he didn’t have the heart to pen them up at night; instead he let them sleep in the corner of his room on a bed of straw. But within a month the male piglet was dead—could it have been a lack of mother’s milk? The surviving female had become the apple of Shigi’s eye. He let her drink out of his only rice bowl, and when she refused water and grunted he knew she was sick and he would put off his wood gathering to spend the day caring for her. Six months passed and his little piggy began to look like a sow.
And so about a month ago Shigi had taken the sow to the town breeding grounds, two or three miles distant, to try her out with a boar. For the service he had paid some fifty chŏn— money he had made from sweat labor—but in the end the sow hadn’t conceived. Shigi was angered. And around the same time, it so happened that Puni, the neighbor girl he had developed affection for, ran off to parts unknown. For a few days thereafter Shigi could do little else but nurse his wounded heart. Always sulky sweet and ready with a frosty comeback, she had not once allowed him liberties with her silky smooth flesh. Shigi was fit to be tied—how could she go off and leave her decrepit father like that? But with her father, Pak Ch’oshi, always a difficult man to read, it was anyone’s guess what he might have finagled in connection with his daughter’s departure. The rumor mill turned out one report after another—she was in Ch’ŏngjin, she was in Seoul, a few days back she had sent her father ten wŏn—but none of these rumors checked out. And Shigi licked his various hurts. How he longed to nibble on those two cheeks of hers the color of crab-apple blossoms—to this day it had proved impossible to dampen the burning in his heart.
“All right, that’ll do it.”
The farmer’s voice recalls Shigi from his painful thoughts. There before him is the boar, grunting in satisfaction, reluctant to conclude its prowl about the stakes.
Just then Puni’s silhouette comes into sight, hovering before his eyes, framed by the mating area, and even though the spectacle is over, Shigi feels mortified. Puni’s figure merges with the played-out sow—oh God! And his face burns when he hears again the vulgar banter and riotous laughter of the crowd. Get out of here! And with this attempt to remove the image, Shigi begins to untether his sow. The greedy, lustful boar continues to circle the sow until the farmer drives him back into the sty.
“This better be it,” Shigi mutters to himself as he pays the fifty-chŏn stud fee, enters his name in the account book, and ventures out into the late afternoon.
Across the crab-apple orchard is a Western-style civil servant’s residence, its roof viridescent in the failing light of the setting sun. Below, the glimmering outlines of market folk coming and going through the gate in the old fortress wall. Out through that gate comes a bus. Shigi turns to see it roaring toward him along the broad countryside road, and at the same time that he jerks his sow and himself off to the side he manages a quick peep inside—ever since Puni disappeared, he has taken to inspecting passing buses. He has conjured up various possibilities as to where Puni has gone, most recently on a bus, for it’s been reported that in Nanam the other day, girls were being examined for hiring as bus girls.
Maybe I’ll have myself a little stroll through the market.
Shigi ties up the sow among the large stone blocks at the foot of the fortress wall, enters through the North Gate nearby and heads for the South Gate.
Now that Puni’s gone, Shigi no longer has to avoid the inquisitive eyes of the market folk and seek out a secluded shop to embarrass himself asking for face powder; all he gets is a bottle of kerosene and a few dried pollack, after which he weaves his way through the market place. With no familiar faces in sight he makes straight for the North Gate and sets out with his sow for home.
The sow trundles along, not nearly as sprightly of foot as on the way to the breeding grounds. But Shigi no longer has the nerve to lash it.
Skirting the railway tracks, he passes a station and turns down the road to Och’onp’o, where he begins to see the occasional silhouette of someone returning from market. The onshore wind has been blocked by a bend in the mountain, and a cozy evening glow veils the road. Electric lines soar above the more distant mountains while braided streams tumble down below. Side by side the railroad and the broad road leading to the hot springs sprawl out endlessly toward the south. This pair of lines stretching into the darkening landscape captivate Shigi—who knows if he recognizes the faint chugging of the train coming around the bend behind him? That’s when a peculiar thought crosses Shigi’s mind.
Maybe I’ll follow this here road and see where it takes me. Sell the sow for traveling expenses and take a train until the money runs out—maybe I’ll find Puni then. Wasn’t she always hoping to work at a factory? Gosh, I could find her there and get myself a job at the same factory—wow! Plus, Father won’t be so hard up once I start sending him my pay every month. Won’t have to keep the pigs inside anymore, Father won’t have to worry anymore about the town clerks hounding us for taxes. Farming has to be the most wretched of all fates—you can’t make a living no matter how hard you work. Puni, where could she be? How much could I get for selling my sow? My sow, my little sow—
“What the—“
The blast of a steam whistle brings Shigi back to reality. Cold air whooshes past him and he feels as if he’s being flung into a different dimension. All is black, all is still, and for a brief moment he’s dead all over, benumbed. And then the blackness lightens, there’s movement, and the stillness admits a terrifying rumble that threatens to sweep him away. The roar of thunder?…the crash of waves?…the clatter of wheels?… Yes, clear-eyed, Shigi sees wheels flash by—and then they’re gone.
“The train!” Shigi shudders and the shuddering gives way to goose bumps. He’s light- headed, physically drained. Where’s the bottle of kerosene, where’s the pollack? And…
“My sow! Where is she?”
“You idiot—worrying about a pig? This is a railroad crossing—wake up!”
Slap! The next thing Shigi knows, he’s looking into the angry face of a railroad guard. “What happened to my sow?”
“Count your lucky stars, boy. Just be grateful you’re still alive.”
“You mean my sow’s been run over?”
“Watch out next time!” With a venomous look the guard yanks Shigi by the arm and drags him clear.
“My sow, I took her two times to the breeding grounds, my sow, my little sow!”
There’s nothing, not a drop of blood, not the merest trace of his sow. Shigi gapes at the tracks stretching into the distance—the train is long gone, and with it his sow.
“My sow, we lived together, we ate together, my poor little sow….” Light of head, empty inside, Shigi is on the verge of collapse.
Translated from the Korean by Young-Ji Kang
Yi Hyosŏk (1907-1942) is one of the talented group of young Korean writers whose flame burned brightly in the 1920s and 1930s only to be extinguished by the time of the Pacific War. Much of his early fiction concerns the urban poor and the destructiveness of city life. But by the mid-1930s he was taking inspiration from the Korean countryside where he was born. “Little Sow” (Ton) was first published in the literary journal Chosŏn munhak in October 1933.
Young-Ji Kang came into translation during her undergraduate years at the University of British Columbia, where she focused on Korean proletarian literature. Her published works include short stories by Yi Hyosŏk and Kim Namch’ŏn and have appeared in Acta Koreana, Waxen Wings, and Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire.