Waxing Moon

by H. S. Kim

  Min suddenly realized that it was impossible to guess the man’s age. He could be anywhere between twenty and fifty. What had made him leave his country? It was odd. With his finger, the man traced the route he had taken.

  They lay next to each other, candlelight still flickering on the low table. Min saw the man cry. Min groaned to tell him that everything was going to be all right. But his unexpected groan sounded wild and must have scared the man out of his wits. He wiped his eyes and stopped crying.

  27

  Before dawn, the sound of the gong at the temple rippled gently into the hollowness of one’s soul.

  Mr. O was sitting in front of the wall in the guest room at the recommendation of the head monk. His mind was intensely focused on the sound of the gong.

  Let your mind be open, and let it be part of everything that surrounds you. Don’t let any of your senses exert effort to recognize one particular phenomenon, whether it is a sound or a pain or a thought the head monk had said. Mr. O was frustrated because that was not possible. He didn’t know how to do it. The first day he had said, “Damn it, I can’t!” And the head monk, sitting next to him in the hall with the Buddha of the Universal Light, ignored his complaint.

  Now, alone in his room, Mr. O sat facing the wall, trying to immerse himself in the low, vibrating sound of the gong, but his attention was directed to only one thing. His stomach was the center of the universe at the moment. Ever since he had come to spend time at the temple, he’d been feeling his stomach painfully shrink. Meals were served only twice a day, and the portions were meager. He stared at the wall and tried to let the sound of the gong seep into his mind. He was counting automatically, and then he was distracted and lost track of his counting. He opened his eyes, stopping his counting, and looked about. He was staying in one of the cubicles near the old part of the temple, behind the main hall. The cold room was minimally furnished.

  When he had arrived six days earlier and announced that he was going to stay indefinitely, the head monk had accepted his proposal with a bow. Mr. O had expected his sudden appearance would disturb the entire schedule of life in the temple. But things went on or, rather, nothing happened.

  That first day, the head monk had silently showed him the guest room and then left. Mr. O called him back, so he could blurt out the whole story.

  “My son was born. But he was born disabled. The doctor thinks he won’t be normal. He will be slow in learning, or he may not be able to learn anything at all. There is something wrong with his head. I felt like jumping into the well in my yard with him. There was no place I could think of to come to hide, except this place. My father used to come here with me. Do you remember? I need to stay here for a while. I need to think about things.”

  The head monk listened, unperturbed, with his eyes cast on his feet, his lips slightly apart, and his palms meeting tightly under his chin. When Mr. O finished pouring out his heart to him, the other man paused for a moment and then asked if he would like some tea. Mr. O was upset because he saw that the head monk was not affected by his tragedy, which was gnawing at him. Mr. O replied angrily that he hadn’t come to drink tea. The head monk bowed slightly and wished a good stay for Mr. O. He chanted something from the Heart Sutra and then left.

  In a few moments, breakfast would be ready. Mr. O couldn’t wait. No one would bring him food, or come to fetch him, so Mr. O got himself ready while other monks rose to go to the main hall for morning chanting and whatever else they had to do before breakfast.

  It was still dark outside when Mr. O stepped out the door and walked briskly to the kitchen. A group of monks were walking in single file, the head monk following at the end. Mr. O watched the bald heads from behind, amused, and suddenly felt an urge to fling a stone with a sling at their heads, one by one. And then he remembered that he had done exactly that to an elderly servant a long time before. Sitting on a branch of a pine tree, he flung a stone using a homemade sling, which hit the servant on his forehead. He fell and bled. Mr. O laughed hysterically then. Suddenly, his own laugher echoed in his head now.

  Mr. O paused by the main hall and watched the monks walk into the kitchen. No one had scolded him for injuring the servant. He couldn’t even recall what had happened to the servant.

