Notes.

No notes.

CHAPTER LX

"To be once in doubt is once to be resolved."

(William Shakespeare, british playwriter and poet, "Othello")

a. Oneirism

Lacking keys and more targeted indications, the maps were fundamentally abstruse, and their incomplete status made the attempts to decipher the represented surfaces and symbols all the more unsuccessful. With the exception of the landscape evidence, which followed conventions and allowed them to make more advanced assumptions about the nature of the terrain mapped by Na-Young, the rest was a web of enigmas as unusual as, in some ways, unsettling.

They had spent nearly two hours in the craftsman's backshop, amidst the tawny, bushy emanations produced by the skins and furs hanging on the wall, especially by the remnants of meat and muscles that had clung to them when the animals had been stripped bare. Woon had already skinned animals, mostly during outdoor missions, both during the years at the training camp and later at Heuksa Chorong or even during his childhood.

His father had taken him hunting with him only twice, once at the age of six and again at the age of ten. He had hardly authorized him to use the arrows, having almost certainly considered it preferable to limit Woon's contact with weapons of any kind. On the other hand, he had imposed on him the skinning of the animals he had killed, showing him with brutal gestures how to do it, tearing off the skin without tenderness or application, with an eagerness that caused the inside of the animals to split open, tearing their flesh, damaging the carcasses.

Woon remembered the nausea that had overwhelmed him while seeing and listening to his father's short, puffy fingers pulling at the skins, producing a hoarse sound, like a death rattle. He had done the same when his father had thrown a rabbit in front of him, but with a clumsiness due solely to his lack of experience, and which had rekindled Yeo Cho-Sang's bad mood. In hindsight, he had concluded that his father had not so much wanted to teach him something as to make sure that the kid was self-sufficient enough to allow him to get drunk and eat in peace.

Woon had assimilated the process quickly, not by choice, but by default : his father had handed it over to him as soon as he had been able to cook his own food, forcing him to make a hasty choice between skinning his future meals or simply starving to death. Except for sleeping, eating, drinking, and sometimes hunting, when he did not go to the village to buy provisions, Yeo Cho-Sang had generally stopped doing anything else related to the maintenance of their home by the time Woon had turned eight.

Alive, the smell that accompanied the skinning had always bothered him, although he had grown accustomed to it over the years. It would have been incongruous in any case to find anyone who truly appreciated the heavy and disgusting stench of skinning, which tended to impregnate the hides long after the flesh had been eaten. At the training camps, during outdoor sessions, beats, field scouting, explorations or simply hunting, which were part of their education as well as that of most of the children from underprivileged families, in order to increase their chances of survival, they sometimes had to eat during the missions, and therefore cook in the open air with what they found.

Woon had carried out the vast majority of these outings with Dong Soo and Cho-Rip, much more rarely with other boys from the camp, as there had been days when Sa-Mo had wanted to break the routine and the groups they had formed among themselves, and if the second frowned and half looked away as soon as it was necessary to pluck a bird or skin any other animal, the first did it with a determination but also a precision which accelerated the accomplishment of the gait and had earned him some rather gloomy nicknames from their other comrades. Most of the time, they had organized themselves so that Woon would hunt, Dong Soo would skin, and Cho-Rip would light the fire and take care of the cooking. Dong Soo wrinkled his nose, but Woon had never heard him protest.

Since his resurrection, things were different. The scent of game whetted his appetite, made him want to spread his jaws, sink his teeth into something warm and juicy, like the arm of the farmer woman who had sold him meat shortly after he had left the capital. In Qing, reassured by their anonymity but also by the ignorance of the people towards the gwishins, Mago and him had been able to limit the occurrence of hunger crisis, by frequenting more assiduously public places where they no longer feared to have to deal with the suspicion and repugnance of the living.

