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My family left our hometown when I was in the fourth grade. I believe the war had ended a year or two earlier. I remember this period pretty well because of our school performance, which was finally held that year. It was usually an annual event but had been skipped for several years because of the war. At that time, the school performance, along with sports day, was one of the biggest events of the year, especially for a school in the country. Because of significant parental interest in the performance, it seemed to be a festival for the entire village rather than a school event.

We practiced diligently for a month before the curtain rose on the performance. The fourth grade had planned three programs: a chorus, a children’s story, and a children’s play. There might have been one more—a dance, in which only several girls must have been involved. I participated in the first three of these productions.

The children’s play “Donkey for Sale,” into which we poured our hearts and souls, was in our Korean textbook. If my memory serves me right, it was Chapter 8. During rehearsals, we would burst out laughing at the foolishness of the father and son on their way to sell the donkey. That effectively ruined the rehearsal. The kids, nervous until then, would unleash their laughter at the same time. The kids playing the foolish father and son would lose control, and even the kids disguised as the donkey would roll around in their brown blanket, laughing and laughing. Teacher was the only person who never cracked a smile. A gangly man nicknamed Long-headed Locust, he would stand quietly looking out the window until the hurricane of laughter subsided. At these moments he looked as tall as a tree. One by one, the kids would stop laughing and look beyond Long-headed Locust’s shoulder. We would rediscover the bright summer sky and fields, and would fidget.

When the laughter died down completely, a strange quiet enveloped our hearts. The kids, who had been laughing with impudence, suddenly couldn’t say a single word, as if they had all become mute. Some lost themselves in the lush summer scene outside the window, and some thought about secrets from the day before, but we would all passionately wish that this ridiculous and awkward business would hurry to an end.

“The audience should be laughing, not you kids,” Teacher said every time, turning slowly as a long-headed locust in your palm would do, looking more gangly than usual. “You can’t do anything in the world if you laugh and cry whenever you want. It’s especially true if you want to entertain others. That means you yourself can never laugh or cry. It’s wrong and people find it distasteful. Now, let’s start from the beginning. Anyone who laughs this time is going to clean the toilets until the school performance is over.”

With that, we hurriedly collected our minds, which we had sent out the window. The kids playing the donkey pulled the blanket over their heads and the foolish father and son took the donkey’s reins. I stuck the long pipe in my mouth, fingered my beard, and, along with the two other boys disguised as old men, waited for the father, son, and donkey to come toward us. It was an awkward and strange mimicry of life.

Chorus practice was easier than the children’s play. Long-headed Locust played the organ well, though it was too small and old for his long, stick-like limbs. The music that came out of that organ was more mysterious than anything else in this world. Twenty-odd kids were divided into three parts to harmonize for “Cuckoo’s Waltz.” Teacher, stuck to the front of the small organ and playing with long fingers befitting a man with long arms, looked exactly like a long-headed locust, but nobody laughed at the sight. We didn’t have the leisure to laugh—we sang with such gusto that we could barely breathe by the end of the song. Sometimes a very weird voice cracked out and ruined the harmony. At those moments, giggles would burst out here and there, briefly mixing in with the chorus. But Long-headed Locust never took his fingers off the keys. Instead, he pecked at them even more forcefully.

The school would be empty by this time. The summer sunset would seep behind the large ginkgo trees lining the small spring and the Chinese arborvitae fence as tall as we were. Only the few upperclassmen remaining at school listened to our singing. In the calm of the early evening, in which nothing moved or made noise save for a few birds that flew across the sky toward the sunset, only our cheerful singing filled the heavens and the earth.

Most kids went home after chorus practice. Only the day’s cleaning monitors stayed behind, making a fuss as they straightened the desks and chairs. But I was always the exception. I had to practice reciting the children’s story.

It was lonely and boring. In the deserted teachers’ office, sitting in one of the vacant chairs, I started on the memorization. Dark blue seawater danced before my eyes when I opened my Korean textbook and flipped through its well-thumbed pages. The story, titled “Gold Fish,” was about an old, kind fisherman, his greedy wife, and a strange gold fish.

