Hwang Sok-yong - Princess Bari

“Turns out that whore had a lover back home in Thailand,” Lady Emily said. “She flew back three or four times a year to see him. Probably stole a lot of money, too. I bet she got sick of sleeping with an old man and was out of her mind when she shot him. The police asked if I wanted to see her. Why would I want to see that murdering bitch?”

Lady Emily covered her face with her hands and began to sob hysterically. She turned on her side and pulled her knees up to her chest. I tried to console her as I straightened her limbs out, covered her with a towel, and began to massage her shoulders.

“Okay,” I said. “Forget about the awful thing that happened. Just let it go. The memory will fade in time. Don’t let it consume you.”

Her knotted muscles began to soften as I rubbed and kneaded. I made my way down the backs of her thighs to her calves and down to her feet. As I squeezed and stroked her feet, my eyes closed automatically. I shivered and my shoulders trembled; my body seemed to grow colder and lighter much more quickly than usual.

*

Someone is standing in the dark: a figure dressed in a loosely draped, dark brown garment made from a rough fabric. I recognize the apparition as Lady Emily’s nanny, Becky.

Please help her , I murmur.

In a hoarse voice, she says: You’re in no position to be worried about others.

I say that we speak, but in fact we use no words. No sooner do she and I think of the same place than the furniture in the room vanishes and the darkness lifts. We stand in the middle of a parched land rough with rocks and dry grass. Wrinkles crease the corners of Becky’s dark eyes as she gazes out over the windswept expanse.

Aren’t you looking for your husband? she asks.

Where are we?

The middle place, between the world of the living and the world of the dead, where shamans like you and I can come and go. Even after death, we can traverse this place.

Am I dead, then?

You die and return to life. There’s something here you want to see.

In an instant the sky turns black as night, and a loud noise like thunder booms. Lights flash around us. Machine guns rattle, and the sound of cannons threatens to tear my eardrums. I glide over the rugged land. A small village appears. Black smoke rises, and I see houses on fire. People pour out of a narrow alleyway. Bodies lie in the street. Men with missing arms and legs scream. I hear planes and helicopters overhead. Tanks roll into the village on their metal wheels.

I run like mad until I see a mosque in front of an empty lot, and rush into the corridor. Inside, hundreds of men and women are praying, their bodies prostrate on the stone floor. They keep bowing, standing up and kneeling down in silence, over and over. I ask the women, some in full burqa and others with only hijabs covering their hair: Have you seen Ali?

Ali? Who’s Ali?

Anyone here seen Ali?

Their questions fly back and forth through the mosque until the entire place is filled with their voices. I hear someone at the far end call out to me: I saw Usman. He went to Kunduz.

Murmurs of Usman, Usman and Kunduz, Kunduz spread through the mosque again. I push my way through the crowd in search of the speaker of that voice. But they all turn their backs when I get close. I keep pushing, burrowing further into the mosque. Someone grabs me by the scruff of the neck, and I am propelled between the pillars and back out to the corridor.

Those are the spirits of the dead , Becky says. They’re all stopped at their memories from when they were alive.

Is this Hell?

No, it’s like a way station. There’s no such thing as Heaven or Hell. If they work hard, they’ll be able to move on to a better place, the same way that babies are born and grow up. Souls with many sins take longer and are stuck at a lower spot.

I think of Kunduz, and immediately a dusty street, a bell tower and low houses appear. I see a plaza in the village where a market is held. There are wooden display stands and awning poles. But the streets are empty, and the houses are all shuttered. I hear a sharp whistling sound followed by an explosion. Dust billows up like a cloud and blocks out the sky. A shell lands in the plaza, and a large crater appears. Another shell lands on the roof of a house. Cement and stone shards fall like hail.

I picture the outside of the village, and in a flash I see a group of men standing with their arms in the air on the side of a road overgrown with dry weeds. There are several trucks. Soldiers with bare feet and military jackets over their tunics aim guns at the men. An officer shouts, and the soldiers fire. The men collapse; several break away and run. They fall face-first. The image vanishes, and it grows dark as the ground ripples with their crawling bodies. I run over to them.

Usman! Is there anyone here named Usman?

I hear a familiar voice behind me.

Bari? What are you doing here?

I turn, and Usman is standing there, tall and with big hands just like his older brother. He has a long beard that makes him look ten years older.

Ali came looking for you. Did you see him?

We parted ways immediately.

Shapes, wavering like wisps of smoke, watch as soldiers toss their bodies into trucks.

In a flash I am whisked away on the wind to where the land ends. I see sand and open water. Towering behind me are enormous mountains carrying heavy loads of snow on their heads. Becky stands next to me and gazes out over the ocean.

Your husband is at sea , she says.

Where is he going ?

I don’t know, but it looks as if he’s headed to where the sun sets in the world of the living.

Help me. Please take me there.

When I plead with her, Becky gives me the same cold, expressionless look that she had when I first saw her in front of the bonfire.

Everyone suffers , she says. But they have to fix their own problems. That’s true for Emily and true for you, too. Now let me ask you this: why can’t I be with him?

Who?

My husband in the world beyond.

Let’s go look for him.

I can’t find him. He left long ago, on a ship. I spent my wedding night with a wooden effigy. The village elders all remember his name. They say he was a brave warrior who hunted lions.

We gaze out at an endless sea that is so blue it is nearly black.

*

I opened my eyes slowly, very slowly, as if peeling off strips of wet paper that had been gluing my eyelids shut. The world around me changed, and I was back in my body. Lady Emily was still asleep. I got up and pulled back the curtain: it was already after dark. I thought again about the scenes of war and Usman’s death that I had seen so clearly. I remembered how Ali had not appeared even once, and I pictured the beach to which Becky had taken me. I was certain that Ali was still alive somewhere. When I was a child in North Korea, the adults taught me that if I truly wanted something with all of my heart, then I shouldn’t tell anyone or it would never happen, it would only slip further out of my reach. I made up my mind that I would not tell anyone how certain I was that Usman was dead and Ali alive. I decided to hide it from Grandfather Abdul as well.

Xiang came to Tongking several days after the Lunar New Year, looking for me. I was with a client. Vinh, who’d finished with her client first and was resting outside in the waiting room, poked her head through the doorway and waited for me to look up. I looked at her questioningly, and she gestured behind her with her thumb. I assumed she meant someone was waiting to see me.