Black Flower (17 page)

After he finished bowing, the shaman began to sketch a person in splendid attire on a piece of wood using red dye he had drawn from a cactus. “Say, that’s enough!” Choe Seongil shouted at the shaman as he glanced over at Father Paul, who was already asleep. Poof, the candlelight went out. Suddenly he was afraid of the shaman, rustling about wordlessly as he searched for his bed. No, he was afraid of the world with which the shaman was related. Where is this netherworld he talks about? Does it even exist? As he wondered these things, Choe Seongil fell asleep. How much time had passed? Choe Seongil opened his eyes. He was thirsty, and he opened the door of the paja and went outside. The hacendado’s house was brightly lit. A savory aroma wafted toward him. Choe Seongil walked in that direction. Countless people were gathered around the fountain inside the front gate of the house. Liquors and meats were spread out there, a veritable feast, and he saw servants in uniform as well. He was ashamed of his shabby appearance and hid behind a tree. He wanted to step forward and eat those delicious things, but he knew the guests would not tolerate him. The longer he stood there, the more he was tempted by the food. Finally he worked up his courage and calmed himself, and he slowly approached a table piled with roast chicken. Yet as soon as his hand reached out to grab that glistening chicken, it disappeared like smoke. The lords and ladies that had been talking around him also vanished. In their place, a black shape with a hat pressed down over his face stood before Choe Seongil. The black shape squeezed his neck with his rough arm. Then he spoke.

“The time has come.”

Choe Seongil did not resist any longer. He closed his eyes and surrendered everything to the shape’s will. When he did, an unbelievably happy feeling, spouting forth like the fountain, suddenly gushed out from inside him. He was shaken by an amazing ecstasy, by a perfect satisfaction. If this is how it is, I can die, he thought. And he felt as if this joy would continue forever.

T
HERE WAS A BOY
. His hometown was Wi Island, the largest populated island in the West Sea. The islanders made their living from yellow corvina. When the corvina fisheries in the ocean off Chilsan were at their peak, the ship owners pooled their money and held a shamanic ritual, and at the beginning of the year they held a grass boat ritual, sending off a grass boat loaded with misfortune and praying for a good catch. They also held a ritual to the dragon king for those who had drowned at sea. When the time for the rituals neared, the village was filled with taboos. Men kept their distance from women, and women who bled were isolated. As the people took care in each word and each action, the festival began, and the shamaness and the men who were not unclean made sacrificial offerings to their unseen guests. The women and children could only watch from afar. The first festival guests were twelve tutelary deities and the dragon king god. The old shamaness tied together the heads of the men participating in the offerings with hemp and dragged them into the shrine. The men, tethered like yellow corvina, delightedly gave their offerings. Only when these rituals had ended could all the people in the village join the festival. While musicians struck gongs and drums and played flutes, everyone came out of the shrine and swarmed toward the ocean. The men added to the excitement by shouting cries of “Hoist the anchor! Unfurl the sails! Row the oars!” and climbing atop the mother ship and dancing. The grass boat, which was tied to the mother ship, was loaded with all of the village’s misfortune and dragged out to sea. When the waves grew high, as if the god of the ocean were raising his body, they stopped the boat there and cut the cord that tied the grass boat, letting it drift into the distant sea. The misfortune on the grass boat was carried off to China, and with it all the taboos disappeared. Wi Island reveled all night with merry dancing, drinking, and song.

The boy grew up in this sort of place. It was a place where one was born the son of a fisherman, lived life as a fisherman, became the father of a fisherman, and then died. There was no other way. The boy’s father and uncles spread out their nets in the yard and tied the knots, and his mother and sisters reeked of fish. If they had salt, they pickled the fish, and if not, they ate it raw on the spot, dipped in soybean paste. One day, the boy’s father decided to go out to fish for yellow corvina. The owner of his boat attempted to dissuade him, but the father just laughed. He never came back. The next day, the fishermen who had gone out as one to fish in the sea off Chilsan sighted the debris of a shattered fishing boat. A few days later, the boy’s mother called the village shamaness and asked her to hold a ritual to save the spirit of her drowned husband. His mother, sisters, and aunts sat down together without a word and prepared for the ritual. His mother caught his sister crying in the outhouse; she beat her and drove her out of the village. “Don’t even think of coming back before the ritual is over, you father-tormenting wench!”

