Heun-jeok by Aram Kim

—But I’m not done with you, says the wife.

Highest marks go to this masterfully crafted piece. The surreal sorrow met by the wife is in such contrast to the apparent peace achieved by the husband, yet one wonders at the staying power of either. Will not either or both see a reversal of experience in time? The title, which I believe can translate to “trace,” “evidence,” “vestige,” or even “imprint,” is pregnant with meaning, and can be seen in the lives of both main characters, the lanterns, and particularly in the bell and what might prove to be the spirit of the bell-maker’s daughter. This is a wonderful story. Bravo.
—Judge Tom Janikowski on LAR Short Fiction Award winner “Heun-jeok” by Aram Kim

He is not a bad man, the husband, she knows. Then who’s at fault? Who’s to blame?

—Who is he? she asks.

The husband folds origami on the floor—a diamond sharp enough to draw blood, spheres stringed like pearls.

—What’s the point? says the husband.

The wife falls to where he’s seated. The hem of her skirt catches the spheres stringed like pearls. She buries her face in his clothes and smells him like a mother smelling the hair of her child.

§

The wife knows the man is the head monk at the temple on a cliff at the edge of land. A real, hairless monk, not like the husband washing dishes at the temple kitchen, selling sweetened coffee to worshippers bowlegged after bowing a thousand times. Not long ago, they visited the temple, husband and wife. They watched the great monk dance to music so thin she could hardly watch with a leveled gaze.

—How beautiful it all is, the husband said. —The quiet, the belief.

She nodded, not knowing then that her husband would soon leave her to be a wife to a man serving a lifetime of sacrifices.

From the bottom of the stone steps, the wife catches glimpses of the husband. In linen, his hair pulled into a loose knot. He carries a rubber basin of dishes, bundles of chopped wood, a live chicken by its feet he playfully tickles. His happiness breaks her in two. His happiness she feels from lying next to him all these years, his body curving into hers forever.

There is nothing for the wife to do. She can circle the gravel parking lot. Throw stones into the sea whose winds don’t even reach her. She sits inside her car. Eventually starts it and rides down the mountain. To her right is the expansive water. To her left are cliffs veiled in nets to catch drifting rocks. And over the city ahead is a cast of gray ghosts stretched out like nylon over the fields, the kinky motels, the low-tiled roofs housing naked babies humming into each other’s ears.

§

When she arrives in the early morning, the temple is still like a scene painted on an old vase. She kicks the piles of collected leaves. She knocks down the stone mounds. She breaks the peace in negligible ways.

A paper door opens. From a prayer room appears her husband who steps out into his humble space. Inside the large stone kitchen, he wakes the fire to warm the back of his beloved monk.

By the time the morning prayers are sung and drums beaten, the monk emerges in his great garb of charcoal draped sadly over his shoulder. Wrapped around a hand are the prayer beads he fingers, one by one by one. Other men and women scrounge around the dirt courtyard. Most of the time, the wife can’t figure out who to pay attention to.

When the temple is hushed, the wife finds her way to the husband’s bungalow. She imagines him huddled under a thin blanket suitable for a poor man. She calls out, —My darling, Eun. She looks for a place to lean on but finds nothing but darkness. Her body folds, collecting the tired night.

§

The wife walks up the steps. She follows the low hum of prayer to a structure housing the Buddha. The head monk sits with folded legs under him. His hands clasped below his chin, holding the beads.

When he notices her, he says, —You’re pretty enough to be a beauty queen.

She finds a place on a cushion of silk. She watches the monk’s profile, the closed eyes, the sloping shoulders. She prays herself. In her mind, she tries to describe in words what it is she wants. But what she wants can’t seem to be made into words.

After, the wife requests a tour. He shows her the many prayer rooms, the small library filled with books of worship. He takes her to a corner of the temple. Here is a wooden pavilion framing the large bronze bell.

—How has your winter been? the monk asks. He is light and heavy like the moon.

—The coldest in a thousand freezing years, says the wife.

Winter rains begin to pound on the pavilion roof. Mountain mist hangs low.

—You have a nice place here, says the wife. She touches the bell’s striker, a thin log suspended from the ceiling by chains.

—How the bell came to be, says the monk, —is a sad story.

—Tell me, she says.

—The first of these bells didn’t sound at first, he says. —The head monk of that monastery had seen in his dream for the bell’s artisan to sacrifice his own child. And so he did, throwing his only daughter into the melting bronze. Her name was Emile.

—Was it worth it? asks the wife.

—On a crisp day, the bell can be heard as far as five towns over, says the monk. —But, no. I don’t think it was worth it.

§

Her car parked in the gravel lot is filled with trash. The tires are buried in thick snow from days of being still.

She searches for leftovers in the stone kitchen. The rest of her day is spent leaning against the pagoda. She calls over a passing boy.

—How do I look to you? she asks. —What’s my voice like? Who do you think I am?

When her husband passes by, she whistles. She says, —Looking good. And when all he does is look away, she asks, —Do you like what I’ve become? Is this what you wanted?

From his place on the top-most platform, the monk watches flanked by stone guards. His garb is endless, the hairless head receiving the only rays of sun under the winter skies.

§

On the night of a full moon, there is a celebration. Paper lanterns are hung on strings across the yard and candles of every size are lighted. Musicians sit on a mat of straw and hum slow songs. Children worshippers throw coins into the well and then drink from it, using the shell of a split gourd.

The wife watches the games being played in circles. When a ball made out of chicken feathers rolls to her, she kicks it back into the circle. She eats the rice cakes spread on a low lacquered table and saves a piece in her pocket. There is a chill in the air no one else seems to notice.

After the festivities, she searches for her husband, the monk. She finds the two in the large open bathhouse. The monk is sitting inside a tub heating over a low fire. And the husband, with a towel, wets the monk’s head and back. When the monk emerges from the water, the husband is there to receive him in a large piece of cloth. He is there to dress him back in his great garb of charcoal.

§

 —Do you remember me? she asks. —Your wife, Geum?

—Come back to me, she says. —You don’t belong here.

There is a light drizzle. The wife sits outside her husband’s prayer room. She speaks to him through the closed door.

—I don’t know who to be with you here, she says.

—Do you hear me calling at night? she asks.

—Suppose I give everything up. Suppose I tape my mouth shut, she says.

—Was I dumb to believe in everything? she asks.

In the darkness, the rain can’t be seen. Only the pit-pat of its landing makes the night less threatening.

—I don’t know why I’m doing this, she says. —I’m so embarrassed.

—When I die, will you go with me? she asks. —Will you at least pray for me?

She waits for answers. Long after the night passes and the rain stops. Long after she takes shelter inside the dome of the bronze bell and her cries become one with those of Emile.

Aram Kim is a short story writer. Her works have appeared in Diagram, No Tokens Journal,Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere. She splits her time between Seoul and Santa Clara, CA.