Pansŏk answered for me, saying, “We read the Korean version together from cover to cover — I did the explanations.”
Tenderly, Reverend Mae looked me in the face. “Is that so? Which part do you like best?”
“I remember the scene where Abraham offers his own son as a sacrifice and then receives the revelation of faith in God.”
Hearing my answer, Reverend Mae nodded slowly.
“Abraham was a chosen man. God chooses with love all the Christians who believe in Him.”
My dear grandchildren, Yohan and Yosŏp — mind my words. That day I received many blessings from Reverend Mae Kyŏnsi. His voice still rings loud and clear in my ears. Do you know what I learned that day? The mission of the believer and the great love of our Father in Heaven. Reverend Mae Kyŏnsi visited the Bible reading group we organized in Sinch’ŏn. He baptized me, and in the summer of that year he died of sunstroke during his mission tour. Brother Pansŏk and I went to Pyongyang to attend a revival service — I’m sure you heard all about what happened then. That was when I returned home and smashed our ancestral tablet, the false idol your great-grandmother worshipped. I graduated from the Pyongyang Seminary and became a minister. Your mother is the daughter of a minister who went to school with me — both the families of your mother and your father are people who have been chosen by God.
You see, Big Brother, rather than ruthlessly destroying Nineveh, God spared the people — so He Himself told Jonah. Now it’s time for you to let go of resentment and hatred, time to enter heaven. Our ancestors would wish that for you also.
Hey, hey, there isn’t an iota of resentment left in me. Life itself is a curse, isn’t it? Damned if I know why the hell we were so frantic about everything back then.
Let’s go visit our hometown together. After that you should go where you’re supposed to go.
No place to go. We’re just floating around together.
Who is “we”?
Oh, quite a bunch of us, really. Uncle Mole, Ichiro, and plenty more. The girls I used to fetch rice for — are they there, too?
We’re like particles of dust. There are many, many here.
The voice was gradually dying out, turning into other sounds. The faint ticking of the clock’s second hand was growing more distinct, the fluorescent hands already pointing to three in the morning.
3. Keeper of the Netherworld
SWITCHING ROLES WITH THE DEAD
OVERNIGHT, LIKE SOME STORYBOOK adventurer, Yosŏp flew over the ocean in an enormous, bird-like Boeing and arrived in an entirely different world.
Waking up from a short nap, he found himself in China. At the hotel, the tour group was handed over to a North Korean travel agency. Their North Korean flight bound for Pyongyang was scheduled to leave the following day, so the group was on their own until the travel agency bus came to pick them up the next morning. On this tour, the group numbered thirty-six people. Twenty-five were from the U.S. and eleven were Korean-Japanese. They did no more than glance at each other’s faces once or twice in the hotel lobby.
Two people were assigned to each room, and Reverend Ryu Yosŏp was no exception. His roommate was an old man, half bald, who looked to be about the same age as Yohan had been. It took a handshake and a couple of introductory niceties for Yosŏp to realize that the man was actually closer to his own age — only three years his senior. Now a professor at some university out West, the man said that Pyongyang was his hometown. Sitting on the two beds that were bolted to opposite walls of the room, the two old men rambled on about their lives in America and about their hometowns.
“People kept saying they were going to drop an atomic bomb on us, so we left, left without having any idea how we were going to make a living — we barely knew which way was south — we just dragged the entire family out onto the road.”
The bald professor went on with his story.
“Rather than lose our entire family to the bomb, Grandfather decided that the oldest grandson, at least, should be taken down south to carry on the family line — that was the reasoning. The rest is history. I was just the second son, attending junior high school. Still, I was old enough to know what was what, and I resented the fact that Father was only taking my older brother to safety. I’d visited my aunt quite often over the holidays, so I figured I wouldn’t have any trouble catching up to them on my own. I snuck out of the house without saying a word to Grandfather or Mother. Later, when Seoul was reclaimed, I ran into some people from my hometown who said they’d run into my father and older brother. Apparently Father turned back, worried about leaving the rest of us behind. My aunt’s family probably went farther south for safety — I never was able to find them. All those years of suffering, alone, drifting all over the world, and it’s only now, when I’m over sixty, that I get to go home and search for what might be left of my family. What kind of fate is this?”
Stories of families being separated during the war were so common that hearing only a few lines for each case, like the quick report you might catch on a TV newscast, was almost always enough to get an idea of what happened. And yet, despite the overarching similarities, there was always something about hearing it firsthand, directly from the lips of the survivor, that tugged at your heart. At around the same time the professor’s family had been separated, Reverend Ryu Yosŏp’s family had also been in the vicinity of Haeju. It was later on that Big Brother Yohan took a boat and retreated to Anmyŏn Island. Most of Yohan’s friends had either enlisted on the spot or been transferred to a special unit.
“You said that your hometown is Pyongyang as well, Reverend, isn’t that right?”
“Uh. yes, that’s right.”
“Any members of your family still around?”
“I was never able to find out. They’re probably all dead by now. ” Yosŏp’s words trailed off.
“I don’t trust these guys. I can’t even imagine how my family back home must have changed.”
Yosŏp almost blurted out that maybe the professor ought to consider how much he himself had changed. Instead, he said, “Well, they probably don’t trust us, either. After all, we did abandon our homes.”
“No, no, I don’t think so. They are the ones who harassed us — they wouldn’t leave us alone. From the very beginning they refused to believe in anything other than the so-called fundamental class.”
Yosŏp responded with a vague nod. Even among the North Koreans who ended up in America, there was a distinct trend: the more successful one was, the stronger his or her resentment towards the North. Yohan’s case was understandable, to a degree, since he’d actually been involved in the fighting. This man, on the other hand, had never wronged his own people; judging from his story, he hadn’t done much of anything but fall victim to a stroke of bad luck that landed him far from home. And yet, here he was, criticizing the North before they’d even arrived. Maybe it was all the time they’d spent living in such a different world — maybe time was to blame.
“Aren’t you hungry? I’m thinking about going out to grab a bite to eat. Would you care to join me, Reverend?”
“Sure. The hotel food here will probably be just like the food on the plane; there must be a Korean restaurant somewhere around here.”
Yosŏp and the professor left the hotel and wandered out into the business district. There they eventually discovered that restaurants in the immediate area would not be opening until dinnertime. With some help from a taxi driver, they made it to an alley crowded with small eateries, a touristy neighborhood. There were more than a few signs in Korean: Sŏrabŏl18 Restaurant, Pubyŏngnu19 Eatery, Moranbong20Restaurant, Koryŏ21 Restaurant, and so on. The professor had a thing or two to say about this, as well.