Eyes out of focus, he sat back on the ground and swayed his upper body back and forth, as if his head felt too heavy.
Get up, you stupid piece of shit!
I struck him again, this time on the back, again with the pick, but Illang just kept on swaying. He wouldn’t fall flat. Ready to burst with rage, I put a bullet in my pistol, cocked it, and placed the muzzle against his blood-drenched head.
You son of a bitch, you took our land — thought you’d be Party chairman for a thousand, ten thousand years, didn’t you?
I was right about to pull the trigger when the boys stopped me and said we should really take him to town for investigation. So I ordered them to pull him up by the armpits to get him to his feet, but the bastard suddenly rose by himself, mumbling, Believe in the God of Chosŏn2.
Goddamn bastard. Still have breath to spare, eh? An illiterate fool, but now that you’ve listened to a couple of lectures you talk ready and smooth, is that it?
That very face from that very day — that was the face reflected in the blank TV screen. Not that I found it particularly frightening. Faces I could recognize never did scare me as much. I asked Yosŏp what he though about ghosts, but his answer wasn’t good enough.
A long time ago in Chinatown, I saw a shadow play at a Chinese pub. It was built along the same lines as the revolving lanterns we had back in the old days, but this device involved the addition of a painted scroll that slid back and forth in front of the light. At night, when I lay in the upstairs bedroom, the window facing the street lets in a faint light, and the headlights of the cars that speed by shine in, touching the ceiling in a flash before they fly away. Depending on the speed of the car and the size of the headlights, the shape of the reflection on the ceiling varies. Even with my eyes shut, I can feel the movement. That night, dozing off and on, in that strange place between wakefulness and sleep, I was awakened by the sirens and red blinking emergency lights of a passing ambulance. Clustered around the foot of my bed, I saw them, a group of people looking down on me. They came in every shape and size: Chungson’s wife, always out and about with one breast hanging low under her chŏgori,3 constantly jiggling the baby on her back as it slipped down her hip; the female elementary school teacher who used to live above that store at the mouth of the village; a fiddler with bobbed hair in a People’s Army uniform; the six little daughters of Myŏngsŏn’s family; and so on. Anyway, they were all women and they all just stood there. They stood with their backs to the window, and because of the darkness I shouldn’t have been able to recognize their faces — but somehow I did. I recognized them at once. I caught myself mumbling aloud in spite of myself.
“I speak in the name of the God Jehovah! Away with you, Satan!”
And with that, I was wide awake. The mattress was soaked in sweat where my back had touched the bed. It was a pain, but I was so thirsty that I went downstairs to the kitchen. I turned on the light above the steps, but the living room remained completely dark. Whenever I climbed up or down the stairs, I was struck by the thought that no one should ever live in a two-story house in their old age. Meanwhile, I’d developed a habit of stretching my stooped back and pounding it a couple of times every time I reached the first floor. While stretching at the bottom of the stairs that night, I thought I saw someone sitting on the sofa in the darkened living room that faced me. I let it be and went to the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator. The light came on. I was gripping the plastic water bottle and taking it out of the door rack, when I was so startled that I almost dropped it entirely. An eye was staring up at me. Hey, you, what are you looking at? A fish head left over from lunch. The croaker’s gills were a little blackened from being fried, and only the sockets were left — no eyeballs. Slowly, deliberately, I closed the refrigerator door and turned to walk back toward the living room. That’s when I saw the thing still sitting on the sofa.
Who are you?
The black thing answered, its speech thick, hoarse, It’s me. Don’t you know me?
Who are you, I say.
In a voice that sounded caked with charcoal, it said, I’m the mole that used to hang about Ŭnnyul.
“Uncle Sunnam?”
Forgetting everything for the moment, excited and delighted, I quickly flipped on the light. The cat was out enjoying its nightly excursions, and there was nothing in the living room except for the furniture and TVset. In a corner near the hallway stood the wooden coat stand carved in the shape of deer antlers. Only then did my legs go limp. Sunnam had been about ten years older than myself, which would have put him somewhere in his mid-thirties back then. He worked in Ŭnnyul as an excavator in the Kŭmsanpo mines until he returned home after Korea’s liberation from Japan. He was good at singing and gambling, and when it came to drinking he’d always been one to do it by the barrel. In the winter of that year, I finished him off. In those days, there was a utility pole that stood at the crossroads where the thoroughfare leading into town from Ch’ansaemgol met with the farm road. It was to that same pole that I eventually had Uncle Sunnam’s neck hanging by a wire.
Word came that the list of names had been announced by the Office of Representatives. The Reverend Ryu Yosŏp met Mr. Kim at a shabby diner in Manhattan. The junky old air conditioner was making a huge racket, but the table directly underneath it was the only one available. Mr. Kim, like Yosŏp’s older brother, was an elderly man approaching seventy. He’d been a journalist in Korea, he said, before he immigrated to America, but for someone with that kind of occupation he didn’t seem quick enough. He took an envelope from his wrinkled briefcase and placed it on the table. Rummaging through it, he produced several pieces of paper.
“Let’s see, this one here is your invitation, Reverend Ryu Yosŏp — and now, take a look at this.”
Yosŏp glanced down at the document he’d been handed. The title printed along the top, “Homeland Visitors Group: Approved Applicants,” caught his attention.
“I see that it’s no longer the ‘Reunions for Separated Families’ program.”
“Oh, yes. You see — well, they had some problems with the ‘Reunions for Separated Families’ project, so they no longer call it by that name. They now use names like “Homeland Visitors” and “Tour Group” instead. In any event, Reverend, I seem to remember that you never did submit a list of family members you hope to find.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, it’s not too late. As long as you make the request here, there’s always a way to get around the red tape once you get there. and you also need to fill in the name of your hometown.”
Yosŏp hesitated a moment. He was in a difficult spot. Identifying his hometown as he set off to visit the North would hardly be advisable, and yet without doing so it would be impossible to find out what had happened to his relatives.
“So, where is your hometown again?”
Ballpoint in hand, Mr. Kim peered at Yosŏp over his reading glasses.
“Pyongyang. it’s Pyongyang.”
“Where in Pyongyang?”
Yosŏp blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“Sŏn’gyori in Pyongyang city.”
“And the address.?”
“Well. the address I can’t remember, but once I’m there I’m sure I’ll be able to recognize the place.”
“Yes, of course, of course. It’s been over half a century, after all. Leaving the street address blank shouldn’t be a problem.”