The Guest

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  “Everything is as God wills it, and I am not easily surprised. Feel free to tell me what happened.”

  “I’m so sorry. Presbyter Ryu passed away today at around 9:00 p.m. We were with him till the end.”

  “I’ll be there soon. Have you notified the funeral home?”

  “Please don’t concern yourself with that—our church has a steward who handles funerals. You can trust him to take care of all the necessary details.”

  Yosŏp woke up his wife. She burst into tears and said again and again that they should have visited more often and that she felt guilty. Yosŏp left the packing to his wife and contacted his nephews, Samyŏl and Pil-lip, who lived in Washington, D.C., and Detroit. Luckily, Samyŏl was home, and Yosŏp asked him to call his younger brother to pass on the news.

  It might have been on account of the rain, or maybe that it was the middle of the week—whatever the reason, the streets were practically empty. Yosŏp stuck to the main roads whenever possible and drove much faster than usual. By the time he pulled up to his brother’s home, a sizeable gathering of Yohan’s fellow churchgoers had already arrived. A good twenty people or so were crowded into the living room, sitting in the various chairs and milling about on the carpeted floor. The young minister sprang to his feet and greeted Reverend Ryu and his wife. Seeking out familiar faces, Yosŏp greeted several acquaintances. A bit dazed, he looked around.

  “My brother . . . ?”

  “He’s upstairs.”

  This time Yosŏp led the way and started up the stairs. A great deal of time had passed since he’d entered his brother’s bedroom. Like the miser he was, Yohan had apparently kept on using the same metal bed he’d bought years ago at a used furniture sale in his neighborhood. A cardigan sweater was draped neatly across the back of a chair, and a pair of dress pants lay on the seat. The late Presbyter Ryu Yohan was lying on his bed, covered entirely by a white sheet. Yosŏp went over to the head of the bed, pulled down the sheet, and looked at his dead brother. It might just have been the fluorescent light, but Yohan’s face looked to be made of old paper, discolored to a faded yellow; his white hair seemed nothing more than a fistful of tangled old yarn. A veteran of countless encounters with bodies of the newly dead, Yosŏp had come to believe that he was capable of reading the various expressions of death. Looking at his brother’s face, Yosŏp read a sensation of relief, of lightness, as if Yohan had finally set down some heavy load. Drawn towards it, unable to stop himself, Yosŏp reached out and felt his older brother’s cheek and traced the cheekbone with his hand. Cold, but not stiff—it was still soft. Could it be that his brother had actually known peace? He prayed for a moment and pulled the sheet over his brother’s face. The young minister and Yosŏp crouched down, facing each other as they squatted on the carpeted floor by the side of the bed. The young minister began to explain.

  “Presbyter Ryu called me early in the evening, saying he didn’t feel well. He asked if I could come over and pray for him. I suggested that we go to the hospital together, but he insisted that wasn’t necessary—he said a plain service with me was what he’d like to have.”

  We’re off to the stream—I’m tagging along after the older guys from the neighborhood. The banks are sandy, the water crystal clear as it gushes through the jagged rocks. Uncle Sunnam is leading the way, dragging a yellow mongrel along by a length of string. Odds are that he’s caught the bitch that wandered over from the other side of the hill—I bet it’s the same dog that was playing about in our village.

  His swift tongue and practical jokes have long since established him as the man at our village sarang.4 Until Uncle Sunnam starts going off to work the mines over in Ŭnnyul, we go hang around outside the sarang every afternoon just to see what the older guys are up to. Ichiro, the longstanding neighborhood servant, is always there. Even we young ones use the casual, low form of speech to Ichiro. In the wintertime, everybody brings their work to the village sarang; they boil sweet potatoes to eat with cold tongch’imi5 juice while they do their work. Sometimes the little ones, pressured by the older guys, brave a taste of makkŏlli.6In the summertime, plans for stealing chickens and pilfering melons are cooked up in that room. One time, trailing after Uncle Sunnam’s gang on a river-fishing trip, I even learn—among other things—about masturbation.