But if they had regularly visited the inns they encountered on their way, sometimes isolated, sometimes located in cities of heterogeneous size and appearance, often atypical from their point of view as foreigners, but without reaching a total absence of landmarks and familiarity, because China had the advantage of sharing a respectable number of values and traditions with Joseon, if they had also taken care to stock up on meat, not hesitating to rely on local herders as Woon had done after leaving Hanyang, they had found themselves more than once on the edge of the tight demarcation line that separated the state of consciousness of a few meatless meals from the inordinate chaos unleashed by the crisis.

The territory, and more specifically its vast, cold, occasionally desert-like northern regions, sometimes clumsily depicted on maps, was just as prone to hunger as any other land where the big cities vied with a lonely countryside, and where individuals unfamiliar with its geography were more likely to get lost, exposing themselves to increased difficulties in finding food.

And Woon still remembered the temple on the road between the mountains, the monk's smile, the rounded shape of his skull, and the silence that had ensued after his death. It wasn't our fault, Mago had said, but not very convincingly, at least not really. They had favored only the main roads after that evening, and had cautiously increased the size of the stocks of meat they bought in the towns and villages.

They left the store a little before yusi. Dong Soo was expected at the barracks for a night patrol immediately after dinner, and Woon wanted to put Mago to work before it became too dark. Dusk was already well advanced by then, and although the weather had been unusually bright and sunny during the last few days, contrasting violently with the heavy atmosphere brought by the return of Dong Soo's parents and Woon's father, people claimed however that the snow and frost would soon come.

In the streets, passers-by wore hats, fur-lined coats, capes and gloves, and had the tips of their noses and ears of a red tending here towards pink, here towards purple. They crowded into the taverns and shops to protect themselves from the wind, which, despite the sun, persisted in being icy cold. The end of the day went hand in hand with a drop in temperature, and Woon saw Dong Soo shivering as he stepped outside, then sniffing while adjusting his nambawi.

Woon suspected that he and Mago were dressed almost too lightly for the season. Neither of them wore quilted caps, and their cotton-lined jackets made them look like intruders among the long coats and pelisses exhibited by the capital's inhabitants, with more or less thickness depending on social class. On the main street bordering Gwon Nam-Jun's shop, the man they had seen earlier, on his improvised platform, had disappeared, and the crowd around him had vanished, drawn to other more urgent occupations.

They took the same path again that they had chosen to go to the craftsman's house, following Dong Soo in the small streets less frequented and limiting their time of passage in the larger arteries which they had to cross to get back home nevertheless. There were fewer people at this time of day, and the patrols were therefore more likely to be able to spot and capture Gwishins than during the busy daily periods, usually between late morning and the second half of the afternoon.

They came across one of them at the end of a narrow passageway between a row of hanoks whose wooden frame was rotting noticeably, and unlike in their early hours in Hanyang, where Dong Soo had been keen to avoid contact with the brigades, they walked past it without trying to disappear behind a wall or turning their backs on them, pretending to admire the display of some merchant.

Shortly after they moved away, Dong Soo, noting the look Mago was casting over her shoulder, like a hunted animal, took the time to justify to them the resort to a more casual attitude.

"At night, when there is no one outside, they question any passer-by, hence the need not to be seen. During the day, it's not the same. There are a lot more people, and they can't go after all those who wander the streets, firstly because it would take too much time, and secondly because it would be likely to provoke general indignation, knowing that there are more than enough since the new repressive measures and the fire test were introduced. Instead, they look at behavior, the way people stand and act. If they have the slightest doubt, interrogation is guaranteed. Under these conditions, it's better to look like normal, relaxed passers-by."

Woon noticed Mago's anxious expression, her black eyes compulsively scanning the surroundings, and he pressed her shoulder, both to encourage her, but also to obey Dong Soo's advice, which was to be as calm and serene as possible.

Most of their returning home conversation focused on Na-Young's maps. Mago had gone around them nearly ten times, looking at particular elements, rechecking their own maps of China and then, once they were brought back by the father of their fellow gwishin, those of Japan and Joseon, in search of a possible similarity, however tiny, which could have been the beginning of a clue.

Woon, for his part, had questioned Na-Young about the states in which she had produced her sketches, trying to see if she did not remember a detail that could have possibly put them on the path to the country thus represented, in vain.

