Saturday. The sky was clear for the first time in a while. The weather was typical for May and tear gas still swirled in the streets. At Jamsil Baseball Stadium the weekend match was on between the Haetae and OB corporate teams and—despite the risk of clashes with the police—it was the day the opposition party had chosen to press on with their constitutional amendment rally in Incheon. It was also the fifth day that two Seoul National University students—who had attempted suicide by self-immolation—were hovering between life and death with burns over their entire bodies. That was the day I finished my morning classes and headed to the market to buy flowers.

When I stepped into the dim and narrow market alley lined with shabby food stalls, my eyes were assaulted by the sight of pigs’ feet, neatly arranged and fully extended to show off their toenails; boiled pigs’ heads, their pale, skinny faces smiling as if they had just bathed; and dark, glistening intestines. The nauseating smell of boiled pork and the intense odor of frying oil agitated my empty stomach, and I struggled against dry heaves that nearly turned my guts inside out. It was past three and I hadn’t had lunch. All I’d had that day was a glass of orange juice I forced myself to gulp down while I was jammed in among the kids at the school cafeteria. For two days, my throat had swollen up for no reason, making me unable to swallow food. And it wasn’t just my throat that ailed me—my eyes were bloodshot from some infection, but I was bearing it all without the thought of getting checked out at the hospital, as if the bodily pain was something I was supposed to suffer through like a seasonal allergy.

The flower shop was deep within the market alley, bookended on one side by a shop that sold rice cakes and a side-dish store on the other. Because the natural light was bad, the fluorescents were on even though it was afternoon, and the flowers all seemed to lack vitality, like wreaths that had been laid out for too long at a funeral.

“What did you have in mind?” the shop owner asked.

I looked around at the variety of flowers that filled the cramped store, but I was a bit embarrassed, realizing that I barely knew the names of any. I had never bought flowers myself, let alone learned what they were called. Maybe it was because I was unaware of what use flowers were in people’s lives.

I pointed to each kind of flower and asked what it was called.

The owner answered, one by one: baby’s breath, China pink, hydrangea, canna, hyacinth. Then she said, apologetically, “Prices have gone up quite a bit these days. It must be because of the fallout.”

“Fallout?”

“You know, the radiation that turns to ashes and falls from the sky.”

Oh, fallout. I looked at the shop owner’s face—she seemed sickly behind her thick glasses. In the newspapers and on broadcasts they were continuously going on about the accident at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl. They said it was possible that the deadly radiation leaking from that place could even reach the skies above the Korean peninsula, but I had a hard time understanding why that would cause flower prices to rise in Korea.

“Prices were already high because of the holidays,” the woman added. “Parents’ Day is next week, you know.”

What jumped out at me in the store were the red carnations. At least I could recognize carnations without asking the owner. I pulled out one red flower from a bundle. The bulb was still closed tightly like a tiny, clenched fist, but a faint fragrance—like a gentle breath—brushed past the tip of my nose, and suddenly I felt a sharp stab of pain in my chest.

It was exactly one year ago, today…. The last thing he did was hold a carnation. He held his mother’s hand to tag along to the market, and he must have begged her to buy a carnation from a street vendor. And on their way home, until a 2.5-ton Titan truck ran him over in the alley, he held that flower in his tiny hand. When I ran into the emergency room after getting the call, what my wife desperately clung to—like something that could not be lost—was that single flower.

“Would you like the carnations?” the woman said.

I asked her to wrap them up together with a bundle of baby’s breath and some China pinks.

“Give me ones in full bloom,” I said when I saw her picking out only ones that hadn’t opened.

“This is better, if you’re going to put them in a vase. Open ones will wilt quickly.”

“They aren’t going in a vase. It’s fine.”

I watched the woman’s hands—so pale they appeared almost blue—as she meticulously wrapped the flowers in thin, white paper.

“What if all the flowers die from the fallout?” she said as she passed them to me.

“Then I guess you won’t be able to sell flowers anymore,” I said.

My answer must have sounded rude. Until I settled the bill and left the shop, the owner maintained an expression of betrayal. With the flowers in hand, I waded through the bustling crowd of people and escaped that repulsive smell of fried food and boiled pork.

