A Corpse in the Koryo (25 page)

Rearrangements. Rethinking."

"It won't be the first time. We'll survive."

He ripped a match from the pack and crushed its head between his nails. "No, this time is different." He swept the powder onto the floor.

"Okay, this time is different. That's life."

"No, that's not life." The waitress walked over and started to ask for our order. It was the same girl who had overheard us last time. When she saw it was my brother, she closed her mouth and backed away. "You are my younger brother. We are all that is left of the family. I looked out for you during the war, or have you forgotten?"

"The war is a blank, an empty room, no echoes, no shadows, no light, no dark. I don't remember, I don't dream, I don't dwell on it."

"You're a sad case, you know that? Some people still ache from the war, but you act as if it's nothing."

"Get to the point."

"The point is, you're going to have to trust me for the next couple of months."

"Meaning?"

"Stay out of my way. Get off this case, drop it, break a l
eg.
Better yet, resign from the Ministry. I can have your files pulled, so yours won't be there when there's a review. I'll put them in a safe place until things calm down."

"Funny, Pak wanted me to resign, too."

"When did he say that?" My brother's voice became smooth, suspicious.

"That

got your attention, I see. Never mind."

"So, you'll do it?"

"Then what?"

"These things are hard to predict."

"What makes you think I'm in your way?"

"You are."

"And if I stay where I am, continue my investigation?"

"I can't help you when the boom drops."

"You mean you won't."

"No, I mean I can't. I'll be fighting for survival. I have others to protect, programs, people." He paused. "Ideas."

"Ideas?"

"I've warned you. I've asked you. Trust me, just for now, just this once."

"You said 'ideas.' You mean class purity? Human perfection? The collective will?"

There was silence. He sat still enough to be a statue guarding the entrance to an old king's tomb, nothing but sadness in the air between us.

"For the first time in years," I said, "you interest me."

"Will you do as I ask, or not?"

"You know the answer."

His closed his eyes for a moment and put his hand to his forehead.

It was a gesture he used to make a long time ago, during the war, to contain the despair that washed over us on cold nights. "Then at least delay the investigation. That's all. Put it in a pending file. Cremate the corpse, lose a couple pieces of evidence, have the room lady reassigned."

"How do you know about her?"

"I told you, this case is beyond what you imagine."

"Don't touch her."

He stood up abruptly. "It's not a choice. I don't give a damn about the case, just where it leads. If you don't let it go, you'll burn. They'll scatter your ashes over the river at dawn."

"And if I burn, so will you."

"Maybe, maybe not. But I can't risk it."

"Ah, now we get to the point. I should save your skin."

He looked at me quizzically, then sat down again. "I thought you were smarter than this. You still don't get it." With his fingers, he traced a single Chinese character on the polished wood of the table. It was the character for family. "If you get too close on this case, you'll give them what they need."

"Them?"

He lowered his eyes. "You heard me."

I stood without a word and walked through the hotel lobby, out the front door, down the drive to the empty street. I walked quickly, but it was already evening, and the darkness overtook me.

"You don't have a brother, you do have a brother. Which?"

"Are you hard of hearing? I have no brother."

"Strange country. You have a relative, a brother, let's say, then he's not a relative anymore. Any other relatives you don't have who are trying to help you?"

"Careful, Rich
ie.
You are stepping into a minefield. Back off."

"Your grandfather was a hero. I respect that."

"Your family?"

"Big, three brothers and three sisters. My father had four brothers. My mother has a sister. They all have families of their own, a pile of kids.

When we get together in the summer, you can't hear yourself think." He watched my face closely. "I have children, two girls." He almost said something more, then checked himself.

"My grandfather used to say that my brother and I were close when we were growing up, that my brother protected me. I don't remember. He came back once from the orphans' school after a year or two. Spoke in a loud voice, said he loved the fatherland. Grandfather said it was a good thing to see loyalty in a young boy, but afterward I heard him tell a neighbor that it was damned unpleasant to be lectured by a kid, especially your own grandson."

