Chapter 9.10:The Mountain Ritual

9
The Inquisitive Bullies, 1949

The lonely traveller did not just bump into road snakes but strange people who wanted to pick an argument or pick a fight. Almost everytime he hit a small country road, Dano met bullies of his peers or adults who wanted to stop him and ask useless questions or give useless pieces of advice, giggling and sneering. He met this time a group of Oksan Elementary School boys on their way back home. They were running down the slope toward the road juncture where I was about to cross the stepping stone bridge.

"Hey, there!" one boy shouted up from a hill. I kept on walking.
"Hey, you white hat!" another boy joined the shout. I didn't stop. In a minute they rushed down the bottom of the road, struggling for breath. The boys mobbed me in a boy's hat.
"Why ignore us?" an oldest-looking boy who looked to be a fourth-year student of the school, holding a school bag glared, touching my shoulder with his right hand.
"I dunno," I said. "What do you not know?" he demanded to know, with the other boys surrounding me. "I dunno what you mean,"I said, unflinching.
"You didn't reply to our calling. That means you ignored us," another boy with freckles intervened.

"I didn't hear your calling," I said, looking the boy straight in the eye.
"We shouted 'hey, you hat'. Didn't you hear that?" the boy said, looking away.
"You called the hat, not me," I said.
“The hat didn't reply also," the third giggled.
"It replied, but you couldn't hear," I insisted.

"What is your name, then? the fourth boy asked, looking to be with interest.
"I am Dano," I declared.
"Don't you go to school?" the fifth wanted to know.
"I have been to school for a half year, but I have my schooling suspended," Dano said.
"Why?" the boys asked in unison.
"Because of a thief guy," I answered.
“What do you mean by a thief guy?" a boy asked.
"He means malaria," I said.
"How long have you been sick with malaria?" the boys were curious.
"For 105 days," Dano said matter-of-factly.
"You have suffered much," one of the boys was sympathetic.
"Not much," Dano said.
"Why?"
"Because my Grandma was very instrumental in gathering herbs and in ejecting evil spirits."
"Ejecting evil spirits? How does she do it?"
"I lie on the ground and Grandma throws a knife in the mid-air and curses the evil spirits and the evil spirits run away and I am cured."
"That's been great," they agreed.

"Where are you going?" some boys wanted to know.
"To Sun Valley," Dano said.
"You must be very afraid. The Sun Valley is a fearful place."
"Not much."

They were very inquisitive. But their curiosities were hilarious to me. Though in a rugged valley, I did not live totally alone. There lived an "uncle" of no relation suffering from leprosy. He lived quite alone in a shack near our house. I called on him from time to time but the uncle often waved me off with sorrowful face. Tigers did not haunt the valley but boar hogs sometimes did. I was afraid of them, of course. I hid myself behind the big trees at the time.

When I mentioned their inquisitive or hilarious curiosities, I said it in good terms. But I can't pave it with good intentions any more. They had not been good to me after all. Their rugged or rude or virulent words and behaviors might have not been intentional at that time nor aware of the meanings of their utterances or actions. In short, they might have followed their instinctive urges to question me, badger me, and assault me physically and psychologically.

People talk about the prevalence of ijime in the Japanese society, especially pervasive in the lower echelon of Japanese schools, starting in the 1990s. It's not true. It can't have been a geographically isolated phenomenon. They had happened in any global society. They could have and they can happen now anywhere on earth, even in the jungle of Amazon.

Why? On what grounds? Because the physical assault is considered a human instinct and might have been etched in the human genes. Looking back, that is, in my flashback memory, their utterances and actions took on developmental attributes, from stage one to stage two and upwards. The kids, who had thrown incisive questions at the moment of the initial encounter, didn't attempt to inflict a physical harm, but as several years passed they wanted me to be consumed by tigers at each and every moment of parting. And as more times passed and as we went to middle school, the inquisitive kids turned out bullies and badgers, and the bullies inflicted me hard nudges and kicks.



10
The Mountain Ritual at the Mountain Hill, 1949

The geographical remoteness and isolation paid its price. Just like winds in the valley blew with the sounds of sea waves, passing along the valley in unknown time, people materialized unannounced. Local police guys came without notice and took my dad rudely and treated him with tormenting questions and torturous beatings. The usual excuse was that my dad Don must have collaborated with partisans, or commies. He refused to admit, and there wasn't anything to confess and naturally got a good beating. No suspicious people, however, came along, partisans, commies, or suspects of whatever name. Folks were few and far between. They were "as rare as beans in the drought."

Don went to the woods, Boolim went milling the grains, her mother-in-law was running nagging mills, and Dano, among the iris of every sort, was happy in the valley. I had mixed feelings about the folks. He missed grandpas, uncles and aunts, brothers and "new aunts" of the clan from Danuishill. He used to run down the hill slope whenever he spied on human shapes far down the valley in dopo or durumaggi. He was afraid of the Reds, or partisans. In actuality, he was not so much afraid of the commies as wild boars.

