Summary

In “Lightning”, several men broke into Geumbok’s house to steal her money. They planned to rape her and kill her after looting her. Chunhui knew the men were hurting her mother and smashed an anvil on the thief’s head. When he collapsed the others fled. Later that evening, the ceiling buckled from the heavy rains. When Geumbok looked at the ceiling she saw a cache of paper money that had been stowed in the rafters. In “Nambaran”, the narrator tells the reader that the cache of money belonged to the old crone. Amongst the bills, Geumbok found property deeds. She asked one of her customers, Mun, to help her navigate to the remote field in the region called Nambaran. As they walked back in the heat, they bathed in the river and had sex near the train tracks. When a...