The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost Read online

  Mother Seoul was talking so fast, Mandogi couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Finally, he was able to blurt out, “The captain said …”

  “Aha!” said Mother Seoul, slapping her knee. “Well then, I heard the guns going off. Did you mess up again? Hmm, I see. That must be it. So what happened?”

  “…”

  “Did you forget to salute again?”

  “The sun was up over the top of the hill, so I was praying.”

  “You’re such a dimwit. You have the honor of working for your country at the sentry post. You have to be reliable. What are you doing here? How do you expect to make it through this world? Even if you are a dimwit …” Mother Seoul paused and took out a cigarette. “Hmph, they threaten a dimwit like you with a gun, tell you to make them rice. And they don’t even say a word about it to me, the one in charge. Those no-good cops. They’re nothing but freeloading swindlers.” She suddenly turned on the police officers. “Well, I won’t stand for it anymore!” Mother Seoul stood up and pushed Mandogi away, the force causing the wind to fill up her skirt. She went out onto the porch, screaming and blowing cigarette smoke.

  “Hey, Captain, what’s this? You think you get rice twice in the morning? The supplies the government gives us are just a drop in the bucket, and I’m the one who has to ration them out! I thought they said gamblers don’t get hungry. How about you stop playing the damn cards? Why don’t you help out your country and go find some reds up in the mountains?”

  As soon as the captain’s men heard her screaming, her head thrust out over the porch, their necks seemed to shrink into their shoulders, just like turtles’. They knew they could stick their necks out again, but they didn’t do it right away. Instead, they stayed hunched like that for a while, and then they slowly started to stretch back out. Knowing plenty of tricks for handling situations like this, the captain faced her and told her that he was just going out on patrol for that very purpose. If he said “patrol,” Mother Seoul would have to just swallow it. She knew that if he could get one of those tasty pheasants, the captain would have to present it to her.

  In these turbulent times on the island, it was no small feat for a woman to get her hands on any money. But Mother Seoul had that power. They even say she took the burning of Kannon Temple as an opportunity to split the temple’s swelling assets with the priest. Her five sons, all with different surnames, were all over the place, since she had had a career as a kisaeng (a Korean geisha) in Seoul and in Pusan, so you can imagine her background. Not only was her dejected return to the temple ten years ago a thing of the past, she had put that dishonorable past behind her. After that, she settled down at the temple and took control of its business management. On top of that, lately, people had overcome their lust for criticism, and you could hear them wishing they could get a piece of her luck. There were even rumors that she had put her previous experiences in Seoul to use in Sŏngnae and had opened a couple of inns, where she was running loan sharking operations. She had “backing,” just as the powerful men at the police headquarters and the town hall had “backing.” Her having it became the greatest matter of interest for people, including the captain. It could even be said that in this country, no matter who you are, sooner or later, the course of your life will be determined by whether or not you have backing. A politician’s political existence is determined by whether or not he has it. Even if you’re not a politician, if you want to have any influence, you must first have backing. Backing is all anyone sees. The height and importance of the backing determine the height and importance of the person. Because of this, people in this country, if they are tied to any backing, they’ll do anything to hold on, no matter how thin the thread. So when Mother Seoul would talk nonchalantly about meeting with someone in the government of Sŏngnae, just by picking up on his rank, she could get the captain’s men right where she wanted them. Then, she would be able to entice the underpaid captain just by throwing him a few coins. She could take the focus away from the actual money by making him feel as if he were connected to her backing. She made him think that she could make him powerful. In other words, he was trapped, caught in the noose of her violent temper.