What originally caused my parents to move to this remote valley cottage was the autumnal harvest they could live on, although it was not so abundant. A heavy responsibility had been attached to the rental contract of the land. Don had to pay a portion of the harvest as rent which consisted of a rice harvest garnered from the tiered paddy fields and the autumnal fruits of the yards, chestnuts and pine mushrooms in the hills. Don also had to take custody of the ancestral graves in the clan-owned hills and prepare the yearly ritual of ancestor worship.

At this time of each late fall the lonely cottage of the remote valley was filled with loud talks and big laughs. Dano had a good time enjoying every minute of each mountain ritual because it was "abundant." Abundant with welcome relatives from the clan town. Abundant with autumn harvests. A persimmon tree in the backyard and a pear tree in the front yard had plump and juicy fruits on them. Sunlight was warm in the valley and wind was crisp.

The advance team of the mountain ritual arrived at the cottage two days before the ritual. The first contingent consisted of the young elder-brothers in their thirties whose mission was to purchase, according to the shopping lists, the fish, meat and other items at the bazaar which would be used for the ritual.

The second contingent came one day before the performance which consisted of the uncles and older elder-brothers in their forties and early fifties whose mission was to make raw materials into offerings. Sea fishes had to be steamed and cut into suitable lengths; Meat had to be steamed, cut or sliced; and chestnuts had to be peeled and carved. Then they made tiered arrangements of the offerings on wooden convex vessels.

The man, who greatly contributed to the animated atmosphere of the ritual preparation workforce, was the gentleman of the West Side, Tschoon. The West Side dominated every scene. He was a born story teller who could unravel the threads of a yarn. He was knowledgeable in many aspects of human interest. He was versed in citing old quotations and age-old legends. He was also good at citing famous episodes. He was an expert at picking at slips of people's tongues not to ridicule them but to make his audience laugh.

The West was the very man who could electrify his audience with his wisecracks, so much so that the job of the ritual organization might not get them bored and fatigued. When they felt they needed recharging, my Grandma Phillnam popped from the women's chamber and put out a nice table for tasty snacks.

Grandma was a good cook who came from the Euiseong Kim clan, She was as tall as a plum tree at the front garden and as thin as a young willow tree at the town creek. She literally had a natural tongue for taste. She knew a variety of recipes of gourmet foods; She memorized ingredients of every gamut of soups ranging from chicken soup to beef rib soup. She had even taken dassokpan, which was made of the jujube tree and had convex cookie patterns on them.

When the preparation works were all done, the team packed them according to the category. The grandpas, except for two or three oldest, and the youngest clan people comprised the last contingent who arrived at the valley on the very morning the ancestor worship ritual was held. The transportation of the loads, which were huge, was quite a problem. But there were no vehicles nor roads on which to carry the loads at the time. So they had to be carried on strong human backs or shoulders, specifically on jigae, wood A-frames. The shallow rough roads leading to the ancestral graves were lush with bushes which were wet with autumnal dew.

The weather on almost all the occasion was fine. The air of November was real cool enough, neither hot nor cold. The November mountain winds among the pines made sea sounds, good to hear to my ears. The participants in the autumnal ritual on the mountain hills usually reached 40, exceeding 50 at times. The grass on the grave mounds was yellow. The tiered clan hills had many tiered graves according to clannish order, with great-great-great-grand father topped the tiers. The ancestral worship event was observed on four separate mountain hills which took nearly six hours.

The mountain ritual for the clan ancestors was observed in an orderly manner. First, the offerings were arranged on each stone table before the grave. When the arrangement was done, the participants took their position in four or five standing lines according to the order of age and rank. A holggi, or a male person who was obligated to remind everyone of each requested action, took his position on the right frontal edge. When the holggi pronounced "chamshin" every participant was supposed to kneel and offer two deep bows.

Then, the jeju, or the host of the ritual, knelt and gave two bows. He knelt again and took a bronze vessel on which the steward on the left frontal edge poured jeongjong, the rice wine, who handed it to the steward who placed it on the table beside the rice bowl.

The time came in which every participant was reminded of the solemn occasion in which a participant, who was predetermined to do it, read a memorial eulogy. When he used to read it, Dano thought in prostrate position, that the doves stopped croaking and that mountain winds got serious. When it was done there followed two more performances--a tribute of long silence and a standing bow. The ritual was all done with the two deep bows.

Shortly thereafter, bokju and eumbok procedures, or the post-ritual shares with the grace and blessings, were in wait for everyone. After all the offerings were placed down, all the members, who took part in the event, soaked their tongue with the wine and partook of the offerings. They cut a slice of them and gave each and everyone the share. It always happened that the kids at a village town over the valley called Dumsan remembered the day of the Bannam Park clan ritual and paid a visit to the mountain hill. They used to hide among or behind the trees around the graves and waited for the event to end. The senior members of the Park clan saw the heads and knew what to do after the event. They were called in and all kinds of edibles were handed out to them.