The two boys went home, nothing more said between them. Back at his house, Gela was greeted by the sight of his mother sitting by the fire, her eyes bright, and her cheeks flushed pink. He could see she was sleepy by the way her body seemed to sit unsupported by any hardness or structure; she was soft all over. Seeing his mother like this was nothing out of the ordinary for Gela—it just meant another man had paid a visit to the house. Gela cursed inwardly, but, like a big man, his face revealed nothing of his inner workings.
"Didn't you go with everyone else to wait for the buses?" Sangdan asked.
She tittered, and her voice took on a coquettish tone: "You were all out there waiting for nothing, weren't you?"
The sweetness of his mother's laugh made Gela feel a little sick; he knew that she was in the kind of mood that she offers up to her male visitors. Gela's only reply was an indifference:
"I'm hungry."
Suddenly, Sangdan's movements became nimble; she jumped up and, lo and behold, a hunk of fresh venison appeared in her hands, as if by magic. She took out a knife, sliced the meat into strips, sprinkled it with salt, and set it over the fire to roast, humming contentedly to herself all the while. When it was done, Gela shovelled three big pieces of meat into his mouth in rapid succession, while his mother watched. As he tore into the meat, chewed it to pieces, and swallowed it down, the tenderness on Sangdan's face gradually morphed from that which she reserved for her men, to that of a mother for her son. She waited for Gela to finish his meal before eating herself. Gela watched his mother watching him—he could see a hint of pity in her eyes, and there was definitely something tragically compassionate in the way she looked at him. Yes, this feeling could be called something approaching happiness.
Gela heard himself laughing.
His mother pressed her forehead close against her son's cheek, and laughed too.
There was something charmingly absent about the way each of them laughed; it showed they were finding happiness where they could amid hardship.
Gela was suddenly gripped by a burning desire to ask his mother who it was that brought them the venison. What kind of man was he? But he never got the question out of his mouth, which was still full of laughter. Sangdan spoke before he could:
"Son, do you think you'd like to eat even more venison?"
"We're going to have a New Year to celebrate this year, that's what I think."
"Well then, we'll be celebrating the New Year with all the venison we can eat!"
Sangdan told Gela that someone had killed a deer up on the mountain behind the village and hidden it in a disused bear's den next to a spruce tree. She said he could find the tree next to a huge boulder, the one that glowed bloody red under a setting sun. Gela was sure she was about to reveal the identity of the man who hid the deer carcass in the bear's den, but, dashing his hopes, she said no more. Instead, she pulled out a sack, a length of rope, and a hatchet, which she foisted into Gela's arms. Gela walked out the door and up the mountain, pushing down his disappointment, making it invisible.
He paused at intervals during his hike to look up at the huge scarlet boulder jutting out from the forest, the sight of which brought the question clawing its way back into his head: who was the man? What kind of man was he?
Each time these questions came floating through his head, they brought with them the image of a man; different each time. Gela vetoed each man-image in turn with a quick shake of his head. Two separate levels of meaning lay behind Gela's head shakes. On the first level, Gela was annoyed, because he normally didn't allow himself to think of this question, but now it kept reappearing in his head. This had become a regular annoyance for him, though one that brought with it a strange feeling of sweetness. On the second level, Gela didn't want any of the men that had so far paraded through his head to be his father.
When he looked up the final time, the huge red boulder was right in front of him, though actually it was more like a plateau than just a boulder. It stood just over halfway up the mountain, occupying a grassy clearing surrounded by the spruce forest. No one from Ji village knew that the huge rock was created by the migration of a glacier many tens of thousands of years ago, and nor did anyone know that the rock originally stood on top of the mountain, and that it was later carried down the slope by the same glacier. Eventually, the glacier melted into a deluge that cascaded down the mountain, leaving the rock behind to stand forever on this spot, like an alien in a strange land. Of course, Gela didn't know this either. He just walked up the edge of the rock. When he looked up and saw the colossal mass of red rock towering over him, the image of one last man shot through his head. That man was Bunny's father, Enbo.
Gela was so surprised that such a thought would even occur to him, he almost shouted out loud. He shook his head again, pushing Enbo away, out of his head. The grassy patch around the boulder was covered in puddles, some of them clear enough that Gela could see his own face in their water. He flashed himself a satisfied smile. The capacity to instantly and at any time empty his brain of unwanted or improper thoughts was a special skill of his, one that his life had taught him with no other instruction, and that was vital to his ability to go on through life in relative happiness.
Compared to this skill, being able to find a particular tree in the middle of a forest wasn't especially demanding.
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