by John Boyne
“That was Hwa-Young,” she told me. “A friend of Bong-Cha. I’ve known her since she was a baby. Her mother, a friend from childhood, gave birth to seven daughters. After each one was born, her husband beat her fiercely, for he wanted a son. When Hwa-Young, his seventh disappointment, was born, he dragged my friend to the river and drowned her, taking a new wife later that same day. She gave him three sons in as many years and died as she was delivered of a fourth.”
“And he was permitted to commit such an act?” I asked, horrified by this wickedness. “He was not hanged for taking the life of another?”
“Hwa-Young’s father is also a darughachi,” she told me. “And darughachis can do whatever they like, they are above the law. I remember once when—”
She stopped suddenly and I followed her gaze across the street. An older woman had just turned a corner, wearing a dark red durumagi over her clothes, an ostentatious item for such an early hour and one that was clearly intended to signify her importance. Next to her walked a young girl of about twelve years of age, pretty, with dark hair and a clean complexion, dressed in a pale green hanbok.
“That’s her,” whispered Sun-Hi, the words catching in her throat. “That’s Bong-Cha.”
“And the woman with her?”
“Despised wretch Dae, the mother of my husband.”
I looked at them as the child glanced in our direction but did not see anyone she recognized. Sun-Hi, her face still covered, rose to her feet and I grabbed her by the arm quickly, shaking my head.
“Not yet,” I said.
“I have to go,” she insisted. “I have to talk to her. I have to let her know that I have come back.”
“No,” I said. “Not in a public place like this. It’s too soon and we have yet to form a plan. If you are to be reunited with your daughter, then this is not the way. Trust me, Sun-Hi, we have to bide our time. You will be reunited soon, but you must wait a little longer.”
* * *
• • •
Sun-Hi knew that Dae liked to visit her sister every afternoon for lunch, so we waited until noon, when the house was sure to be empty, before making our way there. Stepping inside, I noticed how Sun-Hi seemed both frightened to be in this place again and strangely drawn to it. We looked into each of the rooms in turn and, from the condition of the bedroom, it seemed that Vi-Shik had taken another woman since disposing of his wife, but quite how old that unfortunate creature might have been, we could not guess.
Most upsetting to Sun-Hi, of course, was Bong-Cha’s room, in which there was no evidence of her mother at all. Instead, the walls were decorated with painted portraits of the child’s father and his ancestors. Sun-Hi lay down on the mat where the girl placed her head every night, inhaling her scent, and I watched her silently, empathizing with the pain that seeped from every pore of her body.
The depth of her maternal love was almost palpable and made me think of the children that I might have raised to adulthood, too, had fortune favored me. Most days, I tried not to spend too much time thinking of my murdered son, En-Su, not because my love for him had diminished in any way but because to remember him was to endure the most extraordinary pain. When he forced his way into my daydreams, however, I pictured him scrambling across the floor of my workshop, his arms outstretched, Kyung-Soon encouraging him as he learned to walk, and how my beloved wife would clap her hands in delight when the boy made it from one side of the room to the other without falling over. Perhaps, one day, he might have even followed me into my trade and we could have built a workshop together.
To my surprise, I felt a hand upon my face and, drifting unwillingly from my reverie, I realized that Sun-Hi was pressing her palm against my cheeks.
“You are crying,” she said. “What is it that upsets you?”
I shook my head, unable to find the words at first, but then I spoke of the many losses that I had suffered. Without intending to, I lifted my hand and wrapped it around hers, feeling the soft skin of her palm against my fingers. A moment later, my lips were pressed against hers. I could feel myself growing aroused and, rather than being embarrassed by such predictable weakness, I leaned into her and, for a moment, she reciprocated, her body pressing back urgently against my own but then, without warning, she pulled away, shaking her head.
“Forgive me,” she said, placing her hands together now in an attitude of prayer. “But I cannot.”
“Do you worry that someone will return and discover us?” I asked, torn between confusion and desire. “If so, then we could always find—”
“The vows I made to my husband remain in place,” she replied. “And while he yet lives, I will not betray them. I am sorry if this causes you pain.”
I shook my head and turned away. In truth, I respected her unwillingness simply to fall to the floor with me and felt ashamed of my clumsy attempts at seduction.
* * *
• • •
Toward the rear of the property stood an old well that, Sun-Hi told me, had dried up many years before. A boulder lay across the top to prevent anyone from falling in and it took all our strength to move it out of the way. When we did, I stared down into the mysterious darkness, lifted a handful of stones from the ground and dropped them inside. It took a few seconds for them to sound against the shallow layer of water that sat at the base and I guessed that the well was perhaps twenty or thirty feet deep.
While we waited for Vi-Shik’s mother to come home, we devised our plan and Sun-Hi hid out of sight, masked by a small copse of trees, while I remained in the garden, making sure that I remained visible so Dae would notice me the moment she returned. I felt somewhat nervous at the idea of what lay ahead and wondered whether it was this anxiety that was causing me to perspire so much. My arms and legs felt unstable, too, but then I’d been feeling unwell since earlier in the day. Growing nauseous, I sat down upon the grass next to the well, placed myself in the lotus position and breathed slowly, trying to distract my mind from my bilious stomach by examining the carvings of the gods inscribed into the stone. When I continued to feel dizzy, I placed my hands on the ground on either side of me and was about to rise and force myself to be sick when I heard a voice cry out in a mixture of surprise and anger.
