There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. - Hamlet
"Mateo," says Father Anselm, "Go and chase the beggar off the steps."
Father Anselm is seventy, with pouches under his eyes as plump as moneybags. He has to have his cassocks specially made. Mateo—Yoon knows he should become used to thinking of himself as Mateo—is only an acting deacon, but when they advance along the aisle for Sunday Mass together, he knows that they make an odd pair.
Mateo's elbows are almost always jutting from frayed splits in his sleeves. He has gratefully received spools of black thread from the nuns, and he mends and patches as well as he can.
He does everything as well as he can.
.
The doors of the church groan open and the beggar, a few paces below, doesn't even stir.
Not a beggar at all, Mateo thinks. And even if he is one, he shouldn't be chased away.
Where is a man at home, if not under the very shadows of God?
(Where is a man at home, when he has no home to go back to?)
"Yeoboseyo," Yoon says at last, politely. And that gets an answer, even if the answer is just a tilted glance.
The beggar is as young as he is.
"Time to go?" he asks, with a smile, and that's when Yoon (Mateo) sees: he's hurt. His hand is pressed against his side, cracked blood darkening the length of every finger, and the smile, though charming, is split and bruised.
"Are you alright?"
"Just taking a moment in God's shadow, Father," the not-beggar says. He is still smiling. He is thin, like Yoon, though not as tall.
Few people are as tall as Yoon.
"Oh," Yoon says, taken-aback by hearing his own thought coming out of someone else's mouth, "I'm not a priest. Yet."
"Why be one at all?" quips the man (boy) on the stoop, and then he waves a hand. This hand has less blood on it. "No need to answer that."
Yoon couldn't, probably, if he tried. Blood always runs where he least expects it, and it would be easiest for Yoon to run from it. Instead, he chooses a collar that, to some minds, is a noose.
"Do you need medical attention?" Yoon asks gravely.
A shake of the head. "Just a scratch. I'm waiting for my uncle."
"More than one scratch?" Yoon finds himself sitting down, at a respectful distance, beside the not-beggar.
A sigh, a nod. "More than one scratch."
"Can I ask your name?" (This is ministry, isn't it? The unknown. The blood. Reaching past it.)
"You could." This brings another smile. "Sang Pil. It's Sang Pil. And you are…Father Michael? All the chosen Latin names seem to be Michael."
It's Yoon turn to shake his head. "Mateo, he says. My given name is Yoon."
Sang Pil considers this, and then says, "Since you're here, I have a question. A priest wouldn't answer it, but you might."
Yoon waits.
Sang Pil smirks all the way up to his eyebrows, as if he is hiding something. At least, Yoon knows he is probably hiding something because Yoon is hiding something, or hiding himself, a good deal of the time. Then Sang Pil asks, "Is your God a god of vengeance?"
.
When the black car has rolled up and rolled away, taking a cheerful Sang Pil with it, Yoon will reenter the church and tell Father Anselm that the beggar is gone. He will light the candles, say his prayers, and sleep as he always sleeps—which is to say, lightly, and with his ear turned to the door.
He will never see Sang Pil again, will not follow him to Gisung or beyond.
Yoon's path is backwards, and forwards, and away.
(He will pray for him.)
.
"He isn't," is what Mateo (Yoon) answers. "Not anymore." And he thinks he means the gentling of salvation, the shift from Old Testament to New. But Sang Pil nods.
"Ah," he says. "So we go where he can't follow."
The chill that falls over Mateo is not out of fear of this stranger, but of fear for him. And maybe, a little for himself. "I don't think so," he says. "I don't believe that vengeance can bring anything back."
(He says it as well as he can.)