"You were out, but she said she couldn't remember anything except the order of presentation of the maps," he told Dong Soo, moving forward beside him, their shoulders brushing gently, familiarly. "She instinctively knows where to place them in relation to the others. The numbers just indicate the order in which she drew them, but they have no other meaning apart from serving as a reference point for her in time."

"Do you think it could really be another country?" Dong Soo asked him, his arms folded to keep him warm. "And not just an effect of her imagination?"

They walked unhurriedly, Mago in front of them, as she usually liked to. Woon shook his head.

"I don't know," he admitted. "She seemed genuinely confused about not being able to read them, and I don't see why she would have shown them to us without telling us that she had made them up out of thin air, had that been the case. I think she is telling the truth. Or in any case, that she doesn't intend to lie to us."

"Fair point," Dong Soo conceded to him. "And we're far from knowing all the countries in the world, I guess that works in her favor."

"Anyway, the maps are not complete. Without the global representation, to say that she made it all up is a speculation like any other."

They emerged in the last main avenue of the capital, which they had to walk up a few meters before forking into a series of alleys and less crowded streets leading to the Baek home. The bustle was more lively there, because it had more shops, and it was also closer to the royal palace. They speeded up their pace a little, without making it appear too hasty.

"We'll see, then," Dong Soo finally concluded. "The next meeting takes place in two weeks."

They had given Na-Young their address, in case she would come to finish the maps or wished to contact them again.

Woon still had the ghostly feeling, despite the days that had passed since, of Dong Soo's hands, of his curls between his fingers, of his warm belly, of his lip between his teeth, and of the vibrations caused by the beating of his blood-soaked heart against his own desperately silent and empty chest.

He was concerned, inwardly, to find his anger intact and increasingly greedy, dragging in its wake both Dong Soo and his father, Sa-Mo, Cho-Rip, the other boys in the camp, Chun, himself. The targets clumped together, starting to form a compact, dangerous mass. He would have liked to be able to address the subject, to find a way to bring it on the table that would have been both natural and easy, to free himself just for a moment from the current of his anxieties and indecisions, to remove the earth from under his grave, where the things that were them, their substrate, had been sleeping since they were twelve years old.

The problem was always the same. They were covering for too long, and too many things. For a portion barely dug up, there were still dozens of them in the dark, and Woon feared that if he allowed them to come out all at once, they would once and for all decide to suffocate him.

"How were your parents?" He asked instead, because running away had always been his favorite strategy, and people rarely changed their old habits, much less when they were dead.

Dong Soo had gone alone to the Huk house three days earlier. Woon had declined the invitation, unable to bear the idea of being in the same room as his father again, listening to him grumbling about everything, drinking, and saying that his son was cursed. As he had seen the distress on Dong Soo's face, he had wanted to draw him close to him, in the cocoon of the bedroom, to have him back on his body, entirely, like a blanket, or even right next to him, he didn't care, as long as they were together, and alone.

Stay, he had thought, like at the Spring House, like other times during their youth, and later in the evening, at dinner time, noticing his unhappy, taciturn look, he had regretted not at least having proposed to postpone the meeting. Dong Soo's parents, although very far from his father's genre, seemed however to bring him as much discomfort and displeasure as Yeo Cho-Sang inspired to his son.

"Fine," Dong Soo vaguely replied. "They are fine. We've talked."

A clamor suddenly rose up behind them, preventing him from continuing his apathetic summary of his meeting with his resurrected parents, and as they turned around, intrigued by the shouting, they barely had enough time to push themselves backwards to make way for a young man who was running frantically to escape a brigade of soldiers, shouting "gwishin!" and rushing behind him, taking advantage of the furrow he was opening between the passersby to move forward more easily, brandishing their swords and torches.

