A Corpse in the Koryo

by James Church

“I’ve warned you. I’ve asked you. Trust me, just for now, just this once.”

  “You said ‘ideas.’ You mean class purity? Human perfection? The collective will?”

  There was silence. He sat still enough to be a statue guarding the entrance to an old king’s tomb, nothing but sadness in the air between us.

  “For the first time in years,” I said, “you interest me.”

  “Will you do as I ask, or not?”

  “You know the answer.”

  His closed his eyes for a moment and put his hand to his forehead. It was a gesture he used to make a long time ago, during the war, to contain the despair that washed over us on cold nights. “Then at least delay the investigation. That’s all. Put it in a pending file. Cremate the corpse, lose a couple pieces of evidence, have the room lady reassigned.”

  “How do you know about her?”

  “I told you, this case is beyond what you imagine.”

  “Don’t touch her.”

  He stood up abruptly. “It’s not a choice. I don’t give a damn about the case, just where it leads. If you don’t let it go, you’ll burn. They’ll scatter your ashes over the river at dawn.”

  “And if I burn, so will you.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But I can’t risk it.”

  “Ah, now we get to the point. I should save your skin.”

  He looked at me quizzically, then sat down again. “I thought you were smarter than this. You still don’t get it.” With his fingers, he traced a single Chinese character on the polished wood of the table. It was the character for family. “If you get too close on this case, you’ll give them what they need.”

  “Them?”

  He lowered his eyes. “You heard me.”

  I stood without a word and walked through the hotel lobby, out the front door, down the drive to the empty street. I walked quickly, but it was already evening, and the darkness overtook me.

  7

  “You don’t have a brother, you do have a brother. Which?”

  “Are you hard of hearing? I have no brother.”

  “Strange country. You have a relative, a brother, let’s say, then he’s not a relative anymore. Any other relatives you don’t have who are trying to help you?”

  “Careful, Richie. You are stepping into a minefield. Back off.”

  “Your grandfather was a hero. I respect that.”

  “Your family?”

  “Big, three brothers and three sisters. My father had four brothers. My mother has a sister. They all have families of their own, a pile of kids. When we get together in the summer, you can’t hear yourself think.” He watched my face closely. “I have children, two girls.” He almost said something more, then checked himself.

  “My grandfather used to say that my brother and I were close when we were growing up, that my brother protected me. I don’t remember. He came back once from the orphans’ school after a year or two. Spoke in a loud voice, said he loved the fatherland. Grandfather said it was a good thing to see loyalty in a young boy, but afterward I heard him tell a neighbor that it was damned unpleasant to be lectured by a kid, especially your own grandson.”

  “You ever think about getting married? Having a family?”

  “Kang, Mr. Molloy. Kang is your topic A, topic B, and topic Z.”

  “You say he’s dead.”

  “So he is, but even the dead have much to tell. Maybe that’s why we worship them so. Wisdom from beyond.”

  “The sarcasm button just lit up on the tape recorder.”

  “Good, it works. Where were we?”

  “Going to the mountains. In Hyangsan.”

  The road to Hyangsan led to the clouds,

  Still I climbed, listening to waterfalls,

  Breathing the scent

  Of sacred pine trees.

  —Kim Po Pyong (1154–1198)

  When I went to bed in the Hyangsan Hotel, it was a rainy, sticky summer night. When I woke, it was autumn. Not just the promise of a changing season, but the change itself, whatever the calendar said. The air was crisp and the light so pure that the mountains in the distance were etched sharply against the sky. The underbellies of the clouds off to the east were burning gold, but the sun was still low and the flanks of the rugged hills that ran alongside the fast-moving stream coming down from the Myohyang Mountains were mostly in shadow. Small clouds nuzzled outcroppings along the hilltops, baby white puffs that looked like they had needed something solid to lean against during the night. They had overslept and been left behind. As I watched, they grew more transparent with each sunbeam that touched them. No struggle or sound of despair. They just disappeared.

