Free Our Happy Time by Gong Ji-young

glad they weren’t Bibles.”
    Aunt Monica laughed heartily. She seemed to have no intention of telling him what the other inmate had told her.
    “That’s right,” she said, considerably more relaxed thanthe last time we had visited. “Don’t read the Bible. Stay away from it.”
    “That’s… the first time anyone has said
that
to me.”
    “I know you won’t read it even if I tell you to, so what’s the point of wasting my breath? So, even if you feel like reading it, resist the urge!”
    Aunt Monica laughed. He laughed along with her. The half-eaten pastry was still in his hand.
    After a moment, he said hesitantly, “The judge sent me a Christmas card.”
    “The judge? You mean Justice Kim Sejung? The one who presided over your case?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh really?”
    “The card said, ‘As a judge, I sentenced you to death, but as a human being, I pray for you.’”
    He cleared his throat. I wondered if some judges were really that nice. It seemed like a kind thing to say.
    “What did you think about that?” Monica asked, her face brightening.
    “When I got the card, I thought… To be honest, I thought, ‘Why is everyone acting so nice all of a sudden?’”
    He let out a long laugh that sounded like a tire going flat. He looked scornful. While I was thinking that it made perfect sense and was not at all clichéd, Aunt Monica was biting her lip and staring at him.
    “It’s weird,” he said. “Right before the judge sentenced me, he asked me how I felt. So I told him I felt good. I could hear the reporters and the other people in the courtroom start whispering about that. I told him I knew I was going to get the death penalty, so I was glad that the state would kill me since I never managed to do it myself all those years, and I said that no one had ever paid any attention to me my whole life, so it felt good to have them scrutinizingmy every move now. After I was placed on death row, the registrar told me to pick one: P, B, or C? I asked him what he meant, and he explained that the prison had to assign a clergy member to all death row inmates. P, B, and C meant Protestant, Buddhist, and Catholic. He said the other inmates pick either church or temple and attend services for a year or so, but I said no. I said it shouldn’t be like separating trash into plastic, bottles, or cans.”
    “That’s right! It shouldn’t!” Aunt Monica chimed in. He looked at her for a moment in surprise and then kept talking.
    “After you told me last time that meeting with you didn’t mean I had to convert, I did a lot of thinking. To be honest, I don’t need religion. I don’t believe in it, either. I’ve lived fine until now without it. Well, no, I haven’t been fine. I’ve lived like a dog, actually. But if there really were a God, a God of love and justice, then I wouldn’t have turned out to be a murderer.”
    He swallowed hard and continued.
    “A long time ago, I went to a Catholic service. It was after my little brother died and I was in jail again for maybe the third time. Probably about five years ago. I said I wanted to be baptized and was taking catechism classes. I liked it because the women who volunteered there treated us really nicely. They wrote us letters and gave us Bibles. They even brought Choco Pies and gave us good things to eat on holidays. One day, after Mass ended, an elderly death row inmate who was sitting next to me grabbed the hand of one of the volunteers. He did it before the guards could stop him. I saw the look on her face when that happened. That look said,
I will feed you, I will give you some money, and I will come to this prison in the dead of winter and hold Mass for you, but I will not hold your hand.
She didn’t say the words out loud, but the look on her face was clearto me and to that inmate and to everyone around us. She looked like she was looking at a bug or a filthy beast that wasn’t even the same species as her. That night, I heard that old man crying like an