As the ritual was being held on the shore, the boy’s sister stared at the sea from the mountain behind the village. While all the villagers gathered and clucked their tongues, the ritual was reaching its climax. The tide came in and the waves shifted direction. “How cold it must be!” his mother cried. The shamaness, caught up in her own excitement, shook her sacred staff as if mad and called to the deceased. And then a strange thing happened that would be talked about for years whenever a ritual was held in that village. Something approached rapidly, like lightning, and drew near the warped pier that bulged out like a woman’s breast. Even if three or four men had been rowing a boat, it could not have traveled faster. The shape, at first glance resembling a log, made straight for the place where the ritual was being held, and it came to a stop on a sandbar. People screamed, “It’s Geumdong!” It was one of the boy’s uncles, who had been on the boat with his father. The uncle’s body sloshed back and forth with the waves, his fish-bitten arms flapping. The waves repeatedly licked his body like a cow’s tongue. Nothing like that had ever happened in the shamaness’s life, or in her mother’s time. The ritual was meant only to save the soul of the drowned, not to reclaim the body. Anyone could tell that this was not the work of the shamaness. Yet Uncle Geumdong had clearly appeared before their eyes, right in the middle of the ritual. They covered his body with a straw mat and carried it up the mountain. His eyeballs were missing and one arm hung loosely from its socket. An eel slithered out from between the folds of the mat and was trampled underfoot. And someone took out a small octopus that had crawled into an empty eye socket. At that point the shamaness called off the ritual—“I think it’s time to stop. The dragon king doesn’t want to see my face”—and hobbled back to her house. Not long after that, another shamaness who lived at Gomso Ferry came and held a ritual for the soul of Uncle Geumdong, who had died before he could be married, but no one was very interested. Soon the town shamaness succumbed to a lingering illness and died, and her daughter performed the ritual for her mother’s soul to the beat of her father’s drum.

When the shamaness from Gomso Ferry didn’t receive all the money promised to her, she was furious and returned to her home. Sometime later, a strange woman appeared before the boy. “Let’s go to the mainland. I’ll give you white rice and meat soup. Your mother is already there waiting for you.” The boy took the prettily made-up woman’s hand and boarded her boat. After an hour they arrived at Gomso Ferry. Only after they walked for some time and then entered a house fluttering with cloth, colorful clothing, and military officers’ robes, and decorated with idols, did the boy realize who was waiting for him. It was the shamaness of Gomso Ferry. Of course, his mother was not there. The shamaness did not say a word, and locked the boy in a shed. Has my mother sold me off? The boy shed tears of outrage. But a short while later, he lifted his head at the thought that it couldn’t be true. That shamaness is laying a curse on us. Fear swept over him. It was said that some shamanesses seized children and starved them to death. They did this after they had been serving their god for a long time and their powers were failing. Then the grieved spirit of the dead child would enter them. It was said that shamanesses locked children up in chests and poked them with metal rods so that they couldn’t sleep, tormenting them cruelly until they died. That way, the grieved spirit of the dead child would be powerful.

Three days later, the shamaness of Gomso opened the shed door and led the boy out. Then she taught him to play the drum. Bum ba-ba dum ba-ba dum . . . clack! He was clumsy. If he made a mistake the shamaness hit him. She did not lock him up in a chest and poke him with a sharp rod, but he was just as vexed. Day in and day out, the foul-mouthed shamaness swore to kill him. The boy wanted to see his mother and sister. His body swelled from some illness or other. The shamaness stuck charms on his body and mumbled for some time. He shivered with cold. Strangely enough, in only a day the swelling went down. When he was better, the shamaness started teaching him to play the drum again. Every night the boy dreamed that his mother came to find him. He dreamed that his mother threw open the doors of the dark shed, rushed in and grabbed his wrist, and led him home. But when he woke up, he was still in the shamaness’s shed.

One morning, the shamaness had gone out to perform a ritual nearby. The boy broke the shed window and climbed out. He stuffed the rice cakes on the shamaness’s altar into his pocket and ran away. He climbed hill after nameless hill the whole night. The next day, the boy arrived at a sturdy fortress. Old-style Korean soldiers were watching people as they passed by the gate. The boy was ill at ease, for it seemed as if the squint-eyed Gomso shamaness had ordered the soldiers to find him. He stopped some people and asked where he was, and they told him he was in Haemi. They said there was a market there, and the city bustled with people. The boy stayed close behind some men going into the city and tried to slip past the gate, but he was discovered.

