Pow!

determine if that bizarre laugh means I should continue speaking honestly or stop. Honesty is always best, I figure, and speaking honestly in front of the Wise Monk seems appropriate. The woman in green is still sprawled in the same place. Nothing has changed—well, hardly anything. She's playing a little game with her spittle, easing bubbles out between her lips until they burst in the sunlight. I try to imagine what those little bubbles taste like—‘Go on’—

    They kissed each other's greasy lips, interrupted by frequent belches that saturated the air in the yurt, saturated the air of the little log cabin, saturated the air of the little Korean restaurant, with the smell of meat. Then they undressed each other. I knew what Father's body looked like—he'd often taken me down to the river in the summer to bathe—but I'd only once caught a fleeting glimpse of Aunty Wild Mule's body. But that one time was more than enough. She had a sleek body with an oily green cast that gleamed, almost fluorescent, in the light. My boyish fingers itched to reach out and touch her, and if I had, and if she didn't hit me because of it, I'd have really felt around. How would she have felt? Icy cold or fiery hot? I'd have liked to know, but I never did touch her. So I never knew. But my father did. His hands roamed over her body, her buttocks and her breasts. Father's dark hands and Aunty Wild Mule's pale buttocks and breasts. I imagined his hands as wild and savage, like those of a marauder, squeezing her buttocks and breasts dry. She'd moan, her eyes and her mouth expelling light; Father's too. Wrapped in each other's arms, they'd writhe and roll atop a bearskin coverlet, they'd tumble about on the heated kang , they'd ‘do it’ on the wooden floor. Four hands groping and roaming, four lips pressing and crushing, four legs slithering and entwining, every inch of skin rubbed nearly raw…creating heat and setting off sparks, until both bodies gave off a luminescent blue glint, like a pair of enormous, scaly, glittery, deadly serpents coiled in an embrace. Father would close his eyes, the only sound his heavy breathing, but screams would tear from the mouth of Aunty Wild Mule. Now I know why she screamed, but at the time I was innocent where relations between the sexes were concerned and didn't understand the drama playing out between Father and his woman. Her screams banged against my eardrums: ‘Oh, my dear…I'm dying…you're killing me…’ My head pounded as I waited to see what would happen next. I wasn't scared but I was terribly nervous, afraid that my father and Aunty Wild Mule, and I, the sneaky observer, were involved in something sinful and awful. I watched as Father lowered his head and laid his mouth over hers so he could swallow most of her screams, except for a few fragments that slipped out through the sides of his mouth— I sneak a look at the Wise Monk to see the effect, if any, of my slightly erotic description. I detect only a slight redness in his impassive face, but perhaps that's always been there. I think I'd be well advised to exercise restraint. Since I‘ve seen through the vanity of life and chosen an ascetic future, relating the episodes from the lives of my parents makes me feel as if I'm talking about the ancients —

    I don't know if it was the smell of meat or Aunty Wild Mule's screams that drew, out of the darkness, hordes of small children—they crowded round the yurt or sprawled up against the doorway of the forest cabin, their little bottoms sticking up in the air as they peeped through the cracks in the logs. Then, in my mind, wolves—a whole pack, not just one—came, drawn by the smell of meat. The children ran off, their clumsy, stumpy bodies leaving marks on the snow as they stumbled away. But the wolves remained, squatting outside the yurt, the teeth grinding in their greedy mouths. I was afraid they'd rip open the yurt or tear down the log cabin, pounce on my father and his woman and have them for dinner. But no, they merely formed a circle round the yurt and then sat on their haunches, waiting, like loyal hunting dogs—

    A broad road in front of the dilapidated temple wall connects us to the bustling world beyond. Beyond the weather-beaten bricks of the wall and the breaches caused by casual wall-climbers, beyond the woman in the breach in the wall—she is combing her lush hair, having laid the red flower on the wall beside her. She cocks her head, sending hair cascading