The walking yangbans, the gisaengs, the women, the merchants, the children, simply watched the pursuit unfold without intervening, as if it had been a daily spectacle and had become tiresome, which was the case, to some extent. It was while turning his head that Woon saw her, distinct and unavoidable between two houses, at the entrance of a muddy, dark alleyway, with her long disheveled hair and huge eyes, her wrinkles, and her expression of pessimistic sagacity engraved on her face. She hadn't been there before, he could have bet his undead life on it.

He felt Mago, coming near him, pull on the fabric of his vest.

"Master, do you see her?" she asked eagerly, avidly. "Do you see the Eye?"

"What do you mean?" Dong Soo reacted quickly.

"The old shaman," Woon informed him. "She's here."

"Where?"

"Right here. Between the two houses, just across the street."

But Dong Soo, after looking around, shook his head and turned to him, distraught.

"I don't see her," he dropped.

"Right there, Dong Soo, you can't miss her."

"Woon-ah, I swear to the gods I don't see her."

His remark immediately caught Mago's attention.

"You don't see her at all?"

"No. I swear I don't. I don't see anyone, and I'm looking at the same spot you are."

Mago then looked up at him, asking a question, already making a suggestion (maybe it's just for us). At the same time, Jae-Ji opened her mouth, and Woon noted that her hair was completely white, whereas he could have sworn it was black a second before.

"The Clearing of Hanyang," she articulated, perfectly audible in spite of the noises all around them. "You must go to the Clearing of Hanyang."

"What?" Mago asked.

"This is the last one. You must go to the Clearing of Hanyang. Spend the night there. It's the last one. Then everything will be complete."

They exchanged a lost, confused look.

"Do you understand something?" Mago urged him.

"No more than you do."

But when they looked up, hoping to find her again, to get more details, they only encountered the emptiness left by her silhouette.

b. The Art of War

On the afternoon of the thirteenth day of December, wrapped in more layers than he could count, and his breath leaving his chest in a milky mist with each breath, awakening in him the itch of a child, a penchant to exhale longer and faster in order to model before him a kind of miniature cloud that would have had his essence, his identity, Gil Seung-Min came to the Baek home for his weekly lesson.

He had been visiting his parents a little earlier in the morning, had even lunched with them, at the table he had regularly visited when he was younger, until Baek Dong Soo came to his father's store and opened the doors of another path, away from the customers, vases, bowls, white ceramic jars, celadon figurines, bluish and green, sometimes gray engobes, as the national tradition required.

His father, a little playful on the edges, and inclined towards unusual experiences, had nevertheless deviated from ancestral customs to give their chance to other, less widespread styles, such as porcelain of an even deeper black than the trunks of mountain trees at night, or reddish colors, temperamental, capricious and pugnacious, fascinating and repelling the artistocrats, who had simultaneously a taste for the usual but also for the new. In this regard, it was somewhat hilarious to note that the best sales achieved by Seung-Min's father were above all his "atypical" pieces.

During the meal, Seung-Min's father had asked how his parents were doing, about the state of the family business, his sister's health and her plans. During his training, he had only seen them periodically, but since his integration into a militia and his official elevation to the rank of soldier, he had more freedom of action for his exterior visits and, outside of patrols, when he was not at the house of Spring or at other courtesans, for he was not especially fierce or reluctant to vary his pleasures, he would sometimes appear in the doorway of his father's shop, and he was always welcomed there with as much consideration as a prince.

He had announced to them his decision to pass the gwageo exam and apply for more prestigious positions in the army. His statement had, however, been the subject of highly disparate reactions, for while his father had welcomed his initiative, complimenting his ambition and desire for social ascension, all the more justified and celebrated given that the gwishin crisis, as it was sometimes tactfully called, was fragmenting society and its different classes a little more each day, generating a distribution of wealth infinitely more restricted and inequitable than in past centuries, his mother had made known her doubts about the passing of the tests, which she had judged arbitrary and unjustly oriented so that the heirs of the good houses could benefit from them to the advantage of those whose origin was more modest, but also against his rise in rank.

"I'm scared for you," she had said, taking his hand, squeezing his fingers, and Seung-Min had been six years old again, and she was his mommy. "Command posts are just as exposed to risk as soldiers. And what if something horrible were to happen ? You'd be held responsible, even if it wasn't your fault."