  I stood on my balcony to listen to the birds gathering on the lawn in front of the hotel. On the hills off to the left, where the sunlight hadn’t yet found its way, more wispy clouds dumbly awaited their fate. They had settled so close to the ground that they appeared tethered to the gnarled dwarf pine trees growing out of the rocks. The hills were steep. It didn’t look possible to climb up there, but that’s the funny thing about Korean hills. They’re either harder or easier than they appear.

  I left the city right after the meeting with my brother. It had stopped raining by then, but it started up again as soon as I got on the highway. There wasn’t much traffic, and I never did see a train. At one point, near Kujang, the highway crosses the river coming between steep hills. Then, around the next bend, the river broadens out onto a plain, as if whoever had planned its course had a sudden change of heart.

  Leaning support piles are all that remain of a narrow bridge that once spanned the river. It was on this old bridge that my parents were killed. A lonely F-86 had dropped out of the morning sky and made a single strafing run on a small convey of trucks halfway across. The convoy was to have moved at night and been snug against the hills by daybreak, but something held them up and they were hurrying over the river in first light. Fighter planes weren’t supposed to be out that early. I never got mad when I thought about it. It wasn’t murder. It was death by a fluke, a senseless confluence of the winds of chance.

  My father was the only son, and my grandfather never really recovered. He blamed himself until the day he died, though he was miles away at the time, not even in contact with the units in the area. My mother was a nurse and had volunteered to work at the front. Most of the time she and my father were widely separated on the battlefield, but that morning they were together.

  I thought about pulling over after crossing the span that now carries the highway across the river, to look at the remains of the old bridge for a while and think about things. By then the rain had stopped again, but the air was wet and my shirt was sticking to my back. The clouds had dropped to the ground, or maybe the road was starting the climb into the hills. The mist got heavier. In another moment, there was no place to pull over, or more likely I wasn’t searching that hard. The highway curved around another hill, and the river was suddenly out of sight.

  There was a knock at my door, and before I could say anything, a floor lady entered, with a short, wiry workman close behind. “The latch on your balcony window is broken, and it might storm this afternoon.” The floor lady pointed to the top of the glass door leading to the balcony. “If it blows open, we’ll have water damage, and that costs money.”

  “You always fix things so early in the morning?” I came in from the balcony and sat on the bed to watch. The workman was carrying only one tool—a short screwdriver with a cracked black plastic handle—but he seemed to know what he was doing. In quick succession, he unscrewed the latch, grumbled a few words to the floor lady, kicked off his shoes, and climbed up on the small table near the door. He used the screwdriver handle to knock something into alignment. That explained the cracks in the handle. He smacked his lips in satisfaction, climbed down from the table, put the screws back in the latch, nodded to me, and walked out the door. I’d never seen anything so efficient. The floor lady beamed.

  “We would have done it yesterday if we’d known this room was
going to be in use. They normally save this view for important guests.” She gave me a crooked smile, friendly but leaving ambiguous whether she thought I met the standard. “From here, you can see mountains on either side of the road and watch the stream as it tumbles down over the rocks. It’s nearly full now, after the rain. If it storms again tonight, we’ll have a regular torrent. The noise might keep you up all night long. To some people, it’s an angry sound, but I don’t think it is. By our dormitory, up the road there, it sounds like a train. Most of the time, though, it is kind of sleepy. Like everything hereabouts.”

  She bowed and turned to go. Then she turned back. “Just a thought, but you might like to walk around the temple up the way. A pretty stroll on a morning like this. It should be almost perfect. Stick to the side of the road, once in a while a truck coming downhill loses its brakes. When you reach the temple, you can be alone if you want. Tell the guides you can manage by yourself. Though sometimes they feel lonely and like to talk to people.” She paused. “They see a lot. And they take notes.” She paused again. “On paper.”

  I nodded to acknowledge what she’d said but didn’t pursue the opening. Nobody was that helpful without reason, and I didn’t know what her reason was, so I thought I’d let things set until after lunch. Meantime, I could look around. “Until what time is the dining room open for breakfast?”