  In the shade of the trees along the stream, they boil water in an iron cauldron usually used for boiling cattle feed. For the first time in my life, I witness the killing of a dog—exciting and cruel enough to make your blood boil. They tie the dog’s neck with hemp string, winding it round and round many times over, then they throw the other end of the string over a tree branch and pull. As the string becomes taut, the dog’s eyes roll back into its head, flashing white, and its four legs flail frantically, suspended in midair. Then the older guys circle around; armed with wooden clubs, they beat it all over as hard as they can. The dog can’t make a sound. All it can do is rasp out a choking noise and thrash about until it shits all over the place. Once it’s over, the dog is almost formless. They singe its hair over a bonfire down by the edge of the water. Our eyes gleam eerily, filled with murder and appetite.

  Ah, why does that particular summer day come back to me now? It must be because I saw the phantom of Uncle Sunnam on the same night Little Brother came to see me. All day long I’ve had a splitting headache, chills running up and down my body—maybe I’m coming down with some sort of flu.

  It started pouring in the afternoon; the rain was thick and intense. The sound of thunder tore through the house. I turned off the TV and lay down on the sofa in the living room. Feeling wretched and sullen, I rifled through the kitchen cabinet and found a bottle of cognac. When was the last time I touched alcohol, I wondered. This bottle was the one Samyŏl brought home at Thanksgiving. I must have been just lying in the darkness, dreamless. Someone shook me by the arm.

  Hey. Hey, Yohan. Get up. Get up.

  Slowly, I opened my eyes. Someone in black, squatting down by the sofa, was shaking me awake. I wanted to sit up, but somehow my body wouldn’t budge.

  Who are you?

  It’s me, Uncle Mole.

  Uncle Sunnam.

  That’s right. Aren’t you going to pester me for tales about the old days?

  Go ahead . . .

  This tale, that tale—even the cow in the field has its own tail.

  As if I’d been waiting for the joke all along, I snickered. The black thing giggled, too.

  That was why I hanged you on the utility pole.

  The black thing fell silent. It moved over to the chair facing the sofa. It sat down and crossed its legs.

  I’ve come to take you with me.

  Can’t I go tomorrow instead?

  Doesn’t work that way.

  I flew into a temper.

  I’m not the one that made you join the Communist Party, am I? I will not go with you! I am a presbyter in the church!

  The black thing rocked his legs back and forth and muttered a response: There aren’t any sides over there—no my-side-against-your-side.

  Well, I killed you, so I’m definitely not on your side.

  No such thing as living or dying, either.

  What about forgiving and repenting?

  Certainly not.

  Where is ‘there,’ anyway?

  Where you were born . . .

  On the brink of losing consciousness altogether, I staggered to my feet. I moved closer to the chair and was about to lay my hand on Sunnam’s body when, with a flicker, the phantom disappeared.

  It was still raining incessantly. I opened every lock in the front door to give everything inside me—not to mention everything inside my house—a chance to get out. I was getting over my flu symptoms, but I still felt drained. I wanted to wash myself clean. I went upstairs, filled up the bathtub, and immersed my body. It felt as if my whole body were dissolving, melting into the water, leaving only my soul floating on the surface. Gradually, I felt more comfortable. As soon as I got out of the bathroom, I called the
new minister and asked him to visit me. I took off the robe, changed into clean underwear, took out a new pair of pajamas, and put them on. The sound of the rain grew fainter and fainter.

  “We came in here and found him sleeping quietly. We weren’t sure what we should do, so we began to pray. We thought the Presbyter was still asleep all through the prayer, but when we said amen, he joined in and said it with us. We asked him whether he was feeling unwell, but he told us he felt fine and that he was quite comfortable. He said he wasn’t in any pain but that it was time for him to go to sleep.”

  The young minister stopped himself, removed a notepad from the inside pocket of his jacket, and inspected it for a moment.