"You

ever think about getting married? Having a family?"

"Kang, Mr. Molloy. Kang is your topic A, topic B, and topic Z."

"You say he's dead."

"So he is, but even the dead have much to tell. Maybe that's why we worship them so. Wisdom from beyond."

"The sarcasm button just lit up on the tape recorder."

"Good, it works. Where were we?"

"Going to the mountains. In Hyangsan."

The road to Hyangsan led to the clouds, Still I climbed, listening to waterfalls, Breathing the scent

Of sacred pine trees.

-Kim ?o [Vomite I S4-1 198) when I went to bed in the Hyangsan Hotel, it was a rainy, sticky summer night. When I woke, it was autumn. Not just the promise of a changing season, but the change itself, whatever the calendar said. The air was crisp and the light so pure that the mountains in the distance were etched sharply against the sky. The underbellies of the clouds off to the east were burning gold, but the sun was still low and the flanks of the rugged hills that ran alongside the fast moving stream coming down from the Myohyang Mountains were mostly in shadow. Small clouds nuzzled outcroppings along the hilltops, baby white puffs that looked like they had needed something solid to lean against during the night. They had overslept and been left behind. As I watched, they grew more transparent with each sunbeam that touched them. No struggle or sound of despair. They just disappeared.

I

stood on my balcony to listen to the birds gathering on the lawn in front of the hotel. On the hills off to the left, where the sunlight hadn't yet found its way, more wispy clouds dumbly awaited their fate. They had settled so close to the ground that they appeared tethered to the gnarled dwarf pine trees growing out of the rocks. The hills were steep.

It didn't look possible to climb up there, but that's the funny thing about Korean hills. They're either harder or easier than they appear.

I left the city right after the meeting with my brother. It had stopped raining by then, but it started up again as soon as I got on the highway. There wasn't much traffic, and I never did see a train. At one point, near Kujang, the highway crosses the river coming between steep hills. Then, around the next bend, the river broadens out onto a plain, as if whoever had planned its course had a sudden change of heart.

Leaning support piles are all that remain of a narrow bridge that once spanned the river. It was on this old bridge that my parents were killed. A lonely F-86 had dropped out of the morning sky and made a single strafing run on a small convey of trucks halfway across. The convoy was to have moved at night and been snug against the hills by daybreak, but something held them up and they were hurrying over the river in first light. Fighter planes weren't supposed to be out that early.

I never got mad when I thought about it. It wasn't murder. It was death by a fluke, a senseless confluence of the winds of chance.

My father was the only son, and my grandfather never really recovered.

He blamed himself until the day he died, though he was miles away at the time, not even in contact with the units in the area. My mother was a nurse and had volunteered to work at the front. Most of the time she and my father were widely separated on the battlefield, but that morning they were together.

I thought about pulling over after crossing the span that now carries the highway across the river, to look at the remains of the old bridge for a while and think about things. By then the rain had stopped again, but the air was wet and my shirt was sticking to my back. The clouds had dropped to the ground, or maybe the road was starting the climb into the hills. The mist got heavier. In another moment, there was no place to pull over, or more likely I wasn't searching that hard. The highway curved around another hill, and the river was suddenly out of sight.

There was a knock at my door, and before I could say anything, a floor lady entered, with a short, wiry workman close behind. "The latch on your balcony window is broken, and it might storm this afternoon."

The floor lady pointed to the top of the glass door leading to the balcony. "If it blows open, we'll have water damage, and that costs money."

"You always fix things so early in the morning?" I came in from the balcony and sat on the bed to watch. The workman was carrying only one tool--a short screwdriver with a cracked black plastic handle--but he seemed to know what he was doing. In quick succession, he unscrewed the latch, grumbled a few words to the floor lady, kicked off his shoes, and climbed up on the small table near the door. He used the screwdriver handle to knock something into alignment. That explained the cracks in the handle. He smacked his lips in satisfaction, climbed down from the table, put the screws back in the latch, nodded to me, and walked out the door. I'd never seen anything so efficient. The floor lady beamed.

