Right before the boat set sail again, we were pulled out of the containers while new people were smuggled aboard. No one could walk. We crawled back to our spots and sprawled out on the floor. When the woman who’d had her head smacked against the wall for not calling her number out properly was brought out of the container, she could not stand up again; somewhere in the South China Sea, she died. The snakeheads picked her up by her head and legs and carried her out. Number Eight grew so weak that she had to be helped to the toilet each time. Xiang and I were still young, and fortunately had a little strength to spare. The people who boarded in Xiamen sat between the rows of containers next to ours; most of them were young, too. There seemed to be about seven or eight women among them. As the ship crossed the equator, we entered the fiery level of Hell, and thirst and starvation slowly turned people into animals.
Six
I stripped off my shell of a body more than once during those long days of darkness and followed Chilsung down the white path to see my grandmother. Once, after coming to briefly and taking a look around, I realized that the world of the dead was no different from the place I was in. I travelled in the ship through the different layers of the otherworld.
I lay with my eyes closed and my back pressed to the bottom of the ship as it rose and fell with the waves, the din of machinery constant, and let my spirit rise into the air. It was indeed like slipping out of a shell, or removing a garment. It didn’t make a sound, but there was a sensation like soft fabric tearing each time I shed my body and drifted about in the dark.
Then Chilsung would appear, his white fur dazzling my eyes as he wagged his tail in front of me. We would walk single-file along the white path that hovered in the blackness like a belt of moonlight. After a long walk, we would arrive at a riverbank, where a light breeze blew and a bridge arched over the river. The water looked black as tar. Only the bridge was illuminated, as if by lamplight, and Grandmother would come across it, the hem of her white skirt swaying.
Bari, come this way.
When Grandmother walked back over the bridge, it lit up with all the colours of the rainbow. Chilsung walked ahead of me. I followed him across this rainbow bridge. Just then, I heard voices coming from the dark water below, voices crying out to be saved. A woman’s ragged screams. Weeping and wailing. Groans of pain. A baby bawling. Voices moaning under the lash. Dying breaths. Teeth chattering as voices cried out about the cold. Shrill screams following one after the other, wailing about the heat. Hollow giggles from going mad. I could barely bring myself to cross the bridge.
Don’t listen, and don’t look down. If you stray from the path, you’ll lose all your good karma.
Once I was over the bridge I saw that the sun was shining there, and everything was strangely quiet. A wide field filled with fresh grass stretched away evenly, and a delicate breeze stirred the wildflowers. Grandmother pointed to a zelkova tree at the far end of the field.
When you get closer to that tree, your guide will appear. Hurry off now.
Grandma, aren’t you coming with me?
I can’t. My world ends here.
What about Chilsung?
He slowly wagged his tail and didn’t answer. Grandmother held out her hand.
Take these with you. It’ll help.
She dropped three peony blossoms into my palm. I put them in my pocket and floated over to the tree, bobbing gently as if carried there on a current. The tree was enormous; it had to have been as tall as a three or four-storey building. The branches were completely bare, though it wasn’t winter. The closer I got to that tree, with its countless branches twisting out of its thick trunk in all directions, the scarier it looked. On one of the lower branches perched a magpie, flicking its tail. When it saw me it rubbed its beak against the tree several times and then addressed me.
Hey, Stupidhead, where you think you’re goin’? Oughta give you what for.
What did I do wrong? I asked angrily. Despite everything that had happened to me up until that point, I had submitted to all of it meekly, without a single word of blame or complaint, sorrow or frustration, so I truly felt this was uncalled-for. The bird opened its beak wide and laughed at me. Then it said:
You’re still a long way from bringing back the life-giving water. How the living do suffer, do suffer!
I clamped down on my anger.
Show me the way to the western sky, I said.
Follow me, follow me.
The little featherbrain spread his wings and took off from the tip of the branch, circled overhead several times and flew straight into the side of the enormous tree trunk as if to crush his own skull.
Serves you right, I thought. Now you’re dead of a busted skull.
But the trunk opened like a yawning mouth, and the bird disappeared into it. I placed one foot inside the shadowy hollow, and the rest of my body was sucked inside. I slid down, down, down. When I reached the bottom, the top of the tree hovered far above my head and I saw a road stretching out in five directions: north, south, east, west and centre. In the middle of the road stood an envoy from the otherworld, dressed all in black and wearing a black horsehair hat. He clutched a folding fan with both hands. Where are you going? he asked.
I’d been wondering the same thing, so I had no response at first. But then I said the first thing that came to mind:
They told me to come over for dinner.
The envoy considered this for a moment and then asked: The great kings?
I didn’t know what else to do, so I nodded. He pointed to one of the paths with his fan. I walked for a long time and eventually reached a large plaza with torchlight glowing on all sides. The same envoy appeared again and dragged me to the centre. A huge, towering platform, like a judge’s bench, appeared along the opposite wall. Seated atop the platform were ten great kings, each with a different type of crown: a horned crown; an ornament-covered crown that stuck straight up like a chimney and gradually widened; a round crown; a wide, flat crown; a crown that bulged out on the sides. The great kings seemed to stir, and then the one seated in the middle wearing the horned crown glared fiercely at me from above his black beard. He called out:
Loathsome worm! You’re not dead, yet you dare call us forth in your dreams?
The great king with a white beard and a crown with triangular horns yelled:
You lied and said we invited you here!
The great king with the flat crown said:
We cannot send you back to the flesh you abandoned!
Another said:
An insignificant speck like you arrogantly vows to take the life-giving water from the ends of the Earth?!
The great kings of the otherworld called out my crimes each in turn, and at the very end the king with the round crown said: