Chapter 12 magpie

The train from Xiaguan finally stopped.It was already the morning of the second day when I arrived at Kanzaki Station in Saga Prefecture.I didn't sleep at all in the car, I couldn't move in the chaotic compartment. As I descended to the platform, I was overwhelmed by an incredible sense of liberation.It wasn't because I left the army with great difficulty, or because I got off a train where I couldn't even go to the bathroom.Now, it's just me.It is my freedom to walk two miles from here, return to the home with my parents and wife, or go anywhere alone.Why did this idea arise?

Since I am an only child, my parents have restrained me in an unusual way since I was a child. It was a suffocating life.I don't know how much I envy those friends who can move freely alone.People who are not in my position cannot understand these things! When I was receiving three months of educational training in Kurume, my father visited me every Sunday.When I left the army and returned to Xiaocang, my father came to welcome me as if he was guarding me firmly.On the train, there were five or six people from the same company as me, and no family members came to greet them.These people were like prisoners released from prison, making loud noises in the train. As soon as the conductor came, he deliberately spoke military terms and teased them.I sat quietly next to my elderly father, envious of these people who go alone.I remember that I often cursed my father for spoiling me too much.

However, my elderly parents can only rely on me, the only child.When I was in Jeongeup, Joseon, my father wrote to me: "I searched on the map, and it seems that Jeongeup is not far from Busan. Busan takes a ferry from Xiaguan, only needs to sleep for one night, and arrives in the daytime the next day. If possible, I would like to visit Jeongeup. " This is love without adulteration. However, from material to spiritual, I am not free.So I felt a sense of freedom from two years of military life away from my family.Although military life is extremely boring, the only kind of freedom gave me a meaning of existence.

I not only have parents, but also a wife and children.My freedom was more and more closed off.The escape gap was closed.Putting on my leggings and driving my body, I went to that family.The fantasy of escaping disappeared bit by bit as I set foot on the country road. The town of Kanzaki is located in the Saga Plain.Through narrow streets, came to a river.Along the river, the road led out to plains covered with wild sumac.The mountains are in the distance, and there are several ditches in the endless rice fields.On the path, white magpies with upturned arms jumped, and then flew to the tall wild sumac tree.

This kind of bird has been seen many times in front of the infirmary in Seoul in the past. In Saga, it is called the brown crow, which has a different cry from ordinary crows.After walking a mile along the embankment road along the river, a village appeared in the countryside.That was the village where the wife was born. I was standing at the gate of my wife's natal farmhouse with a blanket bag on my back, and my tall mother-in-law was taken aback. "When did you come back?" She asked with wide-eyed eyes, saying that if she sent a telegram, she could pick it up at the station.Then she called my wife's brother-in-law.

With their help, my parents and wife lived in a house in a neighboring village. I already know this from the letters I received from South Korea.My mother-in-law wanted to take me there, but after I declined, I carried the heavy luggage on my shoulders. The road twists and turns, turns back to the river, and crosses a small bridge.I have been to this area several times, but this is the first time to this village.Near the small bridge, there lived a dozen or so farm families.No matter which one, there are a lot of straw piled under the eaves. Walk down the bridge to the road, there is a temple.Five or six elementary school students came over.I stopped and asked if there was a student named Shuzi.It's the name of my oldest daughter, who will be in third grade.That student is also a girl.

She replied, raising her eyes to stare at me.In Saga dialect, it means "have".When I came to school, school was over and there were no children. There are twenty or thirty farmhouses in this village, grouped together irregularly.Away from the road, the houses are separated by farmland.In those little fields, my wife, in culottes, was wielding a hoe.After she saw me, she didn't speak for a while, and stared at me with a confused expression, then her face flushed and tears fell. The farmer's house was quite large, but dilapidated.My parents also ran out, and two middle-aged men and women I didn't know came out together.My father was wrinkled and my mother was sobbing, covering her face with her sleeve.Both are completely old.

A man and a woman I didn't know immediately backed out, and then a little boy I didn't remember seeing dragged out.I soon learned that the couple and the child were the ones living with my family.I thought the family had borrowed a house, but only now did I know that the relatives of the owner had evacuated from Busan, and since they had no place to live, they moved in as cohabitants. My mother told the people about my return, "It's a relief!" she kept saying. From my mother's words of "you can rest assured now", I feel that I have understood all the circumstances.My parents come here to rely on my wife's natal family. How are they living in this unaccustomed life?Among the many peasants, how will a man who has never held a hoe be treated!My mother's words seemed to make me understand everything.