I opened my eyes and looked up as an elderly woman, Dae, marched toward me. She wore a ferocious expression on her face, furious that her property had been invaded by a stranger, and lifting a stick from the ground, she waved it in my direction, as she might to a dog.
“Vagrant!” she cried. “Tramp! Beggar! Be gone from here before I do you an injury. You trespass on the grounds of the darughachi of Kisong!”
I pulled myself to my feet but remained silent and when she roared at me again, I shook my head and babbled some nonsense about having permission to be there, that this was the home of a dear friend of mine.
“What do you want?” she asked, her face close to mine now. “What are you doing here? Don’t you know that you could be put to death even for daring to trespass in this place?”
Knowing that she was standing exactly where I needed her to stand, I smiled and continued to mutter quietly to myself so that she might relax and feel that I presented no danger to her. Frowning, she barely had time to register the sound of footsteps running behind her and when I stepped out of the way she turned, but not quickly enough to prevent herself from being pushed into the well by Sun-Hi. The old woman cried out in terror as she fell to the bottom and then, a few moments later, we heard the sound of groans ascending from below.
Sun-Hi breathed heavily, her face illuminated with pleasure as she looked down into the cavernous opening. The sun appeared from behind a cloud at this moment, allowing us a better view of what lay below. Next to the scurrying rats, lying prostrate in the puddle of foul water, was Dae.
“Gracious Mother!” she cried. “You appear to have fallen.”
“You!” came the voice
from below, but it had little strength in it, for Dae must have been badly wounded in the fall and sounded both frightened and disoriented. “You daughter of a she-goat! You were told never to come back here!”
“And yet here I am!” shouted Sun-Hi defiantly. “Did you think that I would abandon my daughter to you or to that monster you raised? You of all people know what it is to love one’s child and to put their interests ahead of everything and everyone. You should have known that it was only a matter of time before I would return.”
There was a long silence from the floor of the well and then the voice came again, but in a more beseeching tone this time. “Please,” she said. “My leg. I think it’s broken. And blood seeps from my forehead. You have to help me.”
“Help you?” cried Sun-Hi. “So you can steal from me again? Think yourself lucky that I’m not pouring a pot of boiling lead over your miserable body and letting you burn to death—”
“Beloved Wife,” said a voice from behind us, and I spun around to see the Great Camel of Kisong himself standing a few feet away, looking from one of us to the other with a half-smile on his face. “My mother might have believed that you would remain in exile, but I knew otherwise. You have the bravery of a lion and the stupidity of a monkey.”
“I’ve come for only one thing,” said Sun-Hi, doing her best to sound as if she had the ferocity of the former, but her tone was panicked now and lacking in conviction. “I want my daughter, that’s all. Then I will leave, and you won’t see me again.”
“Bong-Cha belongs to me,” replied Vi-Shik, shaking his head. “She is much more…accommodating than you ever were, Wife.” He smiled again, displaying his yellow teeth. “It would be too painful for me to let her go. Not for another couple of years, anyway. Perhaps when she’s a little older? You could come back for her then if you like. She won’t interest me as much when her youth is just a memory.”
The three of us stood in silence for a few moments, taking in the monstrous nature of his words, before Sun-Hi threw herself at him, her fists turning into claws that ripped at his eyes. He was caught off guard and stumbled, but recovered quickly, and even though Sun-Hi did her best to gain the upper hand he was far too strong for her and, with one savage blow, he punched her in the face, and she fell to the grass, unconscious.
I watched in horror, the sickness inside me growing ever greater now, and my stomach began to turn in revulsion. I wanted nothing more than to lie down in a cool, dark place and expel the contents of my breakfast into a basin. Vi-Shik cocked his head to the side a little as he looked at me, perhaps wondering why I was not being more physical in defense of Sun-Hi, before walking toward the well and leaning over to look inside.
“My son!” cried Dae from below, her tone filled with relief. “You have come for me. I knew you would.”
“I think they meant to push us both in there,” he replied. “Well, I’ll get you out and then we can send my wife and…” He looked at me uncertainly. “Her lover? Is that what you are? We can send them down there to spend eternity together.” He glanced toward the boulder that we had removed, and I knew that it was his intention to seal us inside, just as it had been ours to bury him and his mother within its cavernous walls.
Turning around now, he made his way toward me and I moved slowly, trying to escape him. He was bigger and stronger than I, however, and in my current condition, there was simply no possibility that I could best him. From the corner of my eye, I could see Sun-Hi rousing herself and groaning on the grass, trying to lift herself, but she was too weakened by the punch that he had inflicted on her to be of any help.
“Who are you anyway, stranger?” he asked casually, as if this were nothing more than a pleasant conversation with a new acquaintance. “You lie with my wife? And now you come to steal my daughter? Is that it? Perhaps you want to lie with her, too? Do your tastes converge with mine? But she belongs to me, you must understand that. They both do. And I do not tolerate thieves.”