  Slowly, he dragged his feet to the kitchen and entered the room where all the monks sat in silence. They passed the rice bowls to the right and around the table until everyone had a bowl of rice and a bowl of clear soup with a few green leaves. There was also pickled radish on the table. Mr. O sat next to the head monk and ate, conjuring up the image of a roasted duck. When they were done with their meals, they poured hot water into the rice bowls and with their spoons they cleaned the bowls and drank the water with whatever was floating in it. Mr. O was the first to get up and leave, in order to avoid cleaning the table and doing his own dishes. He could lower himself to do many things, but doing the dishes wasn’t one of them.

  He went for a walk. There was a path that led to the peak of the mountain. He was climbing steadily up and when he paused to breathe, he turned around and saw the head monk following him from a distance. He waited. The head monk came close and passed him. He followed, and from behind he asked, “Don’t you all kowtow at this hour in the main hall?”

  “Yes, we do,” the head monk replied, and he stopped. He picked a leaf from the ground and handed it to Mr. O. “Would you like to?” he asked, pointing to the ground, handing the leaf to Mr. O.

  “What?” Mr. O asked.

  “There is a caterpillar crossing the road. Someone might step on it,” the head monk said.

  Mr. O picked up the caterpillar with the leaf and asked, “Where shall I put this?”

  “Wherever you think it might want to be,” he replied quietly.

  “How do I know where it would like to be?” Mr. O wondered, slightly annoyed.

  “Well, it was going that way, and perhaps we should put it over there,” the head monk suggested.

  Mr. O put it down and walked on, ahead of the monk.

  They climbed to the top. The valley was blanketed with thick fog, but they could see the temple, situated deep in the middle of the mountain, in the brilliant morning light.

  The head monk sat on a rock, and Mr. O sat on another rock. For a while they said nothing, but finally Mr. O broke out, “I have been kowtowing one hundred and eight times a day, and meditating—at least trying to meditate—but nothing is really happening to me. I can’t really forget anything. My mind is crowded with thoughts, and they all rush to me as soon as I close my eyes to meditate, facing the wall.”

  The head monk sat still, observing a small bug on his robe.

  Mr. O looked about and cut a leaf from a plant and handed it to the head monk, saying, “Do you want a leaf for the bug?”

  The head monk looked at the freshly cut leaf with regret. And he said, “No, this bug has a pair of wings. It can go wherever it wants to.”

  Mr. O frowned deeply.

  “So what’s the point of all this? Mr. O demanded. “Why do you kowtow to the Buddha? Why do you chant? Why do you meditate? Why do you eat only twice a day? Why do you not do what you want to do? What’s the point?”

  The head monk smiled like a baby, fluttering his eyelashes in the sunlight. And he answered, “There is no point.”

  “Oh.” Mr. O paused, dumbfounded and slightly piqued.

  “There is no point,” the head monk repeated quietly. “You call yourself ‘I,’ and I call myself ‘I.’ The novice monk also calls himself ‘I.’ And yet, I call you ‘you.’ You call me ‘you.’ We call the novice monk ‘he.’ Because we think that ‘you’ are not ‘I,’ and ‘he’ is not ‘I.’ But everyone on earth is ‘I.’ I am borrowing this body to live this life. You are borrowing yours to live this life. The fact that you are in your body, and are called Mr. O, is a coincidence. Nothing more. All Mr. O possess
es or doesn’t possess is also a coincidence. But ‘I’ is troubled with the ‘me’ that wants, desires, wishes, loves, hates, feels unhappy about, and is dissatisfied with. If you let your ‘I’ think this way, every ‘I’ feels troubled.”

  “I don’t get it,” Mr. O said, shaking his head.

  “Your son was born. You expected him to be a certain way. But he arrived differently, in a disabled body. You are disappointed. You feel cursed. You are suffering because you want him to be not who he is. But remember, he is also ‘I.’ He is you. He is ‘I.’ This is what I wanted to tell you. That’s why I followed you up here.” The head monk got up and descended.