“A long time ago, an old man and woman lived by the sea. The old man went out as usual and threw a net into water clear as a mirror. Then he carefully pulled in the net….” I had read this hundreds of times already. The long story, with every sentence and preposition in place, was imprinted in my head. I was sick of it because Long-headed Locust made me reread it three or four times at every practice. And he didn’t allow me to read it in a quiet voice.

“What are you doing? Who asked you to chant a Buddhist invocation? The people at the back will think they need to come forward with a donation.” Long-headed Locust would scold roughly whenever my voice became even a little softer. It was a time before microphones were available. The walls of four adjacent classrooms were going to be taken down to create the school performance site. Our voices had to be loud in order to be heard by the audience sitting in the back. Loudly, I read and reread that damn “A long time ago, an old man,” to the point that I could have recited it if my mouth fell open while I was asleep.

“Good. Now try it again, this time adding gestures,” Long-headed Locust would order, at this point standing in his undershirt with a towel slung around his neck. He was on his way to the spring to wash away the day’s fatigue. Slowly leaving the teachers’ office, his long limbs swaying, he wouldn’t forget to add: “Imagine that there are hundreds in the audience looking at you right now!”

There were only ten or so empty chairs in front of me, but who was I to point that out? I would look resentfully at the back of the sole audience member walking out toward the ginkgo-lined spring and start practicing again. Feebly opening my arms, I would recite: “A long time ago, an old man and woman lived by the sea. The old man went out as usual and threw a net into water clear as a mirror (gesture).”

Looking at the man-sized long-headed locust, energetically drawing water with a bucket at the spring on the other side of the darkening schoolyard, I would start snickering.

One can’t be a friend with a corpse because it is always a stranger. This is still true even if it’s the corpse of a family member or neighbor. I can never imagine a corpse that looks like it’s sleeping. Sleep exists in this world. Perhaps even death is something of this world. But a corpse doesn’t belong here. It’s something left behind by those who have departed this world. So a dead man’s face is unfamiliar and awe-inspiring. Any memory about him is useless. Nothing that belongs to this world is willing to accept a dead man’s body. His is such a cold, unfamiliar face, something people never saw in his lifetime. We can only shovel some dirt on his face.

Dead bodies were often found in the park. I had seen them the previous fall from time to time, in the park that once housed more refugees than the number of city residents. The bald hill and small trees testified to its past. My first encounter with a body was that of a man with a long neck. I couldn’t figure out his age because a painful expression was frozen on his face. Small, thin, and barefoot, he was wearing an out-of-season shirt. There wasn’t much else interesting about him. He was one of those people you could frequently see in the park, the ones who had left their hometowns. He looked as if he had carried his weight with his long neck.

Of course, I didn’t know if there was another world other than this one. If there were such a place, the bridge that helped him go to the other world was a small tree. In the maple family, it was at the top of the bald hill, so you could see the entire city if you hung from the tree like that man. I knew this because I had spent almost a day in that tree. You could see everything; the city, the two railroad tracks going around the city, and beyond that, the toy-like shantytown. His body was found hanging there, but he was already gone. The only thing left behind was that unfamiliar corpse. What was his last memory? Nobody knew what he saw, or wanted to see, in his last moment on earth. At least one thing was clear. He probably hadn’t wanted to see the things I could see myself, because he didn’t have to hang himself there just to take in the destitute city and its neighborhoods.

I’d also come across neglected bodies. Neglected by their owners, by society, and finally by this world, they would rot so quickly. A good example was one man who had died after drinking a bottle of soju spiked with some kind of poison. I didn’t feel awe. Flies, wind, and sunlight lingered on his body. There was no reason to throw dirt on him, since he was already on his way to disintegration.

Winter and ice came to the park. Corpses were found everywhere, left behind by the cold. The winter weather in the basin was temperamental and cruel. The city, unfortunately trapped in a raised valley, produced several people who froze to death each night. Their bodies were frequently found around the park, on the stone steps, in the dry sewer circling it, in the two shrines, and even under the stone engraved with a poem. They were stiffer than rocks and bleaker than the frozen, naked land.