I stepped back toward the well and, when I moved my feet, I came close to stumbling in. Opening my mouth to protest, I found that words failed me. At that same moment an unexpected sound caught my attention. Looking past Vi-Shik, I watched in astonishment as a figure came running across the grass, moving faster than I had ever seen a person run in my entire life.
It was a girl. The same one I had seen walking to school with her grandmother that morning. Vi-Shik turned in surprise as she ran toward him, and, at that same moment, I stepped aside so that when her arms flew out, pushing him hard in the chest, he could not stop himself from falling into the well.
“One of two,” said Bong-Cha, turning to me, but before I had a chance to ask what she meant by this curious phrase, I felt my legs give way beneath me, my weakened body finally giving in to whatever illness had beset me, and I tumbled to the ground. After that, the world turned black.
NORWAY
A.D. 1349
I STRUGGLED TO SEPARATE the real world from the nightmares. As monsters from the deep snapped at my heels, eagles descended in a fury from the sky, breathing fire while they tried to capture me in their claws. Ogres surrounded me, threatening to crush my body into the dust. I saw a man march from house to house, pulling babies from their parents’ arms. The boys had their throats cut while the girls were returned to their screaming mothers. Wherever the man went, cries of terror followed in his wake. Flames from the ground licked at his feet, an army of the dead reaching up to drag him to his new home in the underworld.
My mother, Flavia, sat on my left-hand side, sewing a dress using thread the color of blood to run along the hem, a pattern that reflected the flow of a great river. My aunt, Noria, sat on my right, crafting shoes and tying laces into the leather. At the end of the bed, near a painted portrait of his ancestors, stood my father, Magne, staring down at me with a fierce expression on his face as he chastised me for being weak.
A shadowy figure appeared in the background, but I recognized her immediately as my sister Ablu, a great stain spreading across the front of her tunic. She cried out, pressing her hands against it to stem the flow, but they came away scarlet, the blood running down her legs and from her hairline into her eyes.
“My own brother,” she whispered, “and you murdered me.”
I tried to speak but the words caught at the back of my throat. My body was a temple of pain, sores weeping, pus pouring from open wounds. And then, finally, the sound of sticks making their way toward me, a blurred figure at the back of the room, banging on the stone floor as he hobbled into the light. My cousin, Hakje. He narrowed his eyes when he saw me, then smiled through yellow, rotting teeth.
“You thought you could kill me, Cousin?” he asked. “It seems that you will be forced to make your peace with God before I.”
Behind him, my wife, Kateryna, appeared with our son, skeletons carrying the skin that had been stripped from their bodies, screams emerging from gray bones. On the wall behind them, painted portraits of the child’s father and his ancestors. Now I cried out in terror, too, and tried to sit up, but a hand pushed me back down.
“Rest,” said a voice. “You must rest.”
“Will he recover?” asked another, much younger, and if there came a reply, I was too insentient to hear it.
* * *
• • •
I had started to feel ill shortly after arriving in Vossevangen, where we had traveled in order to kill Signe’s husband and retrieve her daughter, attributing my nauseous stomach to some bad food that I had eaten near Beate’s school. Only now that I was lying in my sickbed, beginning to recover from my lurid hallucinations, did I realize what had actually caused my illness.
A few days earlier, in Bergen, I had been offered employment at the dock unloading the cargo ships that arrived on the merchant trade routes and, in need of money if we were to continue our journey, we decided to stay for a week until our purse was full. The work wa
s dull but tolerable, with ships arriving every day from England and the continent of Europe laden down with fabrics, food, spices and tea. I was not much accustomed to manual labor but found it refreshing to be outdoors alongside honest working men.
On the third day, however, a curious event took place. Wherever he went, the harbor master, Rudiger, carried a list of the ships that were due to dock in our port and, typically, somewhere between four and eight would arrive between dawn and dusk. On that particular afternoon, however, all the ships we had been expecting had arrived and been unloaded. The sailors and captains were busying themselves with eating, drinking and whoring around the town when, over the horizon, we spotted another boat sailing in our direction.
“Perhaps it’s one of tomorrow’s ships, arriving early?” suggested Oddleiv, one of the workers who toiled alongside me and with whom I had grown friendly. Like me, he was a frustrated artist, but his main interest lay in the design of buildings.
“That would be unusual, would it not?” I asked. “I understood that boats were more likely to arrive late than early?”
He nodded and we grew captivated by the boat’s approach, for it was charting an unsteady course, a strange zigzag through the water that no serious navigator would ever consider. Ten minutes lurching port, ten more starboard, so bizarre were its falterings that most of the men, including the harbormaster, remained where they were rather than returning home, watching and wondering what inept, foreign crew would bring a boat into dock in such a bizarre manner.
“The captain must be either a drunk or a Frenchman,” declared Rudiger, shaking his head as the ship drew closer. “Or both.” At one point it looked as if it was going to crash onto the rocks of the islands to the east of Bergen, but somehow it managed to right itself as we called out, trying to guide it in a straight direction, before it achieved a steady path with the tide into the harbor itself.