Little One, Little One!
My name’s Yosŏp, not Little One.
Big Grandma gestures wildly, as if something is wrong.
Your pa and grandpa will be punished — the heavens will punish them. Possessed by the Western spirit, they gave you and your brother such hideous names!
They say God is one and the same everywhere, in all countries.
Well, I know everything, everything from the very beginning. Those big noses just came here with their books and spread them all over the place. Our ancestor, the founding father of our race, was Tan’gun. He came down from the heavens a long, long time ago.
They say that’s not so. They say that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior.
People should worship their ancestors properly if they want to be proper human beings. Our country has gone to the dogs because so many have started worshiping someone else’s God.
Big Grandma wraps up the water bowl, the little wooden table, the candle, and the incense burner in a square of cloth. Then, facing the changsŭng pŏpsu13 chiseled into the stone post along the road, next to the cairn, she says, Come, Little One — bow to him.
Pah, what’s it even supposed to be?
The spirit of Mount Ami, of course. The honorable spirit who protects children from catching the Guest. Worship him well and you won’t get sick. You’ll live a long, long life.
If Father finds out I’ll be in big trouble.
Tell them Big Grandma told you to, and neither your pa nor your grandpa will dare lift a finger — don’t you worry. What are you waiting for? Come on now, quit dawdling and bow!
I’m a bit frightened and I feel kind of strange, but Big Grandma has given me an order, and I’m tempted by the guarantee of protection against smallpox, the Guest that could leave my face ugly and pockmarked. The changsŭng pŏpsu has a tiny nose and eyes that poke out like a pair of glasses. Its mouth is a slit stretching from cheek to cheek, with fierce looking canines sticking sharply out at each corner.
Big Grandma, if this changsŭng pŏpsu helps children, how come it looks so scary?
Ah, that — that’s to scare away the Guest, the barbarian spirit from the faraway lands south of the sea. Come on now, hurry up and bow.
I finally give in and bow, but it’s the kind of bow I’d give to a Japanese teacher who has a sword at his waist — my heart shriveled with fear. I am so sick with dread that as soon as I finish bowing I take off running for our neighborhood. It isn’t just frightening, it’s unfamiliar. Big Grandma may be friendly with it, but I can’t shake the feeling that the heavens will punish me for what I’ve done. The incident stays with me for a long time.
Again, Big Brother’s voice:
You know, the day I was named deacon, I took the young men in the church and we uprooted that thing. We threw it away in the thicket along the stream. That hideous monster lay there in the grass for a year or two before a flood finally washed it away.
Again, I heard myself answering.
Well, I don’t think what I did was right. I bowed in spite of myself because I was afraid of the Guest — because even if you survive you’re scarred for life.
Unlike the rest of the family, who were all busy in their own way, Big Grandma and I didn’t have much to do. We spent hours together in her room across from the main wing. With nothing but sisters and a ten-year difference between Yohan and myself, there was no one around for me to play with. Whenever I dropped by Big Grandma’s room she offered me all kinds of goodies — the grown-ups brought her all the best seasonal foods and she always had some hidden away for me. Melons, watermelons, and peaches in the summer; chestnuts, dates, and apples in the fall — which were too common to be really inviting — and honeyed wheat cakes and even baked sweet potatoes in the winter. Grandma told me all kinds of stories.
“If you go fifty ri14 from our village towards the setting sun, you can see Mount Kuwŏl. At the top of Sahwang Peak, there is a rocky cliff that looks like a paneled-wood door. In the olden days Grandfather Tan’gun — he’s the one that founded our nation — would come down and stay there sometimes, and whenever he went back up to heaven they say he hid his sword and armor behind that stone door. That’s why that rock’s called the Armoring Stone. Some time ago the Japanese came and cracked that cliff trying to steal away the hidden sword and armor, but they just ended up spending a whole lot of money for nothing. Here in our Chosŏn, we say the son of God is Tan’gun, the Honorable Grandfather. When I was young, I, too, once climbed all the way up Mount Kuwŏl. There’s a temple there called P’aeyŏpsa, and on the peak across from the temple you’ve got the Tan’gun Platform. They say that was where Grandfather Tan’gun, standing on the flat stone, looked down to choose the very best place for his people to settle. That very best place is the place we call Changjaeibŏl today. They even have writing there that says ‘Tan’gun Platform,’ and you can see the equipment the Honorable Tan’gun used to shoot arrows, and even the spot where he placed his knee when he took aim. Tan’gun’s footprints, the ones he made when he crossed from Siru Peak in front of the temple all the way to Sŏngdangri — you can see those, too.
“Your Big Grandma grew up in Namuribŏl in Chaeryŏng, and your great-grandpa and I are both from families that never had to worry about putting food on the table. Both our families worked as agents for the landowners — we farmed the land that belonged to the palace. In the very beginning, all of Hwanghae Province belonged to the palace. Your grandfathers were all diligent workers, and they even managed to buy a bit of land — and back then there weren’t many landowners to speak of, you know. But after the Japanese took over, all the land belonging to the palace was given to the Oriental Development Company, the Financial Union, or the Industrial Bank — that’s why your grandpa’s the only one still farming our land and why your pa has to work as a clerk for the Oriental Development Company.
“Your grandpa ended up believing in those Western ghosts all because he made the wrong kinds of friends. I hear that those big-nose missionaries, the ones who keep spreading the tales about those ghosts, I hear they first got into Chosŏn through Sollaep’o, in Changyŏn. Ever since then, everybody in Changyŏn, rich or poor, believes in those Western spirits. That boy from Changyŏn, the one who made friends with your grandpa — the one who became an elementary school teacher — he’s just like his crazy parents — he’s a Western-spirit freak. In the town of Sinch’ŏn, too, I hear they built a mission home or a chapel — whatever it is they call it — and every day the young ones gather there to talk about who knows what. How can a mother win over a full-grown son? Even the ancestor tablet that stood in our living room has been smashed, though it was terrible for me to bear.
“The village women came and said something awful was happening, and I asked what. They said, ‘Your son, your son is in the chapel, and he’s doing the rite of receiving a spirit.’ ‘Receiving what?’ I asked them, and they said, ‘It means your son, he’s being possessed.’ I ran like hell, let me tell you. When I got there I found them asking this and answering that and rubbing his head with water. They told me that was the sign a Western spirit has come into your body. It reminded me of my husband and how he wailed his heart out when he got home, after they chopped his topknot off in the marketplace. I cried and cried and beat the ground with my fists. After that your grandpa became a very high shaman of the Western spirit. And now, now, how can I stop him from turning his own offspring into Jesus freaks? You tell me! Your own father aside, even the girl he brought into this family under the name of daughter-in-law was the child of a Jesus shaman. so, there, you listen well — never forget what I’m telling you now.