The woman worried about all the flowers on Earth dying from radioactive fallout, but she didn’t know about the cruelty of the single flower that bloomed without fail with the coming of spring. And it wasn’t just the flower—all things with life were cruel. That’s the thought that had engulfed me for the past year. A child had died and the world no longer showed a trace of him. Seasons changed as usual, and spring returned, and the sun was warm enough to feel like a mild fever. Outside the classroom window, pollen floated pale over the athletic field like dust from a cotton gin; and as I breathed the stinging air that pricked at the eyes—the spicy air mixed with tear gas that made one sneeze uncontrollably—I trembled at the thought of that tiresome season, the return of yet another May.

I walked out to the main road and waited for a taxi, but I saw nothing vacant in the busy stream of cars sweeping by. Even as I stepped one foot off the curb, trying to flag down one of the passing taxis, I debated whether or not I should call home. There wouldn’t have been anything to say even if I did. My wife had surely invited church people over for the memorial service, or whatever. They would already be at the house right about now.

“Please come home early today,” my wife had said to me as I walked out the apartment door. “The pastor from church said he was coming. The service starts at five, so don’t be late.” She spoke in a low, parched voice, avoiding my eyes, as usual. I raised my voice. “I told you not to do that.” She looked straight at me then, and I saw that her eyes were red.

“Why, exactly?” she said. “I just can’t understand why you’re so against it.”

“Let’s just treat it like any other day,” I said. “Service or whatever…It’s all useless and foolish.”

“That’s not true,” she said. “I believe in our child’s eternal life and resurrection. As long as we don’t forget and keep praying.” Her voice was trembling, but my wife was looking at me defiantly.

“Call them,” I spat. “And tell them it’s been canceled. I won’t be home anyway.” I heard the heavy door slam behind me as I left. And as I descended the five long flights of stairs, from the very top to very bottom, I despaired, wondering how long these parched and interminable days must go on.

Eternal life. Resurrection. I couldn’t control my anger whenever I heard such words. I just could not accept how they tried to explain and console away the death of a two-year-old child. If eternal life and resurrection awaited after his death, how could he have been allowed to die in the first place? How on Earth could any kind of providence or meaning be hidden in the sudden death of an innocent child who had only just begun to see the world and explore it? But my wife persistently clung to those words. She had suddenly started going to church—which she had never attended before—more zealously than any fanatic, trying to overcome her pain through prayer and hymns. As for me, I could not believe that those things could really save my wife. And yet, I did not know of any other way for her to overcome her pain. For the past year, we’d tried hard not to touch each other, even in bed. As if the slightest contact of skin would transmit each other’s pain. With her body turned away, my wife often prayed by herself or wept quietly in the dark, and I would pretend not to notice.

“Take me to the Han River,” I said.

“Han River. Which part?” the taxi driver asked, looking into the rearview, alternating between my face and the flowers in my hand.

“Would you happen to know where I could rent a boat?”

“You want a boat ride?”

“I was there once, last year. But can’t remember where it was. There were boat rides, and it was like a park.”

“How do you expect me to find it from that description?” the taxi driver said, turning sideways to look at me. “I need to know the exact name of the place.”

Seeing his darkly tanned neck and his frustrated expression, I felt suddenly defeated. I realized then that I had started out without a plan. I tried to conjure up the scenery I had seen on that certain day a year ago, but only the faintest memories remained.

It hadn’t been a typical spring day. A nasty rain was falling, and by the old floodgate that led like a tunnel down to the river, the long stretch of embankment was wet. Shabby establishments were lined up all along there—boat rental places and eateries that served liquor and spicy stews. I remembered the view of the wretched little park bereft of visitors because of the rain; the bluish-green weeds covering the riverbank; the strong, murky current; and beyond, on the other side, the shapes of high-rise apartments looking unreal, like a stage set. But I could not tell the driver any of these things. That day, I’d rented a boat with my wife and headed for the middle of the river, where we scattered our child’s ashes in the swift current of the Han. But strangely, the memories from that day only remained as scenes from a nightmare or single shots among a few tattered photos that did not fit into any meaningful sequence. On the way back from the crematorium at Byeokjae, after we got out of the hearse and took the taxi, I was choking with pain and despair and did not notice where we were along the Han River or what the place was called. I finally had to get out of the taxi.