"We would have done it yesterday if we'd known this room was going to be in use. They normally save this view for important guests."

She gave me a crooked smile, friendly but leaving ambiguous whether she thought I met the standard. "From here, you can see mountains on either side of the road and watch the stream as it tumbles down over the rocks. It's nearly full now, after the rain. If it storms again tonight, we'll have a regular torrent. The noise might keep you up all night long. To some people, it's an angry sound, but I don't think it is. By our dormitory, up the road there, it sounds like a train. Most of the time, though, it is kind of sleepy. Like everything hereabouts."

She bowed and turned to go. Then she turned back, "just a thought, but you might like to walk around the temple up the way. A pretty stroll on a morning like this. It should be almost perfect. Stick to the side of the road, once in a while a truck coming downhill loses its brakes.

When you reach the temple, you can be alone if you want. Tell the guides you can manage by yourself. Though sometimes they feel lonely and like to talk to people." She paused. "They see a lot. And they take notes." She paused again. "On paper."

I nodded to acknowledge what she'd said but didn't pursue the opening. Nobody was that helpful without reason, and I didn't know what her reason was, so I thought I'd let things set until after lunch.

Meantime, I could look around. "Until what time is the dining room open for breakfast?"

"Did you call ahead?" Her tone changed, and not very subtly.

"For what?"

"New policy. We only fix enough food for people who sign up ahead of time. Got to make a profit, you know." She was verging on stern.

Suddenly, profits looked like a bad idea.

"All I want is some tea. Maybe some fruit."

She shook her head. "I'll check, but they only started this a month ago, and the manager is new." Her expression showed she hadn't made up her mind about him yet. "He's strict. Says if we make an exception for one person, we'll have to do it for everyone, and then where will we be?" She turned to go again, stepped partway into the hall, then stopped and stepped back inside the room. "The guides at the temple always have a kettle on." Her manner was helpful again, almost pleading with me to start asking her some questions. "They sip tea and chat most of the day. Nice girls, but they don't work all that hard, if you ask me."

When I didn't reply, she bowed deeply to hide her disappointment and glided away.

The road to the temple ran beside the river, which was coursing full and fast over large boulders army engineers had dumped there to slow the current and keep it from tearing at the banks. There wasn't much danger of that on the far side, where the solid-rock base of the mountain rose steeply, almost straight up, from the water. The last of the infant clouds had vanished in the daylight, and the rocky outcroppings were easy to see from the road. Growing from them, trunks struggling to stay upright on the slopes, were groups of the dwarf pine trees I needed to reach. Maybe some mountains were easier than they looked.

Not this one.

By the time I reached the temple, I was puffing. It seemed to me the construction engineers could have done with a little less steepness if they'd given it some thought. There was a small ticket-selling hut just beyond the empty parking lot, next to a colored map of the temple complex and the surrounding mountains. The wooden shutter on the front of the hut was propped open, and I could see two guides sitting inside, drinking tea and staring out at the scenery. One emerged from the side door to ask what I wanted. She was tall and walked with a measured gait, so that the skirts of her costume floated over the stone pathway.

Her hair was pinned up with two combs. It made her neck seem long and gave her jaw more attention than it needed. But she had a smile that looked real, and her eyes sparkled even in the dappled light.

"Good morning. Tours don't begin until noon. The temple complex opens at eleven o'clock." She could see I was still breathing hard from the walk. "The hotel staff knows they're not supposed to send people up here so early. Why don't you sit on the bench under those trees and catch your breath." Her voice was pleasant, without the hard-driving edge of the guides in the capital. It seemed to fit with the trees and the grass and the flowers. Either that or I was lightheaded from the climb.