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 that 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.
He opened the planner and began flipping through it, one page at a time. The first few pages were full of phone numbers, written down in no apparent order. There was the number for Yosŏp himself, followed by numbers for the church, for Samyŏl and Pil-lip, for a Chinese restaurant, a garage, a dry cleaner’s, the social security office, and a hospital. There were also names and numbers of Yohan’s friends, fellow senior citizens whom Yosŏp had no way of knowing, and, every now and then, some dates and memos. Most of the pages were left unused, but near the middle of the book Yosŏp found several notes that had been written only a few days earlier. “Call Pak Myŏngsŏn tomorrow,” declared one recent scribble.
Yosŏp got up, turned on the air conditioner with the remote control, took some water out of the refrigerator, and drank it from the bottle — all wearing nothing but his underwear. He sat down at the table and thought for a while. The only sign of life in the apartment was the whirring of the air conditioner; his wife must have left already, off to her job at the hospital. Who was Pak Myŏngsŏn, again? The name was only vaguely familiar, but he got the feeling he’d be able to put his finger on it if he tried. Several young maidens clad in white chŏgoris and black mongdang chi’mas11 flitted through Yosŏp’s head, but his fuzzy memory was unable to match any satisfactory names to the faces. He thumbed through the planner and located the phone number under Pak Myŏngsŏn’s name. The area code alone was enough to show that the woman lived in Los Angeles. Tomorrow, Yosŏp would be boarding a plane to Los Angeles. The Homeland Visitors were assembling first in L.A. and going on to Beijing from there.