“What’s this?” A soldier lifted the boy up. The boy spoke in a terrified voice, “Gomso shamaness, chest, poke, on Wi Island, my uncle, ritual, my father, the shamaness died, I’m hungry, bum da dum bum da dum to General Gwanun and General Choe Yeong.”

When the boy came to his senses again, he was at the soldier’s house. After eating some porridge boiled by the soldier’s wife and regaining his strength, he began to play with the children of the house, who were younger than him. It was a surprisingly quiet house. At night the family all gathered together, closed their eyes, and mumbled something. Two pieces of wood were tied together in a cross and hung on the wall, and they spoke toward this. He grew afraid again. The soldier saw his fear and took his hand. He told the boy that he must believe in the God of heaven in order to go to heaven. In that place there were no kings or aristocrats, no hunger or tyranny, and it was filled only with eternal joy. Whatever the case, the boy liked the part about there being no hunger. “Does the God of heaven get angry?” he asked. The shamaness of Gomso had only ever taught him of the wrath of the gods. Her god was always angry. Whether the food was too little, or the shamaness wasn’t sincere enough, or there was an unclean person, the god burned with anger. The soldier laughed. “Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He felt compassion for us and died in the body of a man.” The boy tilted his head. “Are you saying that he died because of us and he still doesn’t get angry?” The soldier laughed and tousled his hair. “That’s right. He is the one who died for our sins.”

The soldier told him not to tell anyone what he said, no matter what. Not long after, a blue-eyed man in mourning clothes and a wide-brimmed mourner’s hat came to the soldier’s house and took the boy deep into the mountains. There, people were making charcoal in furnaces. They spoke the same way as the soldier and knelt down morning and night and mumbled something. They spoke repeatedly about someone’s death, and every time they did, they were sad. It was completely different from the shamaness’s house. The boy was baptized. He lived at the blue-eyed priest’s house. He learned the church doctrines and memorized the prayers. Then he was sent to Penang, Malaysia, where he attended a seminary. But wherever he went, when he closed his eyes he was tormented by the sight of Uncle Geumdong splitting the waves and heading toward the pier. That had changed everyone’s fortunes. When a fellow seminary student who had gone to Penang with him asked, “Why don’t you go back to Wi Island and see your family?” the young man said nothing. What would I do if my mother really did sell me off? Mother, the son you sold off has returned. Should I say this to her and then bow down? Of course, that might not have been what happened, but still . . .

After many years had passed, Bak Gwangsu Paul, called Mr. Bak by his fellow Koreans on the hacienda, was asleep in the same room as the shaman. One never knew what life would bring. Is this also God’s will? The shaman’s speech, his every action, the blue and red strips of cloth, the idols he made, everything reminded him of the Gomso shamaness and made him ill at ease. His journey to Penang, through Nagasaki and Hong Kong, and his becoming a Catholic priest had come about partly because of Uncle Geumdong and the Gomso shamaness. He wanted to flee far from that ominous, magical world. Yes, he had accepted the religion from Palestine because it was a faith from far away. And now he had fled from even that religion and had come all the way across the Pacific Ocean to Mexico.

I
N
1521,
THE
S
PANISH
soldier Cortés led six hundred troops to lay siege to and capture the capital of the Aztecs. Mexico and the vast domains of the Indios nearby all fell to Spain. Ten years later, an ignorant and ordinary Indio living in Tepeyac, Juan Diego, converted to Catholicism. After finishing Mass early one morning, he heard someone calling his name from Tepeyac Hill. He went to the top of the hill, where beautiful music rang out and a woman in splendid clothes and radiating all the colors of the rainbow waited for him. This mysterious woman, with her brown skin and black hair, said to Juan Diego, “Build a church on this spot.” Juan Diego did not doubt for one moment that this woman, the very image of an Aztec Indio, was the divine manifestation of the Blessed Mother Maria. He ran down the hill and conveyed the command of the Blessed Mother to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga. Yet the bishop refused to believe that what had appeared before the eyes of one of these unenlightened people, whom the Spaniards had conquered ten years earlier, and who up to that point had devoted themselves to human sacrifice—and a truly trivial person even among those people—could be the Blessed Mother. Not to mention her brown skin! Was the Blessed Mother an Indio, then? He ignored the report.