I stared blankly at the glare of sunlight overwhelming the street, then set out to find a pay phone. I’d remembered my friend who had accompanied us from the crematorium to that place by the river. I thought he might know where it was.

Luckily, he was at his desk. “Hey, what do want to go there for?” he exclaimed, as if he were rebuking me, when he heard my story.

“Today’s the anniversary of his death,” I said.

“Has it been that long, already? Then you should be home consoling your wife instead of trying to go out there.”

“Just tell me where it is.”

“Come over here instead. I need to see your pathetic face before I forget it. I’m not telling you until I see you in person. Come to the coffee shop in the lobby. How long will it take? Half an hour? Twenty minutes? Alright, I’ll come down in exactly twenty minutes.”

After hanging up, I squinted at my watch. It was almost four o’clock. Four o’clock…That’s when he’d just been moved to the hospital. As I watched the sunlight clinging to the leaves on the tree by the phone booth, I felt my heart start to pound. I suddenly heard my wife’s voice assaulting my ears: “What should we do? Mukwoo was in an accident. He’s in the hospital…and they say there’s no hope. What can we do?” Even much later, I would often hear that unfamiliar, hoarse voice—like an auditory hallucination—so mixed with tears that I couldn’t tell if it was really my wife’s. And then I’d feel an unbearable pain like a knife slicing my heart.

My only thought as I raced to the hospital was to wish that it was all just a dream, and that I had misunderstood my wife’s words. “They say there’s no hope….” But the reality was undeniable—it couldn’t be turned back. When I opened the hospital door and stepped inside, my wife was in the hallway crying, her forehead against the wall outside the emergency room. “What do we do…. What do we do….” She just repeated that phrase over and over, her body writhing, as if she had lost her mind. I pushed open the door to the emergency room, and when I went in, I could see our child, lying unconscious on a cold metal gurney, surrounded by four or five young doctors. It looked to me that, instead of doing anything to help him, they were just waiting for him to stop breathing. Other than a dark bruise around his right temple, he did not seem to have any external injuries. He was clean, and he appeared to be sleeping deeply in a pose so familiar to me.

“Wait outside. You can’t just come in here.” Someone stuck their head out of the room and shouted, “Hey, nurse! Why did you let this man in?” Then another doctor pushed me out.

“We’re doing everything we can,” he said. “Try to be calm and wait outside.” But I collapsed right there on that spot because, at that moment, I thought I needed to pray. I had never once prayed until then, and I had never believed in things like the power of prayer, but I now resorted to grasping at straws out of desperation. I knelt on the hard floor and clasped my hands together. I begged God to forgive me for not believing in His existence until now. I said that I would repent for all my sins if He would please save my son. Many other things slipped out of my mouth, and the more I prayed, the more the belief grew in me that some being—an all-knowing and all-powerful one that could determine the life or death of the child—existed. Even so, I felt my prayers would be insufficient. I thought I needed to provide some collateral that He could trust, make a promise that would cause Him to take interest in my prayer. So I prayed that I had many sins, and He should let my child live and take me instead. I swore that if I had to die in his place, I would do so willingly. I had no way of knowing how much time had passed while I was kneeling there on the concrete floor absorbed in prayer. Someone tapped my shoulder. One of the young doctors, draped in a white gown, was standing over me. “He’s stopped breathing,” he said.

My friend was already waiting at the coffee shop in the lobby of the newspaper building.

“What’s with the flowers?” he said before I could even take a seat. “Carrying around flowers in these troubled times…you writers certainly are different.”

He often called me a writer with the affection befitting an old high school classmate, but I hadn’t written a single decent story since I’d just barely made the cut in the New Year Literary Contest.

“Don’t keep calling me a writer,” I said. “It makes me feel like you’re mocking me.”

“What’s wrong with being a writer? It’s better than working for a Chinese restaurant delivering jjajangmyeon.”

“Delivering jjajangmyeon? What does that mean?”

