The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost by Sok-pom Kim

Author:Sok-pom Kim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction/General
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-09-14T04:00:00+00:00

The two jeeps drove swiftly down the bumpy country road, churning up dust as they went. Sudden gusts of wind stirred up the dust, which fell noisily onto the rear jeep where Mandogi was riding, pulling a hazy curtain down over his field of vision. This is just like a runaway horse, thought Mandogi, who had never ridden in a jeep before. But then the sight of Mother Seoul’s frightening face appeared in his head. How on earth could he explain these unfathomable events so that she would understand? What would he do if he were late for cooking the dinner rice? He wasn’t worried about the police, but what about the offerings for the altar? And to have taken the chief mourner away from a funeral … Mandogi couldn’t begin to understand. However, he was able to glean, from the conversation of the police officers riding in the same jeep, that the police substation on the New Road had been attacked by the mountain unit last night. They were saying that the battle had continued fiercely until almost dawn, and that two of their friends had been killed, but they had killed many of the enemy, and that the commies were quick and nimble like monkeys. So Old Man O must have been arrested in connection with the battle.

Before long, they arrived at the police substation, whose building was proof enough that a battle had taken place in the neighborhood. The right side, or the east end, of the tile-roofed bungalow was completely destroyed, from the roof all the way down the wall, so much that you couldn’t see its original shape. Maybe it had been hit with a hand grenade. There were deep bullet holes carved into the crumbling stone fence surrounding the building. Lined up along the New Road that went by the substation were the grocery stores, the reason Mandogi had brought his empty chigae.

Once the jeeps were completely stopped, the dust still didn’t settle. Strong gusts of wind were relentlessly stirring up and scattering the dust from the dried-out surface of the New Road. One entire side of the roof was hidden by a huge camphor tree that stood in the courtyard of the substation. From the jeep, Mandogi saw what looked like the figure of a drunk in front of the crumbling stone wall in the camphor tree’s shadow, but it wasn’t a drunk. It looked that way because his feet were very close to the ground, and he was swaying back and forth in a very strange way. Up close, it was clear that it was a human corpse, hanging from a big branch of the camphor tree that jutted out of the courtyard past the stone fence. It was no accident that he was hung from that tree. About two meters of rope stretched down from the big branch, pulling up on his jaw and digging into his neck, holding up his heavy torso and lifeless arms and legs. He swayed gently back and forth as the branch swayed in the strong wind.

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