  “Did you call ahead?” Her tone changed, and not very subtly.

  “For what?”

  “New policy. We only fix enough food for people who sign up ahead of time. Got to make a profit, you know.” She was verging on stern. Suddenly, profits looked like a bad idea.

  “All I want is some tea. Maybe some fruit.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll check, but they only started this a month ago, and the manager is new.” Her expression showed she hadn’t made up her mind about him yet. “He’s strict. Says if we make an exception for one person, we’ll have to do it for everyone, and then where will we be?” She turned to go again, stepped partway into the hall, then stopped and stepped back inside the room. “The guides at the temple always have a kettle on.” Her manner was helpful again, almost pleading with me to start asking her some questions. “They sip tea and chat most of the day. Nice girls, but they don’t work all that hard, if you ask me.” When I didn’t reply, she bowed deeply to hide her disappointment and glided away.

  The road to the temple ran beside the river, which was coursing full and fast over large boulders army engineers had dumped there to slow the current and keep it from tearing at the banks. There wasn’t much danger of that on the far side, where the solid-rock base of the mountain rose steeply, almost straight up, from the water. The last of the infant clouds had vanished in the daylight, and the rocky outcroppings were easy to see from the road. Growing from them, trunks struggling to stay upright on the slopes, were groups of the dwarf pine trees I needed to reach. Maybe some mountains were easier than they looked. Not this one.

  By the time I reached the temple, I was puffing. It seemed to me the construction engineers could have done with a little less steepness if they’d given it some thought. There was a small ticket-selling hut just beyond the empty parking lot, next to a colored map of the temple complex and the surrounding mountains. The wooden shutter on the front of the hut was propped open, and I could see two guides sitting inside, drinking tea and staring out at the scenery. One emerged from the side door to ask what I wanted. She was tall and walked with a measured gait, so that the skirts of her costume floated over the stone pathway. Her hair was pinned up with two combs. It made her neck seem long and gave her jaw more attention than it needed. But she had a smile that looked real, and her eyes sparkled even in the dappled light.

  “Good morning. Tours don’t begin until noon. The temple complex opens at eleven o’clock.” She could see I was still breathing hard from the walk. “The hotel staff knows they’re not supposed to send people up here so early. Why don’t you sit on the bench under those trees and catch your breath.” Her voice was pleasant, without the hard-driving edge of the guides in the capital. It seemed to fit with the trees and the grass and the flowers. Either that or I was lightheaded from the climb.

  I thought she would go back to the kiosk to finish her tea, but instead she stood there, looking at me as if she’d asked a question that I was so far failing to answer. I had started to say something about the weather when a gust of wind blew closed the shutter on the ticket hut. It swung shut with a loud bang, there was a muffled scream from inside, and then the second guide burst out the door. She was shorter than the first guide; her hair was long, and her face was exactly like those in old folk paintings. Cute, like a kitten or a puppy, with big, wide-set dark eyes. “You’d probably get tired of her after a while,” I could hear Pak saying to me.

  The second guide propped the shutter open and walked over to us. The front of her skirt was wet. “I was pouring myself a cup and spilled the whole kettle when that shutter banged shut. Could have burned myself like a chicken.” She was agitated. Her friend tittered, then caught herself and looked away. It was incumbent on me to say something polite if I had any thought of seeing the kitten again. All I could think was that this had the earmarks of another morning without tea.

  The second guide glanced down at her skirt, which was clinging to her legs. “It’s soaked through. I can’t give tours walking around like this, none of the men will listen. I’ve got to hike back to the room and change. If I can find any, I’ll bring some extra tea, too. What we had left is all over the floor.”

  Amazing, I thought, and kicked a pinecone halfway across the parking lot. One lousy cup of tea wouldn’t do me any harm. I strolled over for a closer view of the low orange flowers that bordered both sides of the walkway leading to the temple grounds. The first guide floated beside me. “It’s going to rain again later this morning anyway, so there won’t be any tours.” She brushed against my arm. “As long as you’ve walked this far up the hill, you may as well look around the grounds. When the rain starts, we can duck into one of the old buildings. The roofs leak a little, but you don’t look too delicate to me.”