He had made the mistake, during their lunch, of telling them about the macabre discovery of the patrolmen mutilated by the bogeyman. Since the creature had become a part of every conversation, and stirred the collective imagination, his mother shared his anguish with him every time he came to visit, and warned him to be careful, to train well, to be vigilant.

He had told her that their brigade captain had taken all the necessary precautions for their survival, and therefore proved to be a much better leader than an educator, preaching their cause to the bureaucrats of the royal ministries and offices when he felt that the situation demanded it and involved too many risks, but his mother remained sceptical.

"He was still a patent dunkard less than three years ago," she had observed critically, and he had found no argument to contradict her on this point. "He may have reduced his consumption, but if I were you, I'd be careful. A little caution won't hurt you, son."

One of his mother's great hobbies, when she wasn't looking at her husband's accounts or thinking up strategies to make a few sales herself, was to put herself generously in other people's shoes, and to advise them on the basis of this personal experience, using the "if I were you" profusely, turning it into almost a mantra or a prayer, as she liked to repeat it whenever she had the chance.

"He's doing his best," Seung-Min had replied nonchalantly. "He's not terrific, but he's a good captain, and he pays attention to us as much as he can."

"If you say so. I still pray for you, darling. I pray."

It was hard to blame her. She was afraid, she was his mother, and her son's profession was probably the most dangerous of all in these troubled times.

Against all expectations, whereas Seung-Min had apprehended it with some anxiety when the deal modalities had been established between them, Baek Dong Soo had revealed himself over the course of the theoretical lessons to be a tutor who, without being extraordinarily gifted or patient, explained much more clearly than during his practical lessons, with a more pleasant ease, and considerably less alcohol.

He obviously drank a lot of tea to compensate, as Seung-Min never saw him without a cup during their sessions, and he sometimes had bloodshot eyes, but his mind remained clear, coherent, and accessible. He didn't stagger, sitting at the table with his student, showing him notions, lines, drawings. He used his hands a lot to help him visualize things.

During their last class, Seung-Min had sensed him more distracted, as if tormented by something, perhaps the same thing he had tried to drown with his soju carafes. As for his wife, she was a miracle of pedagogy, combining gentleness, firmness and understanding. Their two visitors, his childhood friend and his apprentice, were still with them.

They would occasionally pass in the maru to go from one part of the house to another, and as he looked up from his readings just to see who was entering the room each time, Seung-Min had seen his captain follow the man with his eyes, almost instinctively, but without lingering too long. There was a surprising shyness in his glances, a hope too, carefully contained.

He hadn't said anything else about him since Seung-Min had asked him his only questions when he had first seen them at the Baek house. He would not have minded knowing more, but he did not dare, and felt, confusedly, that the slightest question was likely to be unwelcome. Moreover, he had not been given the slightest opportunity to speak with the man and, in truth, remembered too much of the fear he had felt when he had met him in the gardens of the Spring House, in the snow, his black hair falling like a macabre curtain around his pallid face.

The girl, on the other hand, Mago, was another kettle of fish. Seung-Min had heard them practicing in the back garden, had even come to a session after his lesson, and was convinced that he had gained her confidence and favor after praising her performance. She was young, but very lively, and spoke infinitely more than her master, which made her less scary.

With this, she showed a martial arts mastery that had left him flabbergasted, and when Baek Dong Soo offered him, that day, to compete with her in a friendly joust immediately after their lesson, because he had decided beforehand with his childhood friend that it could be "interesting to compare the teachings," Seung-Min followed him without protesting at the back of the big central hanok.

Earlier, during his lesson, the captain had asked him a vague question about a clearing near Hanyang. Does it mean anything to you ? He had wanted to know, without explaining why. Seung-Min had said it didn't. In the back garden, Mago was working on her swordplay, flexing the blade between her fingers, twirling it from hand to hand without dropping it, obstructing her master's attacks, already formidable and prodigiously fast, with just as much agility and ardor.