  Mr. O didn’t move. He sat still and watched the head monk become smaller down on the path to the temple. His mind was in a violent state, and he could hardly breathe.

  The other day, at home in bed, when his wife had whispered, “Should we get rid of him?” his spine had curled with immeasurable fear for the naive wickedness in his wife. But he couldn’t enthusiastically reprimand her, for the same thought had crossed his mind. Every morning, he woke up hoping his son was just a nightmare. But he wasn’t. He was there, everywhere, tainting the smell of the air in Mr. O’s world. The whole village was talking about him. Even the peasants pitied him. Or so he believed. For the first time in his life, he cried in bed alone. Whenever he looked into his wife’s eyes, he shrank with harrowing loneliness. And he grew wordless. His wife found him boring now. He wanted to find solace. So he had come to the temple, hoping to find a remedy for his deepening sickness. But even the head monk had proved to be of no help.

  Mr. O came down to his cubicle behind the main hall. He vowed that he would not give another penny to the temple from then on. He got up and walked out. The novice monk, not older than eight, followed him, wondering where he was going. Mr. O turned around and said, “Tell the head monk that I am gone. I will send my errand boy to fetch my belongings.” Mr. O stopped at the stone tub where the spring water gathered. He took a gourd to scoop it up. He turned around and asked the novice monk, “Would you like to live in my house?”

  The boy raised his eyebrows.

  “Do you want to be a servant in my house?” Mr. O asked. He drank some cool water.

  “A migrating bird flies to the south, but in spring, it ends up here again,” the boy said timidly, blinking his eyes involuntarily.

  “Is that what your master told you?” Mr. O asked, throwing the gourd back into the stone tub of water.

  The boy nodded.

  Mr. O retorted, “Some never return from the south because they die during the winter.” He walked on. He turned around a few moments later and said, “Tell the head monk I left.”

  “He knows,” the boy replied.

  “Doesn’t he teach you not to fib?” Mr. O yelled and walked on.

  28

  Right around dinnertime, a voice shrilled like a crow’s caw. Several people stopped working and listened from their yards. A woman screamed and then a man shouted, “I’m going to kill you!”

  Neighbors came out with wide eyes to see what was going on. For sure, the noise came from Dubak’s household.

  A few people hurried to his house. Dubak’s wife came out in the yard and shrieked for help. With her large belly, she could not run. When she saw the group of people approaching, she shrieked, “My husband is killing me!”

  Dubak was following his wife with a raised rake in his hand, about to strike her.

  A neighbor man hugged Dubak from behind to prevent him from attacking his wife. Another man grabbed Dubak’s arm, saying, “Give that to me.”

  “This woman, I am killing her today! I am killing her!” Dubak foamed around his mouth.

  “Please help me! Take that rake away from him,” Jaya wailed wildly. Her hair was tousled, and her face was so swollen from the pregnancy that it was hard to see her eyes.

  “Shame on you,” said the neighbor, shaking Dubak.

  “She killed my mother!” Dubak shouted, his voice breaking. He collapsed on the ground, sobbing.

  People gasped and looked at one another and then looked at Jaya.

  “Jaya, what happened?” asked a neighbor woman.

  “Mother!” Dubak cried.

  “Where is she?” asked another voice.

  A baby cried from inside.

  “My son! My little boy!” Jaya got up and rushed to their one-bedroom mud house.

  The crowd followed. And Dubak shouted, “Murderer!”

  The elderly mother was lying on the floor in their bedroom, and Sungnam was crying and Mansong whimpering.

  Jaya picked up her son and comforted him. Several women came in and examined the elderly lady, and when they realized she was really dead, they all turned to Jaya again.

  “I didn’t kill her!” she howled, holding her son tightly to her bosom.

  “How did she die?” a neighbor man asked.