“This shitty job—I might as well be delivering black bean noodles,” he said, as if he had a bitter taste in his mouth. “I’m gonna quit.” He blew a plume of cigarette smoke up into the air.

“Something happened, huh?”

“Get this…I had just gotten to the office and sat down, when the phone rang. When I picked up, some guy said he was a reader and had something to say about an article. A piece that went out yesterday, knocking the opposition party a bit. The guy said he wasn’t an opposition party member—he just wanted to chime in, purely as a citizen—but why were we insulting the opposition like that? When I told him, ‘It must’ve been meant to encourage them through constructive criticism,’ he said, ‘Then why’re you only criticizing the opposition and not the incumbents? What’s so great about the press that makes you guys think you can kick the opposition party around like that?’ He was so worked up his voice was shaking. I thought it would just be more trouble if I tried to argue, so I backed off by saying, ‘I’m not the reporter who wrote that article.’ Then the guy started grilling me. He said, ‘Aren’t you a reporter, too?’ So I told him, ‘I’m not a reporter and have no connection to that story.’ I don’t know why I said such an idiotic thing. You know what he said next? He started screaming at me. ‘What are you then, huh? Are you just there delivering jjajangmyeon? Then why the fuck is a delivery guy like you answering the phone, you piece of shit?’ ”

He stubbed out his cigarette and bolted up from his seat. “Hey, let’s grab a drink.”

“It’s still midday,” I said. “Besides, aren’t you busy?”

“I’m done with deliveries for today.”

From the way he said it without even cracking a smile, that phone call must have upset him quite a bit. He walked to the door first, and I had no choice but to follow. “What’s the matter with your eyes?” he said, peering into my face as we stepped out into the sun.

“Did you get hit with tear gas or something?”

“No. It’s an infection. Conjunctivitis maybe. Not sure, since I haven’t been to the hospital.”

“Eyes as crimson as the carnations clutched to his chest. What do you think? You think I could make it as a writer too?”

“What? You think writing a novel is like talking in your sleep?”

“You’re right. It must be hard writing a novel. In the streets and in the newspapers, real stories are being played out every day, so what more can a novelist say?”

We slipped out of the parking lot, which was lined with shining luxury sedans. People were crowding the streets, pollen flying everywhere, and there were riot police buses hooded in wire mesh. As we waited for the crosswalk signal to change, we saw a plain-clothed riot policeman standing guard behind a police bus, holding a shield with the number 88-1 written on it. He looked as young and innocent as most of the eleventh graders I saw every day in my classroom. Next to him, on the crosswalk, was a female college student controlling traffic as a part-time job. She wore a helmet that said Order and held a yellow flag with the same Order printed on it. She looked as young as the riot policeman.

My friend elbowed my side, pointing ahead with his chin. An American GI in civilian clothes was standing with a young Korean woman by his side. The GI was tall and handsome. He wore a shiny, sky-blue jacket. On the back, embroidered in gold thread, was a map of the Korean peninsula, with the letters DMZ and a thick line that ran across it, cutting it in half. There were place names like Seoul and Busan, and even the Yellow Sea and East Sea were labeled. On the peninsula, the Korean flag and the American Stars and Stripes were placed side by side like brothers on good terms. “Just look at that,” my friend said. There was a sentence written in English below the map, embroidered in fat letters: I’m Surely Going to Heaven ’cause I Served My Time in Hell.

“He’s going around advertising the Republic of Korea as Hell,” my friend said as we crossed the street. “That should be considered a crime, either way. But is it ‘spreading false rumors’ or ‘leaking state secrets?’ ”

“It must be about his time in the military,” I said. “Everyone thinks of their life in the military as Hell.”

My friend led the way through the narrow, cluttered alley of restaurants behind a forest of buildings to a small bar with a sign that read Café hanging outside. He pushed open the door and we stepped inside to an unexpectedly splendid interior. The lighting was subtle and elegant, and music was playing.

“Can they openly sell liquor during the day like this?” I asked. “Isn’t it illegal?”

“Isn’t this the kind of world where all desires are fundamentally tolerated?” my friend asked in response.