  For their pheasant-hunting patrol, the captain and his men would go through the forest in the valley and over S Hill, up to the road to the mountain villages. The road stops at the villages, then continues to the base of Mount Halla. But now, you couldn’t see the villages anymore. The faint smell of smoke and ash remained, but the memory of the place was already gone. “Sun Village,” one of the villages close to the coast, had already been soaked in gasoline, prepared for incineration. The whole surface of the island was turning black, not gradually but instantly turning into wasteland. On the island, which has about 250 kilometers of coastline, there was a road that went around the coastal villages for about 200 kilometers that people called the “New Road.” The government had left the coastal villages near the New Road intact, but they had burned a several-kilometer radius around the base of Mount Halla, turning it into a vast ocean of wasteland—fields of barley, millet, mulberry, and such, paddies, graveyards with generations of buried ancestors, bamboo thickets, old trees with long histories, fields, forests, and meadows. Majestic herds of livestock had grazed on these fields, but they were burned to the ground without a second thought. While they worked to burn up the partisans, day after day, night after night, you must have been able to see smoke rising from 150 kilometers away on the summit of Mount Yudal in Mokp’o on the mainland without even straining your eyes. Hell, you could probably even have seen it from the terrace of Syngman Rhee’s palace in Seoul. Disinterested foreigners, watching from the decks of passenger boats, may have been surprised to see that Mount Halla had reactivated and started erupting. The Americans, on the other hand, weren’t so in the dark about the situation. From the decks of their battleships, pipes slanting down from their mouths, perhaps they said something like, “Hmph, nothing to worry about. That smoke burning up the sky is no volcano erupting. That, ha, they’re just burning up the island where all those little bugs live.” Perhaps they spoke as if they had come to exterminate some bugs on one lonely little island in the corner of the East.

  The dispatch point at S Hill was established as a result of the incineration campaign, given that the road running through the mountain area was an important location. People naturally stopped visiting the temple, and it started looking more like temple ruins. People were suspicious and afraid of any contact with the mountain unit. So it wasn’t just the temple. The women avoided the spring in the valley and started using the water from the muddy brown pond in the village. And it wasn’t just the temple-goers who stopped coming. The priest had completely severed his ties with the temple by now, and even Mother Seoul spent more than half her time in Sŏngnae. She only spent about a third of her time at the temple, and that only because she had to show off her heartfelt faith to society. So, if the smell of incense and the sound of chanting didn’t stop floating out of the temple altogether, it must be said that it was due only to Mandogi’s pure heart. One could say that our Mandogi was the real hero in the story of the temple.

  1 Simch’ŏn is a character in a traditional Korean story who sacrifices herself to the sea god in order to restore her blind father’s sight. Her story is frequently used as an example of the virtue of filial piety.

  2 Zabuton is the Japanese word for a cushion typically used for seating.

  3 An ondol is a heated floor, found in many traditional Korean homes.

  4 “Breaking your teeth on cold water” has been translated literally to reflect the fact that it is not idiomatic in Japanese and likely comes from a Korean idiom.

  Mandogi was standing in the open doorway of the priest’s room, staring blankly. After following Mother Seoul into the room when she returned from her tirade about the captain, he had forgotten to close the door. Her moments of anger were so sudden, you could say they rode in on the gales as Hong Gildong did. (Originally a Korean folktale character, Hong Gildong was
the hero of Hŏ Kyun’s seventeenth-century novel, The Tale of Hong Gildong. Highly skilled at disguising himself and escaping, he appeared unexpectedly all over Korea, helping the masses to resist feudalistic oppression.) When she returned, Mandogi hadn’t moved from that spot. Mandogi closed the door at her command. Then she lay down quietly and had Mandogi rub her back, her demeanor unexpectedly calm, her face radiant with a smile.

  After rubbing down her body as she demanded, Mandogi would have to go to the temple and sit cross-legged, breathing deeply and chanting, in order to quiet his own body’s cries. Mandogi knew very well that he would have to experience this shock, but also that at some point his body and mind would be taken to a world of mystery.

  Her elbow resting on the ondol floor, her cheek in her hand, Mother Seoul would call Mandogi into the room even when she lay stretched out in this masculine way, and then she would stretch her long, thin eyes even thinner and smile. He was never sure, but he thought he could see the deep wrinkles in the corners of her eyes twinkling for a moment. It’s no wonder they say she was beautiful when she was young. Even now, the straight lines of her neck and the breadth of her chest showed the balance of her body. Her face was thin, but her shoulders and back and below were plump with flesh, showing that she was more than halfway through her forties, but still affording her plenty of femininity.