  The sky had lost the freshness of morning and was turning a hard blue. The light on the grass and the flowers was brilliant, but it stopped suddenly at the edge of the main path, which was deeply shaded by ten or fifteen old Chinese elms standing in a row. Their trunks curved gently near the ground, as if they had once seen court ladies gathering their skirts and longed to do that, too.

  With the sun climbing above the peaks, the near side of the hills was no longer in shadow. The dwarf pine trees looked farther away, and smaller, while the rocks they were growing from had become larger and more foreboding in the light. The guide looked up at the mountain. “There is a legend about those trees. They were planted by the monks who had to flee the fighting here centuries ago. The story is that they deliberately planted the trees in the most inaccessible places, to be a constant reminder to any invaders that nothing could crush our spirit.”

  “Nice tale. But I think they only live to be about fifty years old, at most, then they reseed. Though how anything could reseed on those rocks is beyond me.”

  The guide motioned me over to a boulder sitting behind a low wooden fence. The face of the rock had been carved away and a poem in ancient Chinese characters chiseled on it, but these had been worn by the weather, making it hard to read more than one or two in each line. “If I told you this boulder has been here for a thousand years, would you tell me it is not so?” The guide’s voice remained professionally pleasant; nothing about her tone suggested she was irritated. It was a simple question. But her gait had changed: She wasn’t floating anymore, and her skirts brushed the stepping-stones.

  “Nothing is impossible,” I said. “Everything you tell me on this beautiful morning, I believe.”

  She walked ahead of me without saying anything more until we reached a low bench in the middle of a semicircle of tall plane trees. They all leaned slightly in the same direc
tion. It was their effort to catch the sun but gave them the look of a group of strangers, each trying to hear the same conversation. The guide sat looking away from the eavesdropping trees, her back to the mountain that rose above the river. In front of us, a stone’s throw away, was a small wooden building surrounded by a hedge of roses.

  “This is my favorite building in the complex. No matter what, it carries an air of tranquility.” She spoke softly, her voice barely rising above the sound of the river and the birds. Almost as an afterthought she said, “There have been a lot of visitors here recently.” She laid her hands calmly in her lap and put her face up to the sky. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn’t resting.

  I thought she was expecting me to say something, to pick up on her remark. Then I realized she was getting her thoughts in order. “Am I interested?”

  “I know who you are, Inspector. Isn’t that what we’re best at, keeping track of other people? Surely you’re not surprised that someone called to tell us you were coming.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  She closed her eyes again. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to remember a story she’d been given to tell me, or was searching her memory for some facts that had fallen into the dark places where they were sitting quietly until she found them. Facts are like that sometimes, especially unpleasant ones. I make it a point to give people the benefit of the doubt if they say they don’t remember, even when I’m not positive I can afford to believe them.

  “Busier than normal?” It might help to start where she left off. If there was a story line, she’d feed it to me no matter what I said.

  She opened her eyes and turned to me. “I didn’t say ‘busy.’ I said we’d had a lot of visitors.”

  Good, she was paying attention, that meant no story line. But she seemed uncertain, trying to keep her balance mentally. “You’re right, that’s what you said—a lot of visitors. The usual tour groups?”

  She stood up and moved slowly from under the trees into a patch of sunlight. I stayed on the bench. It isn’t a good idea to question people when they are moving around—breaks the concentration—but when she didn’t come back to sit down, I got to my feet and walked beyond her to a bed of yellow mums that were starting to bloom. Chasing after her wasn’t going to work. It would confuse our roles. If she had something important to say, something she was nervous about, she was going to have to come to me. “Interesting thing about flowers,” I said. “No matter when you plant them, they open on schedule. Once in a while you get a bush or a tree that lags behind, or gets anxious. Flowers don’t do that.”