Free Black Flower by Young-ha Kim

which awoke a sense of excitement deep within, strove against the sound of the smokestacks and the waves and the wind, and did not waver once until the ritual ended. The fair-skinned musician’s cheeks puffed out like a frog’s and his face grew red. The Japanese crewmen in the galley threw out a rooster, its legs tied. The shaman, lost in his own frenzy, bit down on the rooster’s neck and then slit its throat with a knife and held it up. The blood drenched his sleeves and ran down to his armpits. A hot steam curled up from his forearm. The shaman shed tears. “Mother, mother, my mother! My cruel mother who gave me none of your food and never once held my hands or feet, let’s see if you survive without your son whom you have sent away! No, no, I’m sorry! I was wrong, my mother. Live well, my mother. Live long and live well. Eat my food and live long and well. Oh, it’s cold! Oh, it’s cold! It’s so cold that I can’t go on living even if I wanted to! I came because I was hungry, and now I have died of this cursed disease!” The headless chicken thrashed about on the deck, hopped onto the belly of the corpse, and finally fell down. There were no offerings, no drums or gongs, so the ritual did not last long. The gas lamps lit by the German crewmen shone down faintly on the scene, so things looked crueler than they actually were. This dizzying festival, formed by blood and darkness, song and dance, and the corpse and the shaman, stirred the hearts of this agrarian people faced with an epidemic on the ocean. The rhythm pulsed through their veins. Tears streamed down their faces. Many cried and many fainted. The German crewmen on the bridge grinned and looked down on the commotion.
    When the spirit had at last left the shaman and he collapsed on the spot to catch his breath, the whalers took the sack with the body in it by the edges. They swung it back and forth three times and then heaved it into the Pacific. They hoped that would be the end of it, but no one could be certain. The crowd looked down at the black ocean that had swallowed up the corpse.

19
    N OT EVERYONE WATCHED the ritual for the dead. While the ritual was comforting the soul of the deceased who had become food for the fishes of the Pacific Ocean, Yi Jongdo’s daughter, Yeonsu, sat with her cloak over her head and watched a boy who sat across from her. It was the boy she had come face to face with at dawn on that morning. The boy, who had claimed a seat early, was listening to the shaman’s chanting with his chin on his knees. His lips were firmly pressed together and his large eyes gazed unwaveringly at something. He was not watching the shaman. Whenever a torch shone on the boy’s face, it lit up like a shooting star and then faded again. It was the first time in her life that she had stared for so long at the face of a man whose name she did not know, made possible because the boy was paying attention only to the darkness inside himself. Her heart gradually grew more confused at the ritual, where the shaman’s chants and the cries of the crowd, the dark night sky and the torches, and the song and the blood all mixed together. The cloak that covered all but her eyes made her feel even more confined. Finally the boy got up. Ijeong brushed off the seat of his pants and turned his back on the ritual. After all, he had not known the dead person. The burial grounds and afterlife the shaman sang of were just abstract words to him. He was still at an age when death did not feel real. Even if he were to leap into the ocean, it did not seem that he would die that easily. How could he imagine catching dysentery, suffering diarrhea, and dying? Rather, the things that moved his heart were Yoshida, Mexico—the land it seemed they would never reach—and the hot flame of love that burned within him. Having no skill in letters, he did not know how to express the agony that welled up in his heart.
    As he rose from his place and walked away from the crowd,