A young woman wearing red lipstick brought the beer we ordered and sat down next to my friend. “May I sit here?” she asked.

“You’re already sitting,” he said.

“Should I get up, then?”

“You say that, but you know you don’t want to get up.”

“I know how to get up,” she said, suddenly annoyed. She got up and left.

My friend poured the drinks himself, mumbling, “Bitch isn’t even that pretty.”

“Why’d you do that?” I said. “Picking a fight with a blameless woman.”

“I know,” he said, looking suddenly tired. “It’s strange. These days I see these bitches’ faces and my hatred just boils over. You think maybe it’s because they’re easy targets? A few days ago, I got into a lot of trouble for slapping the girl who sat down next to me at a bar.”

I tried to superimpose the face of the man sitting across from me, who had just entered his thirties, with the face I remembered from our high school days. He could have been someone else now—a complete stranger. In high school, my friend’s nickname was Missy. He was in the school newspaper club and a great singer. I barely managed to suppress a sharp pain that felt like the beer I had swallowed on an empty stomach shooting back up.

“Why do people have to be such cowards?” he asked, staring into his glass as if he were talking to himself.

“What kind of nonsense is that?”

“If each of us only had the guts to give up what we have, we could change the current state of things. But humans aren’t like that, are they? Because if that fundamental human weakness didn’t exist, then how could domination or submission exist? There’s one thing I could never understand whenever I heard about the Nazi concentration camps. It’s the fact that so many Jews didn’t show any resistance, even when they were facing imminent death. They didn’t resist as they marched in line to the gas chambers, as the Nazi officer pointed his finger, as if they were going to a bathhouse. Why do you think that is? Is it because they didn’t want to die by their own actions—until the faucets were turned on for them? Humans are basically weak beings like that.”

“Is that the life philosophy of a jjajangmyeon delivery man?” I said, deliberately joking, but he kept prattling on with the same tired expression on his face.

“But college students still pour paint thinner over themselves and light themselves on fire. Naive optimists who say they believe in humanity and the power of history. Naivete is pretty frightening when you think about it. They used to say the wolves ate the sheep, but now they’re calling for the sheep to get together and eat the wolves. They don’t want to accept the fact that sheep can never become wolves. No matter how much the sheep join forces, can they ever grow fangs? That’s what religion is for: ‘The last shall be the first.’ ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Those that are most oppressed today shall be seated in the highest place, but only when they’re dead and get to Heaven.”

He was mumbling what sounded like a bunch of gibberish, but suddenly my friend lifted his face, his eyes already red-rimmed. “Hey,” he said, “drink your drink. You writer, you…carrying around flowers in these troubled times. Why do you write novels, anyway?”

It was just a rhetorical question, so I didn’t answer. I drank my beer. My swollen throat throbbed like it was burned, and the pain was coming back in my gut. As I suppressed the nausea, I thought about the real reason why I couldn’t give up on writing.

For four years after passing through the gate of my so-called “debut,” I had barely managed to toss out a few short stories. And then, for the whole year after my son died, I hadn’t been able to write a single thing. My precious worldview, broad-minded until then, wasn’t just cracked but completely shattered, and I couldn’t figure out what stories I could possibly tell about life. Life was like a canvas that had been torn to tatters.

“The truth is, I’m just waiting for those kids to die,” my friend said, his tone full of self-loathing now. “Those kids…I’m talking about the college students who torched themselves. I have to write their obituaries.”

I thought it was about time for me to get up. I needed to get to the Han River before sunset. But when he finally heard my story, my friend said, “Why do you have to go there? Forget it. That’s the best medicine.”

“He doesn’t even have a grave for people to visit,” I said. “That’s why I want to at least throw him some flowers at the place where his ashes are scattered.”

“Man, why are you wearing such a long face—like Orpheus going to the underworld to find his dead wife?”

“You’re not wrong there,” I said. “I wish I was Orpheus. Why can’t we call back the dead like they did back then?”

“Are you already drunk? That’s a myth, man. There are no gods anymore.”

“That’s what I mean…. Why are there no gods now?”

He laughed. “If there were, would the world be in this sorry state? A world where gods existed must have been a happier place. A world full of criminals and liars—that’s the tragedy of a world without gods.”