  “I had a feeling that something unusual was going on, so I wrote down what he was saying. He said that he was returning to his birthplace, that his body should be cleansed by fire after his death and placed in a cinerarium—he also said that there’s a bankbook in a basket under the bed and that the money in the account is to be used for expenses. Soon after that he was quiet, and when we looked closely, we realized he’d stopped breathing.”

  Following the minister’s directions, Yosŏp took a look underneath the bed. There was indeed a basket. It was square, like a box, and had a padlock—most likely something left behind by his late wife. He opened the lid and found a Chemical Bank bankbook wedged between a small pile of photo albums and day planners. The bedroom door opened and the deacon poked his head in.

  “The people from the funeral home are ready with the coffin, sir.”

  “Tell them to bring it up here, please.”

  Two men from the funeral home entered, carrying the coffin over their shoulders, and Yosŏp directed them to put it down by the bed. He then began to wash and shroud the body with the young minister. The whole procedure must have been a first for the young man, but for Reverend Ryu Yosŏp it was familiar territory; his experience with such matters dated all the way back to his days in Korea—and after all, it was his own brother. Yosŏp went to take a look in his brother’s wardrobe. There were several suits, but he needed to find the hanbok7that he remembered Yohan owning.

  He found them, together with some winter underwear, in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe: Yosŏp took out the chŏgori, paji,8 and magoja9— the durumagi,10 he set aside. With the help of the young minister, he took off Yohan’s pajamas, and they wiped down his face, arms, and chest with gauze steeped in alcohol. The abdomen, legs, feet, and toes, too, received the same treatment. Yosŏp knew well the entire panorama of events that had left his brother’s body so small and shriveled. After he finished dressing Yohan in his hanbok, Yosŏp wrapped him in a cotton sheet and, together with the minister, lifted him up by the head and legs to lay his body in the coffin. He then stuck a bundle of cloth underneath the head to steady it and filled up the space around the body with crumpled rice paper, packing it in to keep the body from jostling around. Yohan’s fellow churchgoers were called upstairs, and they all held a small service together.

  At dawn, Yosŏp and his wife decided to return home for the time being, leaving the crowd of churchgoers behind. It was agreed that the wishes of the dead ought to be honored in terms of the funeral service, but they decided to put aside any further discussion on that point until Samyŏl and Pillip arrived.

  On his way driving home to Brooklyn, Yosŏp had a rather bizarre experience. At some point on his route he turned the usual way, only to realize several blocks down that the street, lined by tall, dark buildings on either side, was completely dead. He sped up, expecting that normal, brightly lit streets would appear soon enough—only to find himself wondering whether he wasn’t just going deeper and deeper into this inexplicably alien place. As a three-way split in the road came into view, he slowed down and tried to sort out his thoughts.

  His wife, her head thrown back against the headrest, was fast asleep in the passenger side. Yosŏp, having just spent a sleepless night himself, was finding it difficult to think clearly. It would be best to turn back, he finally decided. He turned the car around—and soon realized that he couldn’t recall the spot where he’d turned onto this street. He drove very slowly, thinking that he’d eventually have to ask someone for directions.

  All of a sudden, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he caught a light shining down an alley on his left. Feeling rather reluctant, Yosŏp turned the wheel once more and entered the alleyway. The light turned out to be a small bonfire. It was quintessential New York: buildings abandoned when the last shops went out of business and the last legitimate tenants took off, now used as shelter for garbage, homeless alcoholics, and squatters. Thinking to himself that he’d wandered into the most dangerous of traps, Yosŏp tensed and gripped the steering wheel tight with both hands.

  Squatting in front of the fire was a shadow of no discernible gender, tearing up cardboard boxes to feed the flames. It was still summer, yes, but a concrete forest on a rainy night can be chilly in any season. Yosŏp brought the car to a stop. This is probably how they make it through the night, he thought. The shadow turned in his direction, but the front steps of a building blocked the nearby light and he was unable to see the shadow’s face clearly.

  “Excuse me!” he called out in English as he rolled down the window.

  The shadow slowly sauntered out onto the sidewalk. It was an old hag with a shock of white hair, draped in a huge man’s coat long enough to almost graze the pavement as it swung to and fro.