  Before her amazing figure stretched out on the floor, Mandogi would be swept away to a place not of this earth. Before long, he would feel as if he couldn’t breathe, though in reality his breathing was normal. Seeing nothing, feeling nothing, hearing nothing, his body and soul were like an insect crawling along the lowest point on the ground. Soon, he would be earnestly massaging her voluptuous back and buttocks, and the blood would flow through both his hands, bringing him back to consciousness. He could feel his fingers squeezing, and then he would realize just what they were squeezing. Then he would feel something fearful coming on, just as expected. Oh, great, merciful Buddha, please make my humble fingers into steel. Oh, my fingertips are melting like candy, and my body’s being sucked into Mother Seoul’s. Oh, great, merciful Buddha, make my fingers into steel. Mandogi would be very conscious of his fingers. But when he would finish massaging her, from her back down to her buttocks, the moment he took his fingertips off her, he would feel a sharp pain throbbing between his legs. Oh no, it stood up, he would think. Gradually, the intensity would overcome Mandogi’s strong will, and it would stand up. “Mmm,” she would moan as he suddenly started massaging her harder, but in Mandogi’s tightly shut eyes, Mother Seoul, who brandished the whip with the look of a demon, had already changed into the bodhisattva Kannon. Her body would sway like a rocking boat under the forceful massage of Mandogi’s big hands while in his wild imagination they became one luminous body swaying back and forth together. In this moment, when he was open to all sensations, Mandogi’s soul would be swallowed up into her body. Eventually, his eyes would be shut so tightly that his eye sockets would begin to smart, and as he closed his eyes more and more tightly he would lose the sensation. Inside, Mandogi would feel as if some other person’s fingers were vigorously massaging her back. His body would float slowly into the air, leaving behind his fingers, which were still stuck to her. Seeing nothing, feeling nothing, hearing nothing, and thinking nothing, his spirit, too, would float away from the earth. Her hand would gently touch him between the legs and hold on. He would know that that other person’s fingers were desperately, powerfully massaging her, digging into her flesh. “Hey … Mandogi … what’s wrong? You have … to be … a little … more … gentle,” she would say gently, her speech broken. But it would never reach Mandogi’s ears. When her voice got louder, Mandogi’s eyes would snap open. She would be lying perfectly still, facedown on the ondol floor, her two arms joined together, her face resting on them like a pillow. Mandogi would wake up and shake his head to try to shake off his delusions. But as soon as his fingers were back on her body, his eyes would close again. His eyes would be shut tight. And then her hand would stretch out. It would reach out again and hold it. Suddenly, the voices of the cicadas would come from all four corners of the forest like a sudden, violent storm. But her hand would insist on reaching out, holding it tightly.

  The heat of midsummer scorched the clear, hazy air on the temple grounds. The intense heat rising from the grass robbed the grounds of their natural calm on this strangely sultry afternoon. The grass moved beneath the silent haze, and the sound of water dripping from the bamboo gutters onto the rocks next to the sanctuary could be heard constantly. Mother Seoul and Mandogi were alone on the expansive grounds of Kannon Temple.

  Mandogi was moaning pitifully in his own room, wounds covering his entire body. He lay there letting the silence of the mountain temple, broken only by the sounds of the cicadas and an occasional mountain bird, soak into his wounds. He had just spent more than half an hour howling like a beast under Mother Seoul’s bamboo switch, running from place to place, unable to escape the whip. She had adapted to Mandogi’s slow manner, stretching out to whip him, squatting down to whip him, whipping him no matter where he went. Mandogi covered his head with both hands, and there she whipped him until blood flowed from the backs of his hands. His body was covered with scabs, as if he had ringworm, and as he twisted his body to crawl away his skin scraped on the ground, scattering flakes like talcum powder all over the floor. “Ohh, ohh,” he screamed out in pain as he escaped into the sanctuary. The floor had been polished until it was shiny and slippery, and it helped him to fall over more than it helped him to escape. The curses she screamed manipulated him like the strings on a marionette, so he could never really escape her power over him. Sooner or later she found him, and the whip came down once again on his head. He felt a burning as if his eyeballs had popped out and his forehead had burst. The room spun around and around, and the wall, the red cloth covering the altar, the rainbow-colored banner running around the four walls of the temple, all were catching fire and burning up. When he opened his eyes, all was red, burning bright red. “Fire! The sanctuary’s on fire!” Mandogi screamed, but she increased her strength, yelling, “Fucking liar!” as the blows from the whip came all the harder. The Buddha quietly watched from above, a mysterious smile on his face. “Ohh, great Buddha! Please help your Mandogi!” he cried, but only inside his heart. Crying big tears, like the tears that an ox might cry, Mandogi then turned to Mother Seoul and begged her. “Mother Seoul, how come you’re beating me? How come you’re beating me like this, just for taking a nap? What did I do that was so bad? I won’t ever do it again, Mother Seoul! Please, forgive me! Please, forgive me!” In her presence, he was reduced to a timid animal, not knowing how to resist. He was so strong that with one twist, he could crumble her bones to bits, but he didn’t know how to resist. He just curled up his big body and let her beat him until he bled. His cries and pleas were a way to ease the pain, if only a little. The bamboo switch broke over and over. Since she didn’t have another one, she used her bare hands to scratch Mandogi’s face, getting his flesh stuck in her sharp nails. The whip spasming in her hand, she was just like a possessed medium, and no one could come near, not even the priest of the temple.