It was not the first time I heard my mother say "you can rest assured now".A long time ago, when I was about 20 years old, my mother and father were fighting, and when the fight was raging, my aunt happened to come. "Hey, sister, this child finally has a job, and I'm half relieved!" The mother said to the aunt. My mother is a hard-working, illiterate person. Rather than saying that she is strong, it is better to say that she is mediocre, and she refuses to compromise when things happen.That was when my mother was pulling an open-air truck. At the place of sacrifice, she had a quarrel with the local rivers and lakes businessmen.In order to occupy the space, the owner of the quack shop ordered: "Old woman, you go there!" The mother shouted back: "What old woman?" Her aggressive appearance really stunned the other party.Regarding these, my father often mentioned them.

After I enlisted in the army, my parents stayed with my mother's older sister on the coal mine street called Iizuka.That is to say, my wife and children live in my wife Saga's natal family, while my parents live in the house of my aunt and couple, living their own lives.However, when my mother was causing trouble to my younger sister and his wife, he started to quarrel with them again, and soon left there to go to the residence of my wife in Saga. Although this old farm house is very large, there are seven people in my family alone, so I had to use a partition to separate it, and on the other side was a family of five.We don't even have room for seven people to sleep here.At that time, my second son, who was about four years old, was peeping at the child on the other side through the hole in the partition.The accent of the second son seems to be born here, and he speaks Saga dialect.

