Issue #17: Spring 2007

The White Rabbit

by Kim Yujŏng

Night and day I had that rabbit on my mind: I wanted it to grow to maturity as quickly as possible so it could start making babies, but how could I do it?
This rabbit was a treasure delivered to me from God.

One fiercely cold morning I was still wrapped in my warm cocoon of sleep when I felt Mother shaking my arm to wake me up. Even those times when I knew I was oversleeping, I got annoyed when someone tried to wake me, and I poked her with my elbow. I was about to tell her to leave me alone when I heard her say, “You don’t want this rabbit?” as if to say all right then, we’ll forget about it.

Still half asleep, I wondered if Father had been craving the taste of meat, long denied us, and so had bought a rabbit to eat. If so, I thought, then Mother must want to feed me some. I turned sleepily and opened my eyes and lo and behold, there bundled up in my mother’s skirt was a rabbit the size of a fist, white as jade.

Flustered, I rubbed my eyes and sat up.

“Where did you get it?”

“Cute little thing, isn’t it?”

“I’ll say. But tell me where you got it.”

“When I went out to rinse the morning rice I saw it curled up on top of our cooking stove. Probably belonged to someone else and got away.”

Mother rubbed her hands over the brazier, beaming with happiness. Ever since we moved here to Sindang-ni, we had had nothing but suffering. But the rabbit had come to us among the four families living in the house – perhaps this was a sign that with the new year our luck would change. Mother let out a deep, sad sigh. For my own part, I felt entitled to a private hope. Maybe this cute, white rabbit, passing others by to find me, was a sign that I could be happy. I took the white rabbit from my mom’s skirt, held it to my lips, rubbed it against my cheeks, and pressed it against my chin.

It was really cute, a beautiful animal. Taking no time for breakfast, I was about to walk out the door when Mother grabbed my arm.

“You’re not planning to give it to Sugi, are you? You’re not supposed to give away good fortune that has come to your home. Give it to me.”

I stumbled out the door, ignoring her attempts to stop me. I cut through the back alley to where Sugi’s family lived and discreetly called her outside (whenever we met, the two of us stood outside trembling because we were scared of her parents; of course we were not allowed inside).

“Here, I want you to take good care of this rabbit.”

So saying, I produced the little cutie from inside my coat and handed it to her.

Just as I expected, Sugi’s narrow eyes rounded large in amazement. She scooped it up, and the next thing you know she was kissing it and rubbing it against her cheeks just as I had. But she was pressing it too hard to her chest.

“No, no, no, you’re going to crush it if you do that. You’re supposed to hold a rabbit by its ears, like this.”

I couldn’t leave without first teaching her the proper way to handle a rabbit. As I watched Sugi standing there, holding the rabbit by its ears like I showed her, I thought how wonderful it would be if this were my house and Sugi were my wife. Sugi had asked me to buy her some women’s socks. It had been a month since I said I would, and the thought of not being able to do even that for her made me feel pathetic.

“When this little guy gets big, we’ll find it a mate and get lots of babies. Then we can sell them and the money will start rolling in,” she said.

But when I held up the rabbit I couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl. This worried me a bit.

“We have to know what it is before we can find it a mate!” I complained.
“Oh, yeah.” Sugi blushed a little, but then covering her embarrassment with a smile, she ventured, “We’ll know once it grows up.”

“Sure! Take good care of it now.”

From then on, I went to check on the rabbit every day. And I was delighted to hear that every day it seemed to have grown.

“Is it still eating well?” I would ask.

“Yes,” Sugi answered proudly. “I was feeding it leftover radish soup, but today I gave it some cabbage and it ate it all up!”

I thought that as long as it didn’t get sick and just ate well, everything would be all right.

Sure enough, Sugi soon reported, “Now it’s running around and even going outside to poo.”

And then one day a look in those big black eyes told me that finally the rabbit was fully grown. Now we’ll have to find it a mate, I thought. As I returned home I agonized about not having any money. No matter how I mulled it over, I could think of no way to come up with the dough. Should I pawn my coat? Then what would I wear? As I vacillated among my few options, almost a week passed without my visiting the rabbit. And then one day at dinner, I was shocked to hear my mother complain furiously, “Kǔmch’ŏl’s mom said that Sugi ate that rabbit!”

The reason my mother was so upset was because of the time I had nagged her to setup a marriage between myself and Sugi; I had been rejected. Her family had insisted that she was still too young, but in fact they were scheming to marry her off to a family with money. Mother was aware of all this and hated them for it.

“I knew it! How would the likes of them know how to treat such a cute animal?”

“They ate the rabbit?!”

Furious, I ran out. Try as I might, I just couldn’t understand this. Sugi had made a rainbow-striped vest for that rabbit with her own hands. There was no way she could have eaten it.

But when I called Sugi outside and asked her to bring me the rabbit, she didn’t respond. Her face got redder and redder, and as I looked at her I realized that the rabbit had indeed been eaten. And if that was the case, it was easy to see that the little tease of a girl must have had a change of heart about herself and me. Unless she had forgotten our mutual pledge to live together some day, she would never have allowed the rabbit that I valued so much to be killed and eaten.

I glared at her with big, round bunny eyes.

“I’ve come for the rabbit. I want it back.”

Sugi was almost in tears. “It’s gone.” She lowered her head. “My dad did it – he didn’t tell me.” She seemed awfully ashamed of herself.

In fact, Sugi had been sick and hadn’t been able to eat for three or four days. Sugi was a wage earner for her family, working at the tobacco factory. Her father had grown desperate when he realized that she was ill and not taking food. The family was in no position to buy meat to strengthen her, and so without her knowing, her father had slaughtered the rabbit and fed it to her.

But I didn’t know this at the time. Instead, I hated Sugi as she stood there silently – was she so hungry that she had to eat my rabbit?

“Bring out the rabbit. I’m taking it back,” I told her again.

“I can’t – I ate it,” she finally confessed.

Tears filled her eyes and began streaming down her face. And then she fumbled inside her skirt, held out the purse I had given her when we secretly got engaged (I hadn’t had the money to buy her a gold ring, but I had to get her something, so I bought the purse at a night market for 15 chŏn), and offered it to me, turning her head away as if she didn’t care.

Wretched girl. Go on – eat my white rabbit and pout like that. What do you expect me to do? But I knew that I would look ridiculous if I carried on like that. I hastily lifted up Sugi’s blouse and stuck the purse back in her skirt and then hurried home, afraid she might chase after me. She had eaten my white rabbit, and now, even if her father objected and even if she’d lost interest – sooner or later she would have no choice but to become my wife!

Lying under the covers considering all this, I finally realized what a godsend that rabbit had been.

No doubt about it – you belong to me now! ¤

Kim Yujŏng produced 30 stories in his short life. He died at 29 in 1937. Most of his stories are set in rural Korea, and are characterized by wit and irony. “The White Rabbit” was translated by UBC student Sena Byun, and is printed in “Modern Korean Fiction: An Anthology,” edited by Bruce Fulton and Youngmin Kwon, published by Columbia University Press.