Then he said, more seriously, “Speaking of Orpheus—I read it in high school, so I don’t remember it all that well, but isn’t there a river of forgetfulness called ‘Lethe’ or something? Why do you think there’s a river of forgetfulness? Don’t you think they’re telling you to forget? We have to forget the dead.”

“Just tell me where the place is,” I said.

“Okay, I give up. It was the park at Ttukseom.”

Ttukseom? In the taxicab, I tried to reconcile that place name with my memories of that day a year ago and my heart trembled. An unbearable sadness welled up as the vivid pain from that day was resurrected. I wondered if it was futile, as my friend had said. What meaning would there be for me in returning to that place? Maybe he was right—it was like a pitch-black land of forgetfulness to which the living could never go. I thought of my wife, who must be holding the memorial service about now, trying not to forget our child, afraid of losing even the most trivial memory and hanging on for dear life to keep them from getting buried into oblivion, denying our son’s death. Sometimes my wife would lay out old photos of him and ask me, “What color shirt was he wearing the last time we visited Deoksugung Palace?” When I would tell her to please try to forget, she would say, “How sad would he be if we forgot him? I can’t bear that thought—it feels like we’re committing a sin against him.” My wife did not want to accept the fact that it was a futile struggle, that our child had slipped through our fingers and disappeared like a handful of dust.

He was gone now. He existed only faintly in our memories, and what was most unbearable for me was the fact that there was no meaning in his death. That child, only two years old—who had just started looking at the world through sun-dazzled eyes, who was learning about the things around him as he pointed to them one by one—had ended up dead by the negligence of an elderly truck driver. A death as meaningless as that of an insect. And if that was the case, then what possible meaning could there be in his short life that would end in such a death? What is the meaning of a human life, anyway? When I first heard on the TV news about the students who had lit themselves on fire, I had felt the usual pain in my chest that had already become a kind of chronic illness. And still, the question that preoccupied me was, Did they know the meaning of their death? According to the news, they had poured paint thinner all over their bodies, lit themselves on fire, and then jumped off the roof of a three-story building, shouting something. What went through their minds in those moments? I couldn’t sleep that night because of the terrible image of them in flames, falling. Did they truly fall holding on to some value that transcended their own lives? How were their deaths and the death of my child different? I believed that, as they immolated themselves, that act must have been a part of their struggle to find meaning for their lives in history and society. But my body trembled at the undeniable truth that everything they had given their lives for would, in the end, become the inheritance of cowardly survivors; they would be scattered like a fistful of dust and disappear into a pitch-black emptiness.

When we returned home after cremating our child, the rented room that had been our nest was unfamiliar and eerily quiet. And it wasn’t only because the child who had completely filled our lives from the time we had gotten married had disappeared. Then, I saw the world through eyes already dead—the world after my death, the world where I did not exist. Then, I would feel unbearable hatred toward a book that stood, unchanging, on a bookshelf, even a small potted flower visible through a window. Life, and every living thing, felt cruel and cowardly to me.

As the taxi turned right, just short of the Seongsu Bridge, onto a narrow road that traced the river, my heart started pounding. What I could see outside the window felt familiar: a little Catholic church topped with a cross; dusty buildings that looked like small factories, barely managing. Even the shops lining the street looked familiar. “You can let me out here,” I said to the driver. When he made another turn to let me off, I could see the dike and floodgate in the distance.

The slanted light of the late afternoon illuminated the road, and a breeze blew in from the river. I walked, looking at the distant floodgate that was open like a tunnel. I felt an ache in my head, and sadness, as if I were finding the way to my son’s grave. My wife had been against cremating him. She said that scattering his body without even a grave would be unbearable. “Now we’re his grave,” I said to her. “Don’t they say that when parents die, they’re buried on the mountain, and when children die, they’re buried in your heart?” But the truth was that my feeble heart couldn’t properly fill the role of a child’s grave.