What is winter cold? It’s invisible. We can see only the scars it leaves behind. The corpses could be considered mere scars, too. But I thought I could see the true face of cold whenever I stood in front of the bodies. Its face was very similar to a single diminutive tree planted somewhere in the underworld, or to a soju bottle mixed with an unspecified poison.

I came across a woman’s body lying near the middle of the stone steps. Hers was a small, pitiful corpse, looking as if it had been in the same spot for a long time. I stopped in front of it. I was alone. It was eerily cold without a ray of sunlight, even though it was midday. Hardly anyone was in the park. The body didn’t stop the few people who climbed up the steps.

A sharp wind sliced through the empty park. But I was fine. Sometimes, combating the cold helped me forget my hunger. I looked down at the corpse. Her face was unfamiliar to me. I carefully looked over her narrow forehead pushed against the stone step, her thick hair cushioning her face, and her half-open, stiff, dry lips. Her two hands, which must have been busy until yesterday, were motionless between her chest and chin. Nobody would be able to get those thin and dirty hands to move again—they were in eternal rest. There wasn’t any evidence pointing to struggle. She must have warmed up to the cold, to death, and to the loneliness of her last living moment. Her neat posture gave off the impression that the stone stairs propping her up were warm. She’d left nothing behind. Even her dead body wasn’t hers. She parted with this world so completely and perfectly that her corpse, left behind on the stairs like a small, coiled pad, looked like a completely unfamiliar object.

I straightened up and looked around slowly. I spotted something I recognized. It was definitely hers—a bucket with a couple of rotten apples inside. I didn’t need to revisit my memories from the previous fall. I looked back at the corpse again. I vaguely recognized that woman’s face from the unfamiliar body. Her face had faded like an old memory. Perhaps it wasn’t her face, but my memory of her I was seeing right then.

A man who looked like a park caretaker walked toward me, expressionless. But then he would have no reason to be surprised. He probably had seen her every day last fall. He covered her neglected body with a sack he was carrying under his arm. The dead woman was curled into such a small ball that one sack was enough to cover her. The space she’d occupied in this world probably was not much bigger. Everything, from her hair to her toes, was concealed.

I walked down the steps slowly. The sky was still gray and frozen, without the slightest hint of sunlight. A gust of stinging wind knifed me in the chest. Suddenly the return trip seemed far. Shivering, I thought hard. My head throbbed. Amid all the memories and fantasies, the image of a few rotten apples was the only thing left at the end. Finally, I realized something. I recalled, as clearly as if a cold wind were sweeping through my head, that she had always eaten rotten apples. She would dig out the rotten parts with her dirty finger and eat them. She didn’t eat anything else, the way Mother didn’t take anything in except for water. I felt as if I would throw up. Leaving behind her small, sad body, she had gone to the other world. She would never again come back to that decrepit park. I pictured the bucket and apples. She would obviously never eat or sell the rotten fruit. I felt sick.

That night, the A-bomb patient Mr. Kim died. Everyone was saddened by his death. It was as if we suddenly realized his misfortune, concealed till now thanks to his loyal brother. The man, who used to cross the borders of three or four countries as if hopping over woven fences, had spent almost ten years confined in that small room. What was it that Mr. Kim waited for? He had been waiting for death, spreading slowly from his feet toward his heart.

Mr. Choe bought a coffin and Mr. Gwak hung mourning lamps. The alley, which had been filled only with fierce cold wind since winter began, suddenly became crowded with well-wishers. Women wept as they peeked into the Kims’ room. But Mrs. Kim didn’t cry. She commanded her husband’s funeral cheerfully, as if she had steeled herself for this day for the past ten years.

Mr. Kim, who had occupied a box-sized room while he was alive, took up even less space in death. His coffin was the smallest space I had ever seen. It was so tiny that there wasn’t room for anything else other than his body. His wife and children hovered helplessly outside. There wasn’t space for even his best friends, Mr. Choe and Mr. Gwak, to squeeze in. That was probably why they looked lonelier and sadder than usual.