  “She was eating rice cake. She was eating too fast, too much at a time. She choked on it. What could I have done? I was in the kitchen when all this was happening. She cackled, or so I thought, and I came in to find out what was going on. She fell and died before I could do anything,” Jaya said, trembling.

  “No! That’s not true,” yelled Dubak. “Jaya sent me out to get firewood. We hadn’t run out of it yet, but she said I should get some more. So I went up the hill without suspecting anything. She was roasting petrified rice cake to make it soft to feed my mother.”

  Jaya cried, “She only has a few teeth. Of course I had to roast it to make it soft!”

  “Why would my mother want to eat rice cake right before dinner? In recent years, she’s been eating food in broth or water because she couldn’t chew well. Jaya stuffed rice cake into my mother’s mouth. When I left, my mother was sleeping. When I came back, the whole plate of rice cake was gone and my mother dead!” he shouted deliriously.

  The neighbors stood in the room, murmuring among themselves and not knowing whom to believe. Jaya had always complained about her mother-in-law being a nuisance because, having lost her mind, the old woman wandered off to unlikely places at least once a day. Someone always brought her back home by the evening, but never once had Jaya gone out to look for her mother-in-law. Everyone suddenly remembered that. How could a daughter-in-law stay home when her elderly mother-in-law, senile and frail, had disappeared for half a day? What if she had never returned? Was that what she secretly hoped for? On the other hand, wasn’t Dubak the one who said, annoyed, “Mother, if you want to get lost, get lost someplace where we can’t find you!” But a son could say that because he wouldn’t have really meant it. He was her own blood.

  Mansong looked up with interest at the seething crowd. She had a runny nose and chapped lips and unkempt hair. But she was smiling. The pitiful sight of Mr. O’s daughter, which hadn’t aroused compassion in the past, provoked outrage in people’s minds now.

  Suddenly, Dubak came over and snatched his wife’s hair. Surprised, she fell, dropping her son on the floor. Another woman picked him up and comforted him. Dubak dragged Jaya out of the room. People followed. The men tried to untangle the couple, but not forcefully enough. The women followed, telling Dubak to stop, but not so condemningly.

  Jaya shouted defiantly, “Kill me, then. Kill me!”

  “I will! You deserve to die,” her husband said, glaring and spitting on her. There was a small ax nearby which he had used to split logs to make kindling.

  Holding their collective breath, the villagers watched.

  Suddenly, Mrs. Wang appeared in the yard and said, “Do you have something to eat?” She looked about awkwardly and said, “Oh, I thought there was a party. Everyone was rushing to this house, so I just followed to have a bite.” She laughed wholeheartedly.

  “Well, Mrs. Wang, Dubak’s mother passed away,” a man announced in a loud voice
from the crowd.

  “My condolences,” Mrs. Wang said, looking for Dubak.

  “Well, that’s hardly the end of the story!” a woman screeched.

  “Death is never the end of the story.”

  “Mrs. Wang, this woman of mine has murdered my mother,” Dubak declared, his chest heaving, his saliva splattering. Some observers were sobbing already. “And I am going to kill this one to bring justice to my mother!” He picked up the ax vindictively, and the crowd gasped.

  “Well, well,” Mrs. Wang spoke quickly with faked cheerfulness. “Let’s have a seat. Let us witness the justice done to your mother. In fact, bring your son out to the yard so that he can see how a son brings justice to his mother so someday he will bring justice to his own mother. Ah, don’t strike your wife in her belly. Your other child lives there.” Mrs. Wang raised her eyebrows and stared at Dubak unflinchingly.

  The crowd was hushed. Mrs. Wang stood still, without blinking. Dubak clenched his teeth. Mrs. Wang said under her breath, “You fool!”

  Dubak dropped the ax and wailed pitifully, kneeling on the ground. A man took the ax away. Jaya took her baby and cried. The crowd murmured, avoiding Mrs. Wang, who got up and went into the room and picked up Mansong. She carried her out and said to Jaya, “From now on, I will take care of her.”