Early November, and the wind is cold against my skin. I try to pull the window closed, but the hinges are broken and it is stuck half open; a gust of dirt blows at my face as the bus gives a jerk. We have been following this road for a while now. I will be lucky if I even make it to the temple tonight, because the driver will happen to spot a cousin or a neighbor trotting alongside the road and will slow down to inquire after the year’s harvest and the size of a corn cob or a yam or a chile pepper, and then with a sudden percolating noise the bus will start again, the driver not even pretending to try to catch up with the schedule, which the ticket seller in Seoul had handed me with a nod of assurance at six this morning.
Pitch black outside, that much I can see. Night comes earlier in Korea’s South Cholla province. The sparkles in the distance could be anything, really—the tiny sheds where farmers live or a nameless station where the bus might drop off its few passengers, who seem nonchalant about being so late.
But I am getting anxious with each delay. I must arrive at Songgwangsa, my first destination in a wildly concocted itinerary of sleeping at Buddhist monasteries across Asia, before its 9 p.m. lights-out. Despite the widespread belief that a temple shelters all wayfarers in need, most do not welcome random drop-ins. And I can offer no letter of introduction. I am not even a Buddhist. Back in Seoul, I was confident that I would find my way in. Friends of friends had done it. Many times they told me to make sure to arrive before dinnertime, ask for Monk Wonju (the one who manages the household of a temple), and tell him that I have come to pay respect to Buddha. “Then what?” I should have insisted. Now, it dawns on me that Monk Wonju might find it blasphemous that a young woman who is not even a Buddhist, who looks peculiarly Western despite her signifying Korean face, does not have the courtesy to show up at a decent hour and demands a room as though a temple were a hotel. “Sorry, no room.” I picture the stern face of a monk, any monk, all monks I have ever seen. But before I can come up with an alternative plan, I feel my eyes getting heavy and the rolling hills as soft as dough and I count the hours that I have spent on a moving vehicle today and then lose count, and then begin again; and it is not until the bus lurches forward and sighs to a full stop perhaps half an hour later that I open my eyes to a sudden light.
The driver disappears into a tiny shack with a few cases of fruit and boxes of crackers and soap. I dash across to the store. A middle-aged woman in a persimmon-hued sweater is facing the window. She turns around and stares at me as if she cannot remember how I happened to be standing in her store. “Need a minbak (bed-and-breakfast)?” she finally asks. “No, no, no, I need to get to Songgwangsa, tonight,” I insist. “The last bus left an hour ago,” she answers. Then, after studying my face a bit longer, she points to a taxi across the street. “But he can take you.”
I jump at the offer. The driver keeps sneaking looks at me through the rearview mirror as though he finds me somewhat suspicious, but he does not ask anything, and I am relieved. The ride is increasingly uphill, and he seems to think he is driving a safari jeep. I am about to ask the wild man to slow down when the car halts with a precipitous thump.
To my eyes, trained among skyscrapers, the darkness is menacing, and I have no flashlight. There are no paper lanterns guiding the way, no reception desk, no ticket seller. “Where would I find Monk Wonju?” I ask the driver. He does not answer but instead climbs out of the taxi and walks off into the dark. Within minutes, he reappears with a man in a beige jacket, who peers through the window and motions for me to follow him.
I have no idea who he is. The stillness is so heavy that I am afraid to speak. The only thing I am certain of is that I am now officially inside. We pass through a few gates and walk alongside several dark halls. The intersecting courtyards are eerily empty, and I sense not a trace of the 100 monks who supposedly reside on the grounds. He walks so fast that I am almost out of breath when he abruptly stops before a brightly lit, paper-screened door, through which I see wavering shadows. The man calls out, “Monk Wonju, are you in there?” There is a pause, or perhaps it is the thick air engulfing me. Then a voice from the other side: “Who is looking for me?” I don’t know what to say, so I keep my face down and stare at the several pairs of shoes on the stone step when I finally remember the words: “Please let me stay the night and pay my respect to Buddha.” And then I hastily add, “I came a long way.” The last bit sounds coyly familiar, as though I were reciting a line from a play. Then a pause again, this time longer. I wait, and the wait is so broodingly dark, and the room seems to grow brighter with each interminable second, and I really want to be inside, and I think maybe I should tell him that I left Seoul at six this morning, and that my flight from New York took 13 hours before that and cost a month of freelance writing, and that I still haven’t even had dinner—I am about to tell him all this when the magic words ring through the door: “Please enter.”
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