“No, my father is here, look!”
He pulled Joe over to the table and uncovered the lid of a bronze incense burner, scooping the bone ashes inside with his small hands.
“My father’s name is Kim. He lived over where you come from, and I grew up there. This year I’m thirteen years old.”
“He owns the pastureland?”
“Yes, I brought Father back by myself,” he said proudly. “He always says the bosom of the snowy mountains is his home. I never met someone who thought of home so much. Do you want to listen to him speak?”
Joe put his ear to the bronze censer, but what he heard was only the moan of the man inside the netting.
The boy waved the censer. The moans of the man inside the netting were worse. The more the boy shook the incense burner, the fiercer the moans. Bone ashes spilled out of the censer. Joe asked the boy who was inside the mosquito net. He said it was a passerby who’d walked in and gotten inside the netting.
“Sir, can you help me?”
“Help you do what?”
“There’s a large oven over there. It’s lit. Hold onto me, throw me into the oven, and wait until I’ve turned to ashes. Then you can scoop me out and put me into the censer.”
He led Joe to a door and kicked it open. Joe saw a blazing coal fire. A wave of heat attacked him and he drew back. The boy laughed piercingly.
“Coward, coward. Here, drink some of this scented tea.”
He gave Joe an enormous cup. Joe drank a mouthful and was choked so fiercely he couldn’t stop coughing. It felt as if his throat were being cut apart by knives. With difficulty he finally controlled the cough. Insane ideas sprang up in his mind.
“If you don’t drink the tea, how will you climb the snow-covered mountain?” The boy put on the manner of an adult, his voice becoming melancholy. “I will go into the furnace anyway. But I worry about you, what you will do alone.”
Joe didn’t dare open his mouth. He thought that if he opened it blood would come out. His mouth was already filled with the taste of blood. The man inside the netting grew enraged and began to curse and roar. The boy wanted Joe to go outside. He said it wasn’t safe in the room, and since Joe couldn’t help him he would finish the task himself. He wanted Joe to go through the door and walk always toward the east, because “underneath the sun nothing can go wrong.” When Joe passed by the large bed he smelled a strange fragrance, and another like the smell of a forest. His steps drew to a stop as if pulled by magnets and he stood still. “I didn’t think you were interested in this,” the boy said. He urged him to look inside the netting. Joe raised the netting, and the smell of mushrooms, of pine needles and of spring water blew against his face. A man lay inside the mosquito netting, or, more precisely, half of a man.
He was naked, with a seam dividing the center of his body. The left side was a normal man’s body; the entire right side was rotting, the skin turned to a blackish-green with spots on it, and with mold growing on the spots. His enormous penis was erect. It was especially offensive to look at — one side black, one side red, on the scrotum where the testicle should be was a festering hole. He stared at Joe, not feeling the slightest shame at his nakedness. Joe heard him say several sentences — perhaps it was the local language, he didn’t understand it. The boy crawled onto the bed, and he said in Joe’s ear, “This year he is 103 years old. He isn’t a passerby, he is the spirit of the earth for this region. His power is great.”
The fragrance of wildflowers assaulted Joe’s nostrils, and he sighed, saying, “I never thought, I never imagined.”
That man raised the good hand on his left side and grabbed his right armpit. Flies tore crazily around the netting. His armpit was an abscess. Numerous flies sucked on the inside.
The boy, with a wild expression of joy, crawled over, lightly fondling the putrid leg from the foot all the way up toward the penis, where he stopped, kissing the putrid hole in infatuation, stretching his tongue to lick it. Inside the netting there was an indistinct sound of running spring water. The man, fondling the boy’s naked back, moaned comfortably.
The boy turned his head to glance at Joe, saying, “Quick, get out! The lamp’s tipped over and started a fire!”
Joe felt in the dark to the outer room. When he reached the shop front, the netting and the wooden bed had already kindled into a huge blaze. He heard the boy stamping his feet on the bed and yelling at him to get out quickly.
A number of people had already collected on the street. All were wearing the dress that exposed the back. This kind of clothing made them appear very easy and natural, especially when the wind lifted the lower hems and they looked like so many hawks. Now these people all stood surveying the fire in the silver shop from the street, excitedly craning their necks and sniffing the strange fragrance in the air. No one noticed Joe. Among them was a woman with one breast exposed who was especially beautiful. She lifted an arm, seeming to greet the people inside the silver shop. The fire grew larger, and poisonous smoke rushed into the street. Everyone began to cough violently. Joe hid far away, avoiding the smoke cloud. He saw all of them stooping to the ground to vomit, or they might have been spitting out blood.
The man who’d helped pick up his luggage at the airport appeared again.
“I said you wouldn’t get lost and you didn’t! My name is Kim.”
He picked up Joe’s suitcase, swayed a few times, and asked: “What’s in your suitcase?”
Joe answered that it was clothing and toiletries.
“Very good. You are frugal. Come with me to King Street.”
Joe tailed him as he turned onto a wide gravel road. In Joe’s eyes, from behind Kim looked solemn and mournful. It seemed there were many stories inside him, stories that exceeded Joe’s experience. All the people and things of this place had nothing whatsoever to do with the web of his past stories, with that square. With his mind occupied, he ran into someone. It was a local man, who pushed Joe away and continued to walk ahead. He wore only a thin green robe, his feet bare, and he walked along the road airily. Joe looked again at the stone road full of local people, all wearing thin robes, with bare feet, slowly, airily moving about. The man named Kim turned his head and said to Joe:
“These people all smoke opium. Every person’s heart holds a ball of fire. Have you seen the flower gardens? The poppies in them are their lifeblood. A cold place like this doesn’t grow poppies natively, but there are hot springs in the gardens, and the enormous ground heat changes the temperature. The poppies grow lush in those areas.”
Joe didn’t see anything because only businesses lined the two sides of the road. He thought, Perhaps this man named Kim smokes opium and is recounting his hallucinations.
“Where do you plan to stay? A hotel or the poppy plantation?”
“The poppy plantation,” he blurted.
The man named Kim stopped by a low iron gate, saying, “You’re already there.”
He pushed open the door. Inside was a deserted compound. After a while, a side door opened on the courtyard’s right side. A man with an ardent expression walked toward Joe. He reached out both hands, grasping Joe’s hands firmly.
The man’s mouth spit out a string of the local language. His gaze was firmly set on Joe, as if he wanted to remember his features. Joe thought sadly that he had no distinctive features — what could be remembered? Suddenly the man left Joe aside, walked off and sat down in the mud. He was thinking deeply.
Kim said in Joe’s ear: “This man is an opium smoker, too. Stay here with him.”