  “What, got yourself lost?”

  “Yes. Right. I’m trying to get to Brooklyn.”

  The hag burst into a cackle.

  “What are you going there for? It’s no use, you know, even if you get there.”

  He shouldn’t have even bothered responding—he should have just turned his car around and gotten out of there—but instead, in spite of himself, he blurted out, “I’m going to my house.”

  “That’s no house of yours. Your house is the Kingdom of Heaven. I know very well where you’re coming from.”

  “And where might that be?”

  Again the old hag cackled.

  “You know very well, too. You’re coming from the house of the dead.”

  With a thud, Yosŏp’s heart sank. The hag moved even closer, practically leaning her chin on the edge of the open window.

  “Buy this, and I’ll tell you the way.”

  She held out something that looked like a small bundle of yarn.

  “How much?”

  “Ten dollars.”

  “Too expensive.”

  “Well, five, then . . . that’s as low as I go.”

  Yosŏp fished a five-dollar bill out of his wallet and gave it to the woman. She placed the small bundle in his hand.

  “Keep this on you, and something good will happen. Now, go out to the main road, and turn right after three blocks. That’ll put you on the road you’re used to taking every day.”

  Eager to get away from there, Yosŏp turned the car once more in a rough swerve. For a split second, his headlights illuminated the old hag as she waved her hand. Awakened, perhaps, by the sudden turn, his wife opened her eyes, looked around, and asked, “What’s going on?”

  “I got lost.”

  “Did you talk to someone?”

  “Yeah, a homeless person, I guess. I asked for directions.”

  Yosŏp looked again at what the old hag had deposited in his hand. He couldn’t tell what kind of animal skin it was, but it was a leather pouch—something you’d see for sale at a Native American tourist trap.

  The family of Presbyter Ryu Yohan decided to follow his wishes and put his remains to rest in a cinerarium. His two sons, Samyŏl and Pil-lip, both led busy lives in different cities, and they seemed rather relieved by the idea. Before they actually pushed the coffin into the mouth of the furnace at the crematory, they held another service. Afterward they stayed on to listen to the flames as they burned away inside the furnace. Later, the relatives moved over to one side and began separating the bones from the big pile of ashes th
at had been dumped out on the broad wooden counter. The four men, Yosŏp, Samyŏl, Pil-lip, and the young minister, each held a receptacle that resembled a deep porcelain bowl, and used tongs to pick out pieces of bone. The ashes were still warm. The bones were white. They looked clean. There really weren’t many, in terms of quantity. All the bones collected by the four men, if put together, would probably have amounted to a few handfuls at most. Before he poured his share of the bones into the urn, Yosŏp, without really thinking, quietly picked up one of the pieces and slid it into his suit pocket.

  2

  Possession

  TODAY IS TOMORROW FOR THOSE WHO DIED YESTERDAY

  STARTLED BY THE ALARM, he got the distinct impression as he fumbled for the clock that something had just fallen to the floor. Even after he succeeded in quieting the alarm, however, Yosŏp chose to bury his head back in the pillow and stay in bed. The sound of a drill, driving a nail into some far off wall, pounded through his skull. Someone’s moved in again, he said to himself. Lying on his stomach, he doubled up the pillow to cover his ears. Bit by bit, though, he was waking up—his mind kept getting clearer and clearer until finally he could no longer stay in the sweat-drenched bed.

  Sitting up on the edge of the bed, Yosŏp looked at the clothes he had so carelessly tossed over the chair. He opened the curtains to check the weather and turned on the table lamp. The window offered a view of the building next door, close enough to keep the room perpetually dreary and dark; but if you pressed your face right up against the glass and looked up, you could see the line of sunlight that touched the top of the neighboring structure. He noticed the thing that had dropped to the carpet.

  It looked like a small, black book. Picking it up, he saw that it was a palm-sized day planner. Ah, that’s right. Yesterday, Big Brother Yohan passed away. He remembered giving the bankbook to Samyŏl at the crematorium, but he must have forgotten about the little planner and brought it home.