Tales of a Korean Grandmother Read Online Free PDF Page A

storeroom. When he walked on the river bank, they trotted by his side. When he lay down to sleep upon the warm floor, they crept close to his back. They were good enough friends then, the dog and the cat, but that was before the disaster occurred and the cat behaved so badly.
    "Old Koo was poor, but he was honest and kind. His shop was not like those where travelers are persuaded to drink wine until they become drunk and roll on the ground. Only one kind of wine was sold, but it was a good wine. Once they had tasted it, Koo's customers came back again and again to fill their long-necked wine bottles.
    "'Where does Old Koo get so much wine?' the neighbors used to ask one another. 'No new jars are ever delivered by bull carts at his door. He makes no wine himself, yet his black jug is never without wine to pour for his customers.'
    "No one knew the answer to the riddle save Old Koo himself, and he told it to no one except his dog and his cat. Years before he opened his wineshop, Koo had worked on the ferry. One cold rainy night when the last ferry had returned, a strange traveler came to the gate of his hut.
    "'Honorable Sir, he begged Koo, 'give me a drop of good wine to drive out the damp chill.'
    "'My wine jug is almost empty,' Koo told the traveler. I have only a little for my evening drink, but no doubt you need the wine far more than I. I'll share it with you.' And he filled up a bowl for his strange, thirsty guest.
    "The stranger on leaving put into the ferryman's hand a bit of bright golden amber. 'Keep this in your wine jug,' he said, 'and it will always be full.'
    "Now, as Old Koo told his dog and his cat, that traveler must have been a spirit from Heaven, for when Koo lifted the black jug, it was heavy with wine. When he filled his bowl from it, he thought he had never tasted a drink so sweet and so rich. No matter how much he poured, the wine in the jug never grew less.
    "Here was a treasure indeed. With a jug that never ran dry, he could open a wineshop. He would no longer have to go back and forth, back and forth, in the ferryboat over the river in all kinds of weather.
    "All went well until one day when he was serving a traveler, Koo found to his horror that his black jug was empty. He shook it and shook it, but no answering tinkle came from the hard amber charm that should have been inside.
    "'Ai-go! Ai-go!' Koo wailed. 'I must unknowingly have poured the amber out into the bottle of one of my customers. Ai-go! What shall I do?'
    "The dog and the cat shared their master's sadness. The dog howled at the moon, and the cat prowled around the shop, sniffing and sniffing under the rice jars and even high up on the rafters. These animals knew the secret of the magic wine jug, for the old man had often talked to them about the stranger's amber charm.
    "I am sure I could find the charm,' the cat said to the dog, 'if I only could catch its amber smell.'
    "'We shall search for it together,' the dog suggested. 'We shall go through every house in the neighborhood. When you sniff it out, I will run home with it.'
    "So they began their quest. They asked all the cats and dogs they met for news of the lost amber. They prowled about all the houses, but not a trace could they find of their master's magic charm.
    "'We must try the other side of the river,' the dog said at last. 'They will not let us ride across on the ferryboat. But when the winter cold comes and the river's stomach is solid, we can safely creep over the ice, like everyone else.'
    "Thus it was that one winter morning the dog and the cat crossed the river to the opposite side. As soon as the owners were not looking, they crept into the houses. The dog sniffed round the courtyards, and the cat even climbed up on the beams under the sloping grass roofs. Day after day, week after week, month after month, they searched and they searched, but with no success.
    "Spring was at hand. The joyful fish in the river were bumping their backs against the soft ice. At last, one