The bellhop flipped the switch on the wall. I blinked at the sudden bright light and stared at the scene it revealed in a daze.
“It’s quite a view. You can see all of Seoul’s nightscape from up here.”
“Thank you.” Mija opened her purse to withdraw a single bill and deftly placed it in the bellhop’s palm.
He bent down ninety degrees at the waist. “Thank you. And…” he turned his head toward me and winked. “…Have a good night.”
I tried to wink back at him but couldn’t—I just made an odd grimace. For some reason, I had lost all confidence as soon as I walked back into the hotel, and my body was suddenly overcome by the alcohol. I tried to speak nonchalantly but the sound that came out was so loud that even I was startled.
“Is there a TV? Television?”
“Of course there is,” the bellhop replied, as if he’d anticipated the question.
“Color, I mean.”
“Of course it’s color.” He went into the room and turned the TV on. We heard the sound of applause and then the sound of a familiar song.
“That’s fine,” Mija said. “You can go now.”
Before leaving, the bellhop paused in the hall and winked at me again, but I decided not to return the gesture.
“What are you doing out there?” Mija said from inside.
“Uh, I’m coming.”
Of course, I should have gone in, but for some reason my feet would not move. I had imagined scenes like this for a long time—thousands of times. And yet, now that I was actually alone with a woman in a hotel room, I could not, for the life of me, remember what to do or how to start a conversation.
Mija sat on the edge of the bed, watching TV. She looked as if she had completely forgotten that she had just now walked into a hotel room with a man who was not her husband. She seemed so oblivious that I considered slipping out the door and running away.
I went over to the window and looked outside. In the distance, light from the banks of the Han River was beginning to surrender to the darkness, and in the streets, the processions of cars were gradually diminishing, making way for the silence and night. I bent my neck and looked down below the window. I could see the hotel entrance fifteen floors below, and a light—spread out like a white handkerchief—on the street. I suddenly felt the urge to jump. My body would descend in a flash and crash into the ground. It would not take long, even from fifteen stories up. There might not even be enough time to scream, and my face would be pulverized, kissing the pavement. The images were vivid—I could even feel the solid, cold touch of the hard asphalt, and it gave me a dull and heavy sensation of pleasure.
I thought of Jangsu’s final appearance. He died twenty-eight hours after the onset of his fits, twenty-four hours after falling asleep. And during those final twenty-four hours, he died slowly. His breathing grew more labored, and his body gradually wasted away. It looked as if he had lived his whole life in the span of that time. Finally, his face became just skin and bones and froze into a jester’s mask. The next morning, he drew his last breath. I clearly recalled the moment when we were changing him out of his hospital gown and into a shroud. We briefly paused in the middle of taking off his underwear as the first rays of the morning sun serendipitously shone in through the window onto his exposed penis. Surprisingly, though he had been in the military, he was still uncircumcised, and we stared for a long time at the dead man’s sex organ as it gleamed like a newborn child’s, illuminated by that single ray of sunlight.
“How long are you going to stay like that?” Mija said with her back turned to me.
At that moment, I wanted to run up to her, grab her by the hair, and speak roughly to her, saying, “Now tell me how you want it.” But what I barely managed to say, instead, sounded stupid even to me:
“What do we do now?”
She turned around laughing loudly. “Hey, Bonsu,” she said, and looking straight at me, she whispered, in a sweet voice, “Do you know why I came here with you?”
She smiled and gave me a wink. It was my second time seeing that kind of smile in this hotel room. But this one was a far better sight than the bellhop’s. Her lips were slightly parted, revealing her glistening gums. I stared absently at her gums, shining and livid in the soft light of the hotel room, her teeth oddly distinct and sturdy like tiles. She straightened one of her fingers and pointed at the crotch of my pants.
“I noticed that a while ago. And I figured out what it is you wanted.”
I bowed my head to look down at myself. That bulge was still there. But I was sure it was the thing in my pocket, though it was a real mystery to me how it could protrude so obviously all night. I spoke, suppressing the urge to pull the thing out of my pocket and hold it in front of her eyes, to tell her to take a close look.
“Is that how Americans think?” I asked.
“Not at all, it’s the opposite,” she said. “It’s because you’re Korean, Bonsu. You see, I’ve never slept with a Korean man.”
It looked like she was coming closer, but then she abruptly stopped. She narrowed her eyes and raised her arms slightly. “Now, let’s celebrate our complicity.”
I slowly stepped forward to meet her.
Her body was softer and more voluptuous than I’d imagined. It was so unexpected to me that her body would be so receptive, and yet my hands remained on her waist, frozen. If I did as I wanted, I would have known well how to move those hands, but I could not. Some unknowable fear weighed heavily on me—it felt as if I were about to do a terrible and despicable thing.
“Now it’s your turn.” The grad student gave me a nudge.
I got up from my seat. The magazine reporter had just finished his turn. He was wet up to his knees, staggering out of the water with a ghastly, pale face like a man who had just done something awful.
“I’m gonna pass,” I said, sitting down again.
“What’s the matter?”
“My stomach’s acting up. I’ve never touched anything like that with my own hands.”
“You dumbass! You think anyone else is used to this sort of thing?”
He shoved me. I staggered into the water and waded out. As the magazine reporter passed me, our palms touched somberly, like players being substituted in a sports arena. The ground under my feet was slippery, and the current was so strong I teetered precariously with every step. I looked ahead, barely keeping my body upright. It was the Hantan River. After finishing the cremation, we’d found our way there, carrying Jangsu’s ashes. All we had left to do was wade through the current and spread his ashes in the water, one person at a time.
As our lips met, she pushed something soft and spongy into my mouth, slick with desire, licking every crevice inside. I felt myself being sucked into some pitch-black wetland, suffocating from lack of oxygen. At the same time, my entire body became so weak that I found it difficult to stand. I could hear the sounds of us moaning as we moved backward, trying to maintain that posture, and I was certain it would probably end on the pink sheets that covered the bed. We both staggered, unable to find our balance, panting as if we were running a three-legged race. When she fumbled around and flipped off the lights, the curtain of darkness engulfed us. We bumped into something and fell over.
The current clutched my legs and made me slip. I raised my body again, catching myself over and over as I moved forward. Jangsu was about halfway into the middle of the river. No, actually, his ashes were in the hands of the insurance salesman, waiting to be scattered by me.
The insurance salesman shook them in front of me. “Welcome. Mr. Kim Jangsu presently awaits your outstretched hand.”
I somehow ended up with my face being dunked in the water.
The sound of a fire truck siren came from somewhere. It started faintly in the distance, then gradually grew louder, vaulting through the window, and after its horrific wailing, which lasted for a while, it diminished in intensity and once again slowly slipped away to some unseen place in the darkness. An ominous silence set in.
My mouth kept going dry. Bit by bit, the scent of Mija’s mouth slipped me into vertigo. The dizzying scent of overripe fruit bursting—it was also the smell of worldly things decaying. Something enormous was slowly toppling over into the flames. Embers scattered in the night sky like fireflies. The whole world had burned up and was crumbling at the mere touch of a hand. Her lips were persistent, and they left me breathless.
I barely managed to stand up. That thing, wrapped in white paper, was suddenly thrust before my eyes.
“Now, grab a handful and scatter it.”
Needless to say, they were human bones—pale white, some ground finely and some remaining as large lumps. There were fragments with blood-colored speckles, like rust, but what I felt more than anything, when it was put in front of me, was the intense warmth, like the breath of a living person, coming from the ashes. It was Jangsu’s breath.
“You’re dead,” I panted. Then I said to Mija, in a hoarse voice, “Do you know how much Jangsu asked for you? Until the moment he died, he only asked for you. And that’s what I told him…” Her sweaty face was pressed so close to mine that it felt like I wasn’t talking to her but rather to myself. “…that you were dead.”
But Mija was alive. Her body feverish in the corner room of the kind of hotel you could find anywhere in this city, she was moving against me, her breasts pressing down on me.
“That’s right,” she said. “I died.” Her voice was unexpectedly calm. “All the promises made to our generation are already dead. I just learned that a bit early. Now, let’s bury our corpses.” Her hand slid down and searched my body. With startling speed, she found my member and grasped it.
“Now raise that tombstone for me,” she said. “Hurry.”
Her voice had an irresistible power and sounded as if it were coming from that deep, dark place, far away, or from a place so high as to be invisible. Her hand gripped the tombstone and raised it.
“Say something. Say that you pray he rests in peace,” the salesman said.
But I couldn’t say anything. When the heat shot up—the moment I thought of it as Jangsu’s breath—I felt an unbearable queasiness. In a daze, I grabbed the ashes with both hands and scattered them into the air. But Jangsu’s breath did not disappear. It clung to my body and persisted, licking at me. Then a gust of wind blew in my direction, and I was enveloped in white, as if I were covered in flour. I dunked myself in the river, vomit shooting up from my throat. While I flailed around in the water to wash away Jangsu’s breath, I could not stop the involuntary retching.
You have been watching KBS, broadcasting from Seoul, Republic of Korea…. The TV station we had left on was ending its broadcast day. The national anthem blared. ’Til the waters of the East Sea run dry and Mount Baekdu is worn away…That somber and melancholy song—always inadequate and depressing whenever I heard it—now seemed fitting. As the music played, the Korean colors came down the flagpole. It was Mija’s black dress, wrapped around her like a flag, and as it came down, it revealed a world, bright and abundant, in the empty space left behind.
I was frantically fumbling with my hands, but things did not go as planned. I’d been through situations like this countless times before in my imagination. But in real life, a woman’s clothes are much more complicated and full of booby traps—like buttons and hooks—parts that you can touch but whose use you cannot figure out.