  Panting like a wounded animal, Mandogi used strips of old newspaper wet with saliva to soak up the blood from his open wounds. A slight breeze blew in through the open door, carrying with it the heavy, bitter smell of pollen. White rays of sun pierced the glittering surface of the lotus pond on the edge of the temple grounds as he crouched in the overgrown grass on the causeway, catching his breath. In the hot silence of the summer afternoon, the smell of the enormous forest soaked into his heavy body. Right there, he dozed off and slipped into a dream.

  Having been called a few times, Mandogi stood staring at Mother Seoul’s figure in the doorway on the porch. His body seemed stuck to the floor, but when he finally sat up and looked at her, there was a smile on her face. Gone was the hard, devilish face of a moment ago. Now her long, thin face was smiling, carving deep wrinkles into
the corners of her long, narrow eyes, her chin tapering down to a point. She ordered Mandogi to come out to her. Her voice was gentle, and her manner calm. The sudden calm that came over her in this moment made her figure appear beautiful to Mandogi once again. As if drawn by an invisible power, Mandogi came out of the room just as she said, put on his sandals, and followed her wherever she moved. Mother Seoul continued across the spacious temple grounds away from the sanctuary, stopping on the causeway of the pond to turn around and look at Mandogi. Then, looking down at the surface of the pond, where large schools of tadpoles gathered under the lotus leaves, she saw the reflection of the shed, and turned her feet in that direction. There was a ladder on the shed, which had been specially built so that the floor could hover above the ground.

  Since childhood, Mandogi, the kongyangju of Kannon Temple, had come to like the inconvenient shed simply because it had a ladder that he could climb, and it was a convenient place to take a nap. He was often scolded when he was discovered in the middle of a nap, and Mother Seoul would attack him with her bamboo switch if she found him, as she had done just now.

  The two went up the ladder into the shed.

  Mandogi thought they were going to carry some stuff out of the shed, but instead she ordered a nervous Mandogi to sit down. This was where he had just been napping, and it was rank with the smell of stirred-up, dried-out straw. Then, something happened there that Mandogi could not have expected. Even afterward, our Mandogi couldn’t quite fathom what had just happened. In fact, she had plopped down beside Mandogi on the straw and first asked, “Before, did that hurt?” Then she was silent, her hands unfastening the belt on his paji, and when she slid her hand between his legs, he wondered, “What’s she doing? Where could she possibly be going?” Cornered, Mandogi let himself sink into the hill of straw while she caressed him, and she kept caressing his thing, which had suddenly stood up, until finally he thought, This is too strange. There was a saying around town that you could judge the thing between a man’s legs by the size of his nose. It was just a saying, but maybe what Mother Seoul saw this time was consistent with what people usually assumed about Mandogi’s strange, overly long nose. It was certainly true that his oddly shaped nose was a popular topic of conversation among the women at the temple. Taking one hand out from between his legs and stroking the tip of his nose, she let out a deep sigh and said, “Hail Amida Buddha. Hail Amida Buddha.”