Then there was the maidservant. At first, everyone liked her because she was friendly and accommodating and handled her duties promptly and expertly, but it became apparent that she was crafty and talkative, like the madam of a gisaeng establishment. Deok-gi’s heart sank to think that this maidservant had been in charge of brewing his grandfather’s medicine.
We’ll know soon enough! However depressed he felt over his grandfather’s hospitalization, Deok-gi resolved to get to the bottom of the matter.
Farewell to Grandfather
The men gathered at the hospital to perform the New Year’s ancestral ceremony. The patient was well enough during the day, but toward evening he lapsed into a coma and regained consciousness only at dawn.
The doctor felt that it would be better to put off the operation for several days to give the patient time to regain some strength. An operation in name only, the procedure amounted to draining liquid from both sides of the rib cage. The doctor explained that it would nevertheless be difficult to perform, given the patient’s weakened state. He couldn’t understand how the patient had become so enervated. He assumed that the old man had taken considerable amounts of invigorating medicine — he could certainly afford it.
The next three or four days passed without incident. Still, the doctor couldn’t attempt the operation because the patient remained lethargic for no discernable reason. To make matters worse, the old man couldn’t keep down solid food.
“This doesn’t make sense. It looks like a toxic syndrome,” speculated the doctor.
“What toxin would you say?” Deok-gi prompted.
“We’d better wait and see what symptoms he shows.” That was all the doctor would say for the time being. Several times a day, injections were administered into the old man’s hardened veins. Thanks to these injections, his only source of nourishment, he hung on to life.
The Jo family doctor came to the hospital when he learned that the old man’s condition was critical. Deok-gi arranged a meeting between him and the hospital doctor in the hope that together they could reach a diagnosis.
The two discussed the patient’s condition, the care given him, and examined each other’s prescriptions. The diagnosis could have been wrong, but there was no possibility that their own prescriptions could have been toxic. However, when the results of the stool analysis were brought to the family doctor, he gasped.
After extensive consultation, the two doctors asked Deok-gi to bring them the Chinese herbal prescriptions and whatever dregs of the medicine remained. Suspicion had now shifted to the Chinese medicine doctor. Deok-gi went to see him personally, hoping to find some sort of a clue.
The Chinese doctor accompanied Deok-gi to the hospital, explained his diagnosis to the family and other doctors and shared his prescriptions with them. He had been treating the patient for internal weakness due to a cold, but he hadn’t been aware that pneumonia was the cause of the fever. In any event, there was no evidence of any toxic substance to be found in his prescription, and nothing remained of the medicine itself.
The patient was given an antidote, but it caused a kidney inflammation and stomach catarrh, and he began to lose his eyesight. In light of these symptoms, the diagnosis of arsenic poisoning became decisive, and the hospital doctor grew desperate.
Amid the commotion, the Suwon woman stayed in bed for three days, claiming that she had a cold and her body ached all over. On the day of the operation, though, she did visit but moaned and groaned so much it was embarrassing to hear her. From the sound of it, you’d have thought the young wife was going to die before the old man.
The women went so far as to poke fun at her. “You’re exhausted because you had to take care of your sick husband for so long,” they said. “We were afraid that you might die of exhaustion while taking care of him.”
“What more could I wish for if I could die first?” said the Suwon woman between short breaths, prompting a peal of laughter from the women.
The operation finally took place, and the fever abated, but the ordeal pushed the patient into a coma. Without opening his eyes for two days, his breathing grew shallower until, at last, it stopped.
The doctor, afraid that the family wouldn’t understand what had happened and blame him for hastening the patient’s death with the operation, explained that arsenic poisoning was the cause, and everyone accepted it. No one in the family would speak their mind about the cause of the poisoning, yet they regarded it as a criminal case.
When the doctor raised the subject of performing an autopsy for research purposes, Sang-hun, the head mourner, expressed agreement before anyone else had a chance to offer an opinion. Deok-gi had actually wanted to suggest a postmortem, but he didn’t dare open his mouth, afraid to provoke his relatives’ complaints and accusations.
Sure enough, Sang-hun was showered with abuse.
“Are you crazy? Do you want to besmirch the Jo family name?” Chang-hun spewed accusations. And his weren’t the only ones.
How can a fifty-year-old man have so little sense? What kind of bastard wants to rend his parent’s body apart piece by piece, like a butcher slaughtering a cow? Who in the world would do such a thing? How could the body be brought to the coffin room at the funeral? The debates grew more vehement.
The old gentleman was his parent, not his enemy! Just because his father said some unpleasant things to him while he was alive, it doesn’t justify his trying to humiliate him by hacking his dead body apart with a knife. If Sang-hun is sane, he should be killed and dismembered. If he’s insane, he should be confined to an animal shed or else beaten to death by the Jo clan. Chang-hun freely encouraged such sentiments among the mourners.
No one would be surprised if such a man had given his father arsenic. He wants the corpse torn to pieces to get rid of the evidence because he’s afraid his crime will be discovered. Then he’ll either burn the pieces or leave them to float in bottles in some corner of the hospital and walk away from the matter. Clerk Choe and Chang-hun spread notions like these to anyone who would listen. Everyone thought it made sense. In the meantime, the Suwon woman bawled hysterically, and dozens of people spoke up to put in their two cents worth. A corner of the hospital might as well have been destroyed from the racket they made. Sang-hun ended up like a crushed horsehair hat and was forced to sit quietly for the time being. It was not that he had nothing to say or that he didn’t have a mouth with which to say it, but as the blade of the attack was so sharp, he thought he’d better be cautious. If the key to the safe had fallen into Sang-hun’s hands, they wouldn’t have insulted him to such an extent. Rather, Chang-hun would have said, “I think it’s strange, too. Let them do the autopsy.” But in fact, Sang-hun didn’t think that an autopsy was absolutely necessary. He agreed to the idea because he thought that if a vicious conspiracy existed, it should be uncovered. He changed his mind, however, telling himself that there was no need for an autopsy when two doctors had confirmed the cause of death. There would be other ways to make it an issue if necessary — after his father was buried. The truth was that even though he didn’t subscribe to the traditional distaste for such things, Sang-hun was loath to see a knife cutting into his father’s still-warm body. In the heat of the moment, Chang-hun made Sang-hun out to be the bad guy, and indeed his accusations sounded plausible, but Sang-hun decided to wait for the right time, convinced that a hideous crime couldn’t be concealed forever.
I’ll bide my time, Sang-hun thought. How long will you bastards remain so confident?