When I finally walked through the run-down floodgate cut to the river, I was shocked. I could not believe what I saw. There were no houses along the riverbank, no canopied rental boats, not even a weeping willow with its hair down. The whole area had become a desolate construction site, the only visible things being mounds of excavated dirt and heavy equipment like bulldozers and trucks. Then I remembered what was called “The Comprehensive Han River Development Plan” that I must have heard about on the radio. This place was probably one of those that had been demolished at that time, and everyone had moved away. Wind-borne dust blew in my face.

I trudged through piles of excavated dirt toward the river. It hadn’t changed, flowing on, dragging its massive body. That day, we had launched from here, in a small rowboat, to the middle of the river. An old man rowed for us, and raindrops that found their way through the gaps in the canopy were splashing onto the deck. I opened the envelope that I had held against my chest all the way from the cremation site. The bones barely filled half of the manila envelope. My wife and I each grasped a handful of what remained of our child’s body, ground so finely it was like powder, and scattered it onto the water. The dust that left our hands was swallowed up by the current and disappeared instantly into the river.

I had planned to go out on that same boat again and toss the flowers from the spot where we’d scattered his ashes. But that was impossible now. I looked down at the dirty river water under my feet. Fragments of newspaper and plastic were floating about and dark green river weeds that looked like a drowned woman’s hair waved this way and that in the current. Standing by a beached rowboat, broken and upside down, I could do nothing but watch the black river flowing silently before my eyes.

When I left the riverbank and slipped out of the floodgate again, I saw an old tented food cart nearby. The dark-faced owner stood watch over a few bottles of soju and some meager snacks, and a gray-haired drunk old man was asleep in front of her with his nose buried in the table. I sat myself down on a corner of the narrow plywood bench by the old man and ordered a drink.

“When did the park disappear?” I asked.

“Last year,” the woman said. “They started construction in the fall and completely tore it apart. What would you like to eat?”

Before the food was even ready, I emptied my soju glass again and again. The tent flaps parted at each gust of wind, letting in dust and dirt.

“There’s so much dust…. It must be all the construction,” the woman said apologetically.

“Business must be slow since the park is gone.”

“It’s not much different,” she said. “Any change in business here, it’s never more than a couple thousand won. You think people coming for the park would eat at a snack cart like this? There’s a lot of factories down this alley, so the factory workers are always stopping by to pick up tteokbokki and such.”

I watched a few young men at the other end of an alley that connected to the dike. They were energetically kicking a ball around, wearing dirty tank tops stained red with rust, and for some reason that made me think of my wife’s pale face. Had the memorial service ended? I wondered what she was doing now, after the church people left. Suddenly my entire body was awash with a terrible fatigue.

“You must’ve come to enjoy the park and struck out,” the woman said.

I emptied the glass again. My body felt heavy, as if I were about to collapse, and the strong soju was stirring up my empty stomach, and yet for some reason I knew I could not leave this place without getting drunk.

“I came here to find someone.”

“You’re looking for a person?” The woman noticed my bloodshot eyes. “Someone who used to be at the park?”

“That’s right, where did all those people go? I mean, the people who used to pilot the boats.”

“They’re scattered all over. I heard some went to the ferry at Cheonho-dong, but most just split and drifted away, here and there.”

I thought he’d been asleep, but just then the old man lifted his disheveled head. “You came looking for someone?” he asked. “Who?” He looked around, sniffing, his nose red with burst blood vessels.

“Oh, you old geezer, please just go home now,” the woman said. “How can you get so sloshed this early in the day?”

The old man pretended not to hear. “Give me my bottle,” he said, blinking his rheumy eyes.

“What bottle?”

“The one I left with you.”

“You didn’t leave any bottle with me. You don’t even have anything left to drink. Please, just go home. I wouldn’t sell you any more liquor even if you offered to pay.”

Still, the old man lingered, mumbling something, until the woman shouted, “Go home! Now!” And then he rose unsteadily from the bench.

The woman clicked her tongue and watched him stagger away with his fallen pants exposing his backside. “That old geezer used to be a boatman here. I think he’s a local. Born here, used to fish, too. Now that he’s got nowhere to go, he’s become that old wreck.”

