Holding the planner open with one hand, Yosŏp used the index finger of his other hand to dial. He listened as the phone rang on the other end of the line. He was about to hang up on about the tenth — or maybe the fifteenth — ring, when he finally heard a faint voice.
“Hello?” A woman’s voice answered in English.
“Hello,” he said in Korean.
“Who’s this?”
“Ah, well. may I speak to Ms. Pak Myŏngsŏn?”
“Speaking. What can I do for you?”
“I, ah. I am the younger brother of Presbyter Ryu Yohan.”
The other end of the line fell silent for a moment. Yosŏp could still hear her breathing, but he cleared his throat just to make sure. She spoke up.
“He said he’d come himself. but it seems he’s changed his mind.”
“I beg your pardon? My brother arranged to visit you? When?”
“Next weekend.”
Once again Yosŏp cleared his throat then said, rather nonchalantly, “My brother passed away yesterday.”
An outburst of emotion, something close to a laugh, was immediately followed by a resounding click. The line was dead.
It’s something you go through every time you pack. You take all the things you’re going to need, and then you spread them out on the bed and across the floor. Then you try to fit it all into one suitcase. You end up taking some of the stuff out, and then you repeat the whole process all over again. You cut down on the clothes and remove what you can from the shaving kit, and in the end you just barely manage to fit everything in. Before changing your clothes, you go through all your pockets and empty their contents: wallet, passport, tickets, planner, loose change, and car keys. Before changing his clothes, Yosŏp took all his sundry items and put them in a little heap on the bed. Then, one by one, he put each item in its place: the wallet in the right inner pocket of his jacket, the passport and tickets in his left inner pocket, the car keys on top of the dresser for his wife. He was reaching for the coins when something, something resembling a warped tojang,12 caught his eye. He picked it up for a closer look, holding it before his eyes and turning it over a couple of times. Suddenly realizing what it was, he clenched his hand around it and looked around the room. What on earth was he going to do with it? Also on the bed, he noticed something that looked like a small lump of yarn. He opened the soft, strong leather pouch and put the sliver of bone in it. A thin leather string dangled from the pouch, so he pulled. Its mouth squeezed shut.
On the plane, Yosŏp got the impression that he was chasing after time itself. As he was boarding he’d been struck by the notion that since he was heading westward, the sun would simply continue to hang behind him — but somehow, time had not only caught up, it had left him behind. The screen at the front of the cabin was down; a movie was playing. He hadn’t rented a headset, so all he could do was watch the silent pictures move about. He’d had about three glasses of wine. A Chinese woman in her fifties sat next to him. With a rustling noise, she fished something out from under her seat. Through the open plastic bag, he spotted something mysterious and red. She tore off a strip of the red stuff, about the size of a finger, and held it out to him. “Chicken, chicken,” she mumbled. It appeared to be some sort of boiled chicken dyed red.
With a shudder, Yosŏp shook his head violently and said in English, “Oh, no, no thank you.” The foreign syllables felt raw, lingering about his ears. The voice didn’t sound like his own.
Yosŏp was sitting in an aisle seat, facing the curtain that hung at the far end of the cabin to screen the entrance to the toilets. Someone behind the curtain was moving around. As the top of the curtain shook a little, the person’s lower half came into view: a pair of trousers and dress shoes. All at once the curtain was parted, and the man behind it was now looking in Yosŏp’s direction. Staggering every now and then to the rhythm of the plane, Big Brother Yohan was walking directly toward Yosŏp. Yosŏp closed his eyes. No one passed. When he opened them the aisle was empty, the screen still flickering. He stood up, holding onto the back of the seat in front of him. Making his way out into the aisle, his step a bit unsteady, Yosŏp wondered where Yohan might be sitting.
Turning this way and that, Yosŏp peered back into the faces of the passengers he’d just passed. Well, he’s not sitting on that side of the aisle. Yosŏp drew the curtain aside and walked into the darkness. A gleaming blue light showed the toilet to be vacant. He pushed the door open and entered. The deafening roar of the plane filled his ears. The tired face of an elderly man floated on the mirror’s surface. He washed his hands and face. He scrubbed his face dry with a paper towel then ran his two palms down across it, from forehead to chin. Turning around to face the door, Yosŏp suddenly felt like he was a stranger to himself. He glanced back at the mirror. Looking back at him was his brother. Frantically, he threw the door open and stumbled out. He yanked the curtain aside and came out into the aisle, only to see Yohan sitting in his seat. After a moment’s hesitation, Reverend Ryu Yosŏp stepped forward, looking his brother straight in the eye as he made his way back to his seat. When he got to it, however, it was empty. As he turned to sit down, he looked behind him and saw his brother’s face appear in the back of his seat. He went ahead and sat down. Crushing his brother’s phantom with his body, Yosŏp leaned back into the seat.
Yosŏp, Yosŏp!
Startled, he jumped up, then sat back down, mumbling to himself, Don’t do this — it’s futile. Once you’re gone, you’re gone — that’s all there is to it. What reason do you have to keep showing up like this?
I want to go home, too — that’s what.
The plane seemed to drop all of a sudden, and the cabin shook a few times. Yosŏp hastily fastened his seat belt and sat up straight. Maybe I had a little too much wine. He felt as if he and his brother had become one and the same being. His mind grew hazy and soon only his brother’s murmurs were audible:
I want to go to our hometown with you, to Ch’ansaemgol, to the old days. Look over there, you can see the nettle tree. We never could get our arms all the way around its trunk. They said it’d been there forever, since long before we were born, so it must be hundreds of years old.
The tree stood strong all throughout the war, so it’ll probably still be the same as it’s always been. Roots that look like the fingers and toes of some giant would crawl out above the surface at the base of the trunk, stretching out in all directions. The scars here and the gnarls there, the bark, wrinkled like the skin of an old man — all inspire awe. The tangled mass of branches looks like a head of hair, the strands reaching up towards the sky. The pieces of cloth the villagers have knotted onto almost every branch all billow together in the wind, a rainbow of five colors — yellow, blue, red, white and black. It will be dusk soon, and under the tree a woman in white sits with her back against the setting sun. She has a bowl of clear water set on a little table before her. She is praying fervently to the divine spirits. Big Brother Yohan whispers nearby. Look — it’s Great-grandma. The woman in white, her hair white, and the band around her head white, too, is Great-grandmother. At home they call her Big Grandma. I’m on my way back from the fields, and Big Grandma motions to me, calling me over.