“Don’t you want to see what Jangsu looks like now?” I asked. I still can’t understand why I said such a stupid thing.
“What do you mean?”
“Jangsu’s here with us now. Want to see?”
Still, it seemed that Mija had no idea what I was talking about.
“Touch it,” I said.
In the darkness, I guided her hand onto that hard, lumpy object.
“What is this?” she whispered, the pitch of her voice rising.
I realized that I was running toward a place from which there would be no returning, a cliff that—if I took one more step—would send me hurtling into the abyss. And yet, at the same time, I could not resist the pleasure that was spreading precariously in my chest. I extended my arm to turn on the nightstand lamp.
“Take a good look.”
For a moment, nothing. But in the next moment, there were two short screams, back-to-back. The first came from Mija, and the next from me. Then I realized I’d been shoved—in that brief moment—off the bed, and that I had tumbled head over heels onto the floor, my chin striking so hard I thought it might have broken.
“Get out,” she said from above me. “Get out, Bonsu.”
I couldn’t answer because of the pain in my chin. The only thing I was able to communicate was “Ouch!” And only when she got up and stood on the floor did I barely manage to speak. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“Get out of here,” she said coldly. “Now!” Then she corrected herself and said, “No, I’ll leave.”
Clutching my chin with one hand, I watched her quickly getting dressed, arranging her clothes. They seemed surprisingly uncomplicated under the bright light, and I had the absurd thought that if I got the chance to undress her again, I could do it easily.
I could have said something simple like, “I’m sorry, Mija. Please, hear me out,” or “I’ll go—you sleep here,” and so on. But my chin hurt too much. Until she picked up her purse and slammed the door shut behind her, there was not even the sound of a cough between us.
I sat there, still, listening to her rapid footsteps growing distant down the hallway. The terrible pain swam to the top of my head. I got up slowly.
The thing was on the pink sheet. That object, so out of place on a bed for two—it lay there quietly as if it had been there for a long time. I picked it up.
“It’s not over, yet!” the insurance salesman shouted. “There’s still the last part of the ceremony.”
During the long bus ride back, a strange lively energy was circulating among us. We looked like we had just been through a shamanic ceremony that exorcised bad fortune, and thus had gained a certain optimism and confidence about our lives.
The salesman deliberately craned his neck to look around at those present and spoke in a polished voice. “Um…on behalf of the deceased, I would like to offer sincere gratitude for attending despite the extreme heat. To uphold the wishes of the deceased, I would like to pass on a gift to each of you. Now, what could this be?”
He lifted up what he was holding in his hand and waved the object—wrapped in white paper—in front of our eyes.
“Kim Jangsu may have been carried away by the waters of the Hantan River, but we wish for him to remain by our side for all time. The deceased did not ignore our desperate wishes. That is why he left us this gift. What I mean is, we must equally share these in consideration of the last wishes of the deceased.”
“Hey, your introduction is too long,” the grad student said.
The salesman paused for a moment while he caught his balance in the moving bus. “Let the dead judge the living,” he said. “Let the living bear witness for the dead. The condition of life, as a poet once said, is loneliness….” He paused again, but this time it was because of hiccups.
Staggering and hiccupping, and yet still managing to act like a priest on a pulpit, he took the objects wrapped in paper and divided them among us.
“We must engrave on our hearts that the reason for our preserving these relics is to remember him and bear witness on his behalf. Oh, dear departed, may you rest in peace. And may you live with us forever.”
“Amen,” the grad student added.
The magazine reporter was sitting next to me. “I read somewhere that warriors in this one tribe in Africa wear a very special ornament around their necks,” he said. “I saw a picture once. They were wearing war trophies around their necks, from battles they won against other tribes. They say the most prized trophy of all is the bones of a man they killed themselves.”
I looked down at the so-called present from Kim Jangsu I held in my hand. That light and solid object lying silent and impassive in my palm—it was a piece of bone.
From somewhere, the faint sound of a siren approached and then disappeared. I had a terrible headache. I lifted my body and staggered to the window.
The city was smothered in darkness. I looked down into it for a long time. Somewhere, a person will die and something will decay, and as inevitably as a rat will gnaw on old wood, an ember resurrected from a pile of ashes will slowly grow and burn again.
But there was no sound. It was all terribly quiet, and everyone was trapped in a deep sleep from which they could not awake.
Suddenly, I felt I was suffocating from an unbearable shame. I bowed my head and pressed my forehead against the cool glass. A lump of heat rose up from deep within my throat. When it was so large that I could no longer contain it, I finally threw it up. I was crying.
I extended my arm into the darkness like a soldier about to throw a grenade. And I hurled that fragment of Jangsu’s bone with all my might. It flew high up into the thin air like a small bird freed from its cage, and then it disappeared, as if it had been sucked into a silent abyss.
But in the next instant, I could hear it clearly—an enormous boom that could, in a single breath, blow away this world’s terrible slumber.
Translated by Yoosup Chang & Heinz Insu Fenkl