I got up from my spot, stomach churning, barely resisting the urge to throw up as my insides twisted into knots of pain. I passed through the floodgate and had to climb over the mound of excavated earth and a willow tree uprooted on its side to get to the river. I threw up then. Since I’d had nothing to eat all day, there was nothing to come up, but I continued to vomit for a long time, as if to purge everything I was holding inside me. Tiny gadflies flew between the poisonous blue weeds. In other spots, nameless wildflowers poked up through the dirty rocks, lifting their heads to the sky.

I watched a lone seagull flapping its tired wings and flying off somewhere toward the red, dipping sun. Suddenly, I recalled an image of my smiling son—he had always loved to laugh—and I felt my throat burn with longing and nostalgia.

I was just about to leave when I saw a young girl in the distance, hunched over and looking into the water. As I approached her, I realized she was struggling to put something into the water. It looked like a plastic bag with something in it.

“What is that?” I asked.

Still hunched over, the girl lifted her face to look up at me. She must have been ten or eleven. “It’s my goldfish,” she said.

“What are you doing with the bag?”

“I think they’re dying. So I wanted to set them free in the river.”

“I’ll help you.”

Because of the high bank, she couldn’t reach down to the water. I took the water-filled plastic bag from her hand. Inside were two goldfish, already half dead. I let them loose in the water, into the flow of the murky river, where they showed their pale bellies and then quickly disappeared.

“You know, goldfish aren’t supposed to live in the river,” I said.

“It’s alright. It’s still better than dying on land, don’t you think?”

“No,” I said. “I’m sure they’re going to live.” I looked at the girl, her face red in the setting sun. “Where do you live?” I asked.

“Nearby.” She looked straight at me and spoke with confidence. “Why are you here instead of home, mister? Don’t you have a home?”

“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I have a home?”

“Are you married?”

“Yes, I’m married.”

“Then your wife’s waiting for you.”

“Wife?” I laughed. “Would you like these flowers?”

The girl looked at the flowers I presented in surprise, not even trying to hide how much she wanted them. “They’re carnations,” she said in a whisper.

“Take them. You can put them on your desk.”

She took the flowers without a word of thanks and, holding them close, smelled their fragrance. She took a few steps, then stopped for some reason and came walking back to me.

“Here,” she said. “You take the flowers, mister.”

The girl put the flowers in my hands, spun around, and ran off. There was no time even to say anything. Still holding the flowers, I stood there for a long time, overcome with emotion, watching her recede into the distance. Yes, I thought, like she said, I should leave this place and return to where I ought to be.

I paused before leaving through the floodgate when I saw the glare of the red dusk dyeing the river. The desolately cratered construction site, the silently flowing river, the piers under the long spans of the Seongsu Bridge—even the apartment buildings lined up on the other side—all seemed aflame in red. I remembered the story of Orpheus, who had brought his wife back from the realm of the dead but then looked back before crossing the river of forgetfulness and ended up losing his wife forever. I stared at that place for a very long time.

It was during the taxi ride back that I heard the news that one of the Seoul National University students who had immolated themselves had died. Among other news—the opposition party’s constitutional amendment rally being turned into a violent riot by the extreme leftist faction; Olympic Boulevard opening; a worker, who had lost his job and threatened a food manufacturer with poison, being arrested—the radio briefly mentioned the death of the young student. It was at five thirty that afternoon, after five days of hovering between life and death.

“It’s only the precious kids who die,” the taxi driver said bitterly. “What a wretched world…. How many more is it gonna kill?”

I did not say anything. It was while I was wandering the desolate riverside that the student was dying. Maybe I went all the way out there to keep vigil over his death. I looked out the window as the taxi passed between the piers under a subway rail bridge. The streets were winding down the day as usual, subway trains passing noisily overhead, a bus filled with people—their expressions blank, as if made of clay—rushing somewhere. I noticed I was trembling, as if I’d caught a chill. I felt a pain, as if my heart were being torn out, and along with it something unbearably hot—an ecstasy filling up my body. I saw it clearly, just then, through the gigantic piers becoming tinged with darkness: a human figure wrapped in flames, burning. But it was not falling down; it was ascending, breaking upward beyond death.

Translated by Yoosup Chang & Heinz Insu Fenkl