A Novel

Episode 2: "Live with Me, darling!"


As air is unseen dream is unseen, isn't it? As the wind crosses rivers and mountains, dream also crosses the rivers and mountains, doesn't it? As the wind has no borders, dream also knows no borders, doesn't it?

My earlier life before my parents, if it could have been designated as such, might have been the wind, the river and the mountain, might it not? Something, which could be called me myself, would have been without form, the limit and the border, would it not?

Who am I? Am I some existence which had been formless and traceless, or the sum of what could be termed without form, without trace, and without origin? Am I entitled to ask myself or someone else these silly questions?

As a lonely boy at a remote mountain valley, I had no peers to talk to nor peer pressure that forced me to do this or that. My grandma was busy carping her daughter-in-law, that is, my poor mom, virtually every minute of every day. My Mom was also busy excusing herself, weeping and whining. My Dad was busy, too, hitting the hills cutting the fire woods.

I was busy, too. I was too lonely, which made me busy. I paced up and down at the house ground, walking to the pear tree and touching it in front of the house ground and talking to it, and walking back to the persimmon tree in the rear garden. Then climbing and standing on the elevated footing in front of the house gate and spreading two legs apart, I got my stuff out and gave a urinal shot up far down the ground, which was thrilling.

There was another lonely man at the valley twenty or so paces away from our house who had been sick on his face or something. He of course was ugly and dirty at the same time. He was a real loner who had no family. I stopped by the uncle's house from time to time, when he waved me away, which was so sad.

You might ask me if I was afraid of him. I can assuredly say that I wasn't. To the contrary, whenever I spotted him lingering or doing something on his place, I was glad. Anyway he belonged in the valley.

I was lonely but not so lonely, I bet you. I had a lot of companions with me. Nature was my best companion to begin with. All the sounds of nature were all around me: low yet sometimes high-pitched, rhythmic and melodious yet sometimes cantankerous. The valley creeks were so cold which made me feel good, rolling and rolling among the rocks.

I missed people--cousins, uncles, aunts and grandpas and grandmas of the family clan, who were 12 kilo meters or so away. My real grandma and dad were really worried about the sorry state of my isolation. They sent me from time to time to the clan town where I could be "enlightened."

I missed people so much so that I used to run down the slope which was not so steep each and every time when I spotted the alikes of the family clan. I was really disappointed at the back heads viewed from behind which were about to turn the corner into the down village.

I was fond of people and afraid of them at the same time. In the year of 1950 when the Korean War broke out, a squadron of the Korean Army bivouacked on the peak of the valley hill. My mom took the meal baskets to the place and I dropped by the army tent which was so cozy and comfortable.

I learned to like people and things in the first place. No, I didn't learn that. I came naturally to take care for them. It seems that I wanted people and things in return for what were missing about me. Naturally I didn't learn to hate.

No one got to me to define such human emotions as adoration, hatred, or love. I missed people over the valley because I was so lonely. I needed the outside contact, but I couldn't get it, so I sought solace in nature--the sky dotted with clouds, rolling creeks with melodious solunds, the pines pondering all day and the fresh wind traveling through them.

The autumnal mountain ritual was the one I longed to have an encounter with because the uncles and grandpas of the family clan came to the place to observe the annual rites of the ancestor worship. My parents were left with the custody of the clan farmland, by the harvests of which they could donate the seasonal offerings to the spirits of the ancestors which had been resting for decades or tens of decades on the hilly graves of the valley.

I liked the autumnal ritual better than the rest of the three seasons because it was the season of richness. I was able to eat cooked rice to my heart's content, that is, to my stomach's content. Bumper crops were stacked high on the yard.

The preparation of the ritual took several days, during which time the advance troops consisting of the dextrous brothers and handy uncles of the clan were deployed to the valley town. All kinds of fish and meat were purchased at a local market and all the gamut of vegetables and mountain herbs were collected, handled with care, cleaned, and suitably oiled, stewed and cooked.

The participants in the ritual numbered 40 to 50 members at each sitting, and the time which was needed for the solemn event took nearly a whole day, from early morning to dusk. The offerings of things and respects were duly observed, and the litany of eulogies for each ancestor trailed long into the valley.

Just like the wind got across the rivers and over the mountain hills, did the mountains ever try to get across the rivers? Did the hills opt not to move, only desire to stay where they ever were? Just like the wind didn't know the barriers or borders, is it just that dreams do not know the bounds?

The rustic folks in the countryside didn't keep gates at the time, say, in the 1950s. They did have the gates and doors, of course, but they didn't know how to lock them. Some of them did have a semblance of wooden latches, which were mere vertical hangers which could be opened by an open arm.

Whereas no one came to me to teach me how to like people and things, I came to learn how to hate them by myself. The flashback tells me that Japan was not the originator of ijime, that is, the only culprit of the flagrantly bullying practice in the juvenile populace. The teenage bullies in some rustic communities in South Korea in the 1950s testify to the truth to the contrary.

I didn't know who went after whom, but after a few days the army soldiers of the South left the hill barracks on the peak, the army soldiers of the North appeared from nowhere. The real Reds, whose red arm bands and insignia on their shoulders glistened, had asked for a meal. My grandma had given them barley grain meal, which had been husked and twice boiled.

There were no barriers of any kind. Not any type of elevated stumbling blocks, or walls either. The winds whiffing of pines travelled with no hindrance. There were no fences to make good neighbors. I walked freely along the creeks, sat under the trunks of pines surrounded with iris, looked up at the sky over the valley hills.

I had been powerless, as a young boy, of course, as to the unhindered invasion of the Red army soldiers from the North, defenseless against the nasty bullying of the peer boys, and speechless about the taller and older girl who had been on a swing and determined to stand before me uninvited.

I was badly upset, giving my sidelong glances to the rifles of short length standing against the wall while the Red Army privates were gulping down the cooked barleys. I had wondered at the time why my country had been so vulnerably exposed to the invasion from the North. Looking at the backs of the young Red privates receding hurriedly from our house, I got mad at my bare arms with no weapon. I dashed to them and stabbed their unsuspecting backs with blazing stares.

I had rudely been woken up so often at the time when I met the concerned eyes of Dad or Grandma, saying "You're having a dream, aren't you?" I wasn't crying out loud, having free falls from an elevated farm road of a paddy field down below. I wasn't gasping for breath, was I with me meeting eye to eye with a boar with her cubs, me hiding behind a pine tree?

A dream? What was it like? They didn't explain to me and I didn't ask them about it, either. They knew I knew about it, and I thought they knew that, seeing that they didn't try to mention it further.

But actually I didn't know it because I didn't ever see their signs or moves just when we the family members were watching the People's Army soldiers getting to us from across the valley hills, flying their flags. I couldn't notice any signs, sounds of footsteps, or moves.

They came anyway in no time from nowhere when I was nodding off sitting on the grass below the peak in the sunny spring afternoon, or sleeping one more time after having been to the urinal urn, listening to my dad cooking cow feeds outside the room. They came in faraway sounds, in muted footsteps, and in human shapes,

Human shapes? When they came to me especially in human shapes, they were usually attired in mature women's dress. I hadn't ever talked to any girl of my age at the time, much less adult women. They came to me anyway like the wind, and that in groups. They whispered to my solitary ears, "Live with me, dear!"