In this area, the canals filled with water are criss-crossed, and the wild sumac trees are lined up in rows, which is a beautiful pastoral area.However, I felt that as soon as I came back from the army, I immediately jumped into hell on earth. Take the train to Xiaokura, probably on the third day of settling down at home!In such a countryside, I am very worried that I will lose my job, and I will not even be able to rest steadily. When I came to the newspaper office where I had been separated for two years, I realized that I was the first to come back from other places.Unknown young women were added to the newspaper office, all of whom were hired during the war to fill the vacancies left by the male staff. The minister accepted my greeting, "It's good to be back!" He nodded the long neck.That's all.I'm afraid this minister has not liked me in the past.People who paint like me are alienated in the workplace. Of the three people who used to work together, one of them is still in the army. T, who is two years older than me, said: "The future work will be difficult, there is no paper." He said half casually, half worriedly. In fact, a newspaper is just a folio.As far as advertisements are concerned, they are all printed in type, and there is nothing like a letterpress.In the past, newspapers were occupied by large advertisements from Tokyo and Osaka, so now there is no room for advertisements in local editions.There is, at most it is a guide advertisement, which does not require my own page or handwritten text. T said to me, "It's okay to come here now, let's rest first." To tell you the truth, compared to going back home in Saga, I prefer to stay alone in Ogura and relax.Because there is nothing to do, it becomes a real rest.And I need my personal freedom more than anything.It was extremely depressing to return to the farmer's house in Saga, which can be called hell on earth. However, the house in Kokura that I rented in the past has already been taken in by others, neither renting an apartment nor renting a house.The dormitory of the newspaper office has been occupied by family members who have left as soldiers, and this road is also blocked.I stayed at a friend's house for three days, and it's not a place to stay for long.First, there is no food.They invited me to eat boiled sweet potato juice, I don't know how awkward it was.Secondly, I have an obligation to rescue the family members from the farmhouse in Saga as soon as possible.The relative of the house owner who lives with my family really wants to live alone in that house.The housewife said to my father, as if she wanted me to hear it on purpose: "Your son has returned from the army, and now we are relieved." However, we couldn't borrow a house in Xiaocang.No matter where in the city, houses are occupied by people. Soon I heard good news from the people at the printing office. "The staff dormitory of the arsenal in Heiyuan is quite empty now. Maybe we can borrow a house there." Kurohara is located from the city to the place near Mount Adachi, and the traffic is very inconvenient. Because it is a dormitory built for the workers of the arsenal.There are a lot of them, like matchboxes lined up, and there are about a hundred sets of houses in the two rows of houses.Look inside the house, the specifications are six stacks, four and a half stacks, three stacks, and there is a small yard.However, after the evacuation of the workers from Tokyo, those houses were deserted, and the floors and ceilings were stripped away.Probably used it as fuel in winter.People can't live in it like this. However, there are also some slightly better houses among them, which can still get along with a little restoration.In the middle of the dormitory street there is a bath and the home of the manager.I didn't dare to have any extravagant hopes, so I immediately went to see the manager and asked for a loan.He said that if he is a member of the "Asahi Shimbun" agency, he can still agree.Many people in the society only recognize the size of the brand. In the dormitory, there are employees who stayed in the arsenal and people who moved in later, accounting for about two-thirds.The manager is a crippled soldier with one hand missing.He said it would have been nice to have brought it up sooner.The number of new residents is constantly increasing.Indeed, as he said, if we delay a little longer, we will definitely not even be able to live there. I went back to Saga and told my family about it, and they were relieved.There is nothing more miserable than the townspeople who live in the countryside with no fields and no land.Even though my wife was born in a neighboring village, she has also become an outsider. She is often looked down upon, just like a parasite in the village.Every day, she goes back to her parents' house and her brother's field to work as a helper, bringing a little bit of rice, beans and potatoes. It was decided at the moment to send only the bedding to Xiaocang, and I will live alone in the newly rented house.I went back to the staff dormitory.I plan to clean up and go shopping, but there is no broom on the market.The commercial street in Xiaokura is called Fish Street, and no matter which store you go to on the street, brooms are not sold. The first item to hit the market was food, which was eye-poppingly expensive.Due to inflation, my daily salary rose to about 3,000 yuan at that time. In late autumn, I slept with a coat on top of the quilt, and it was very cold at dawn, which woke me up.The glass windows in the hallway were supposed to be closed, but now they were half open.I felt strange, looked on the quilt, and found that the coat covered last night had been stolen.I am alone and do not have any furniture. This overcoat was made by a clothing store I was familiar with before I was a soldier. The quality is relatively good.That thief would have traded that coat for rice and potatoes right away. People in the towns took their clothes to farmers and exchanged them for food, which was common in rural Saga.The common people secretly took the visitors to their homes and gave them the food they had hidden.However, no matter how kind people are, they would not give rice to our family who did not exchange items. That was the second time I went back to Saga from Xiaogura. I walked along the road by the river, and when I came to the bridge, I saw a dozen or so farmhouses, all of which were weaving straw brooms.There are more hand brooms than long brooms with bamboo handles, and they pile them up in the room.Only then did I suddenly realize the reason for the straw piled under the eaves of the farmers when I passed this village for the first time. When I came from Ogura, I bought two brooms.I thought that there were no brooms on the street in Kokura, and suddenly I had an idea, how about selling it to the merchants in Kokura? There is still no job for me at the newspaper. "If you're free, can you help with typesetting?" The minister with a high nose came over and said. Typesetting is the work of sending the manuscript from the agency to the factory and performing it in the factory.Someone has already taken care of this work, so I don't need to help.And I was not appreciated by this minister just like that. When I was not in the army, this minister took his favorite person to a sushi restaurant for drinks. At that time, the business of the sushi restaurant was already out of control, but at the request of the minister who spent money randomly, he still took out rice balls.I heard that there seems to be a thick fat part of tuna, and there is a conger eel wrapped in it.Naturally, a high black market price.Such a "privileged class" has no fate with me.There was a deputy minister who was treated coldly by the minister and was very disgusted with him. Those who were not favored by the minister followed him, and the ministry was divided into two factions.But now the minister's efforts are overwhelming.I was not appreciated by the Minister, nor was I invited by the opposite side, the Under-Secretary.People who are of no use value are ignored by anyone. With no job and the situation in the ministry, my mood became more and more gloomy after being demobilized.I think soldiers who don't use their brains at all and work like horses are not bad.There is no sign of when the newspaper will return to its former state.I went to work every day without a job and continued to live a bleak life. One day during my lunch break, I took the small broom I brought with me from Saga to the door of the grocery store in the market.I had someone look at the broom and asked if I could sell it to them.The owner of the store took a look and asked the price.I said it was bought directly from the production store, and I added 20% to the price.The boss replied the second time that he could deliver as much as he wanted.I do not have a clear identity.However, at that time, as long as the store had goods, it didn't ask what kind of person the other party was. I shoulder the heavy burden of living with a family of seven in inflation.