The Plotters. Un-su Kim

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СКАЧАТЬ Christmas gift I ever got.”

      The old man continued to stroke the dog’s head.

      “He’s very gentle for his size.”

      “Not exactly. I used to have to keep him leashed all the time. One glimpse of a stranger and he’d attack. But now that he’s old, he’s gone soft. It’s odd. I can’t get used to the idea of an animal being this friendly with people.”

      The meat smelled cooked. The old man poked at it with the skewer and took it off the fire. Using a serrated knife, he carved the meat into thick slices. He gave a piece to Reseng, a piece to himself, and a piece to Santa. Reseng brushed off the ash and took a bite.

      “What an unusual flavor. Doesn’t really taste like pork.”

      “Good, yeah?”

      “It is. But do you have any salt?”

      “Nope.”

      “No fridge, no salt—that’s quite a way to live. Do the native Peruvians also live without salt?”

      “No, no,” the old man said sheepishly. “I ran out a few days ago.”

      “Do you hunt?”

      “Not anymore. About a month ago, I found a wild boar stuck in a poacher’s trap. Still alive. I watched it gasp for breath and thought to myself, Do I kill it now or wait for it to die? If I waited for it to die, then I could blame its death on the poacher who left that trap out, but if I killed it, then I’d be responsible for its death. What would you have done?”

      The old man’s smile was inscrutable. Reseng gave the tin cup a swirl before polishing off the alcohol.

      “Hard to say. I don’t think it really matters who killed the boar.”

      The old man seemed to ponder this for a moment before responding.

      “I guess you’re right. When you really think about it, it doesn’t matter who killed it. Either way, here we are enjoying some Peruvian-style roasted boar.”

      The old man laughed loudly. Reseng laughed, too. It wasn’t much of a joke, but the old man kept laughing, and Reseng followed suit with a loud laugh of his own.

      The old man was in high spirits. He filled Reseng’s cup with whiskey until it was nearly overflowing, then filled his own and raised it in a toast. They downed their drinks in one gulp. The old man picked up the skewer and fished a couple of potatoes from the hot ashes. After taking a bite of one, he pronounced it delicious and gave the other to Reseng. Reseng brushed off the ashes and took a bite. “That is delicious,” he said.

      “There’s nothing better than a roasted potato on a cold winter’s day,” the old man said.

      “Potatoes always remind me of someone …” Reseng started to babble. His face was red from the alcohol and the glow of the fire.

      “I’m guessing this story doesn’t have a happy ending,” the old man said.

      “It doesn’t.”

      “Is that someone alive or dead?”

      “Long dead. I was in Africa at the time, and we got an emergency call in the middle of the night. We jumped in a truck and headed off. It turned out that a rebel soldier who’d escaped camp had taken an old woman hostage. He was just a kid—still had his baby fat. Must’ve been fifteen, maybe even fourteen? From what I saw, he was worked up and scared out of his wits, but not an actual threat. The old woman kept saying something to him. Meanwhile, he was pointing an AK-47 at her head with one hand and cramming a potato into his mouth with the other. We all knew he wasn’t going to do anything, but then the order came over the walkie-talkie to take him out. Someone pulled the trigger. We ran over to take a closer look. Half of the kid’s head was blown away, and in his mouth was the mashed-up potato that he never got the chance to swallow.”

      “The poor thing. He must’ve been starving.”

      “It felt so strange to look into the mouth of a boy with half his head missing. What would’ve happened if we’d waited just ten more seconds? All I could think was, If we had waited, he would’ve been able to swallow the potato before he died.”

      “Not like anything would’ve changed for that poor boy if he had swallowed it.”

      “No, of course not.” Reseng’s voice wavered. “But it still felt weird to think about that chewed-up potato in his mouth.”

      The old man finished the rest of his whiskey and poked around in the ashes with the skewer to see if there were any more potatoes. He found one in the corner and offered it to Reseng, who gazed blankly at it and politely declined. The old man looked at the potato; his face darkened and he tossed it back into the ashes.

      “I’ve got another bottle of whiskey. What do you say?” the old man asked.

      Reseng thought about it for a moment. “Your call,” he said.

      The old man brought another bottle from the kitchen and poured some for him. They sipped in silence as they watched the flames dance in the fireplace. As Reseng grew tipsy, a feeling of profound unreality washed over him. The old man’s eyes never left the fire.

      “Fire is so beautiful,” Reseng said.

      “Ash is more beautiful once you get to know it.”

      The old man slowly swirled his cup as he gazed into the flames. He smiled then, as if recalling something funny.

      “My grandfather was a whaler. This was back before they outlawed whaling. He didn’t grow up anywhere near the ocean—he was actually from inland Hamgyong Province, but he went down south to Jangsaengpo harbor for work and ended up becoming the best harpooner in the country. During one of the whaling trips, he got dragged under by a sperm whale. Really deep under. What happened was, he threw the harpoon into the whale’s back, but the rope tangled around his foot and pulled him overboard. Those flimsy colonial-era whaling boats and shoddy harpoons were no match for an animal that big. A male sperm whale can grow up to eighteen meters long and weigh up to sixty tons. Think about it. That’s like fifteen adult African elephants. I don’t care if it were just a balloon animal—I would never want to mess with anything that big. No way, no how. But not my grandfather. He stuck his harpoon right in that giant whale.”

      “What happened next?” Reseng asked.

      “Utter havoc, of course. He said the shock of falling off the bow made him woozy, and he couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or hallucinating. Meanwhile, he was being dragged helplessly into the dark depths of the ocean by a very angry whale. He said the first thing he saw when he finally snapped out of his daze was a blue light coming off the sperm whale’s fins. As he stared at the light, he forgot all about the danger he was in. When he told me the story, he kept going on about how mysterious and tranquil and beautiful it was. An eighteen-meter-long behemoth coursing through the pitch-black ocean with glowing blue fins. I tried to break it to him gently—he was practically in tears just recalling it—that since whales are not bioluminescent, there was no way its fins could have glowed like that. He threw his chamber pot at my head. Ha! What a hothead! He told the story to everyone he met. I told him everyone thought he was lying because of the part about the fins. But all he said to that was, ‘Everything people СКАЧАТЬ