"Not fast enough," he said to her nevertheless, while stepping back, and Seung-Min, if he had been more caricatural, would undoubtedly have let himself go to express his bewilderment with large gestures of arms and strong contractions of the face.

"But faster than before," Mago remarked, and her master nodded lightly, then set eyes on Captain Baek and Seung-Min who was coming with him.

"I'm bringing you Seung-Min for what we've discussed," the first one announced to him in a more joyful tone than in the last few days.

"You're still on that? Hi, Seung-Min!"

Mago, whom he hadn't seen yet, gratified him with a smile and a light wave of her hand. Her master gave up the training area and went to stand by the wall of the house. Baek Dong Soo joined him, spontaneously adopting the same posture as him, arms folded, looking serious, although made less distant by his corner smile.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" the other asked him. "You know the fight won't be equal."

"Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. This is a chance to see. It might be fun, Woon-ah. Who knows?"

It was the first time Seung-Min was hearing the man's name. Baek Dong Soo then leaned towards him, and his shoulder touched Mago's master's in a teasing, friendly caress.

"And it might relax us," he added mischievously. "It would do us good to relax. We make do with what we have."

Mago's master rolled his eyes to the sky, his lips pursed in a repressed smirk, looking falsely annoyed, then finally gave his consent. Mago, for her part, did not hide her delight at the idea of having another opponent, younger and equally trained. She went to lay her sword down near their two spectators, then came back, almost jumping, carefree, while Seung-Min searched for potential flaws, revised his postures and defenses, doing his best to adapt them to someone as small in stature as she was.

Later, Seung-Min would think about the fight all over again, recall every movement, feel the bite of the blows and remember the impression of being overwhelmed above everything else. Mago had beaten him, or, more accurately, had knocked him down, without him even having the time to realize it or to consider a counterattack.

She had been almost impossible to grasp, both because she was small, but also because she was much too fast in the sequence of her blows and retorts, preventing him from modifying his approach accordingly and from being able to stand firm in the face of her assault. She had essentially used her legs, gratifying him with kicks that had caused syncope in her knees and calves, and she was also jumping almost constantly, like a crazy bird, her face tense with concentration and determination, although she had sometimes seemed hesitant about what to do when seeing him collapsed on the ground or kneeling in pain.

At one point, as he was holding his hands tightly on his belly which she had just struck, bent in half, she had thrown herself on him and wrapped herself around his back like a spider, dragging him to the ground, pinning him down, immobilizing him, her thin but powerful arm blocking his throat and tilting him backwards. He had surrendered at that moment, unable to get up, and already exhausted. Against the wall of the hanok, he would have sworn to see the girl's master gratifying Baek Dong Soo with a small satisfied smile and a light pat on the chest, before he invited his student to free his prisoner.

He had lost, but the humiliation had lasted barely a blink of an eye, partly because of the intimacy of the confrontation, which had taken place with few witnesses, and therefore had reduced its ability to affect his ego, but also because Mago, after having released him, had asked him if she had not hurt him too much, and had sought to know what he had thought of her, applying to his initially wounded pride the sweetness of compliments due to his age and experience, which he had found delicate and courteous.

In addition, Captain Baek, while helping him up, had patted him on the shoulder and told him that he had done very honourably.

"She's really good," Seung-Min had commented to him while catching his breath.

"She can. Woon was the best when we were kids. He still is."

On the night after the fight, in his barracks bed, he had thought about the movements, the girl's speed, her incongruous strength, the icy temperature of her body when she had pulled him down, her very black eyes and her very pale face. To her master, to the scar he had seen in the gardens. He had thought, in a flash, in an interval between heartbeats (gwishin). Like a reflex, he had also thought (Min-Su).

Then he had thought about something else, an old, insidious answer, at the crossroads of his education, training, patrols, an old primary observation stemming from his beliefs and especially from the doubts he had towards them since he was confronted with the Gwishins on a daily basis, really.

(they're like us they're liks us they're like us)