The Door to Bitterness

by Martin Limon

  Ernie shouted. What, I didn’t know. The gun lay in the mud now and the wide-eyed man beneath me stared up into a fist plunging toward his mouth. I punched him again and again. Blood ran, out of his nose, and mouth, and ear. He stopped struggling. His head lolled to the side. I could now hear what Ernie was saying.

  “Untie me, goddamn it! Untie me!”

  I grabbed my .45, shoved it in my pocket and stood, legs wobbly. The man didn’t move. He was out cold. I turned, staggered forward, and knelt beside Ernie.

  The red light of the Chusok moon peeked out from behind storm clouds. I could see that my assumptions had been correct. Lying next to Ernie in the mud, the back of his head blown open in a bloody pulp, was Mr. Yun Guang-min, former owner of the Olympos Hotel and Casino.

  “Wires,” Ernie said. “In knots. He kept pulling on them, tightening them around my wrists and ankles. Hurt like a mother. Untie them, will ya?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  I studied the knots as best I could in the dark, going mainly by feel, listening for any movement behind me. Finally, I twisted the tightly wrapped wire but, as Ernie groaned, I realized that I was twisting the wrong way. I reversed the torque and the wires popped free. Ernie reached across and unknotted his other hand.

  “Untie my feet,” he said.

  I did. Ernie ripped all the wires off of his torso and hopped upright. He strode toward the supine man in front of us, knelt, and lifted the back of his head.

  The moon had risen higher. Borum, the Koreans call it. The full moon. It was only a third of the way above the horizon but with this temporary break in the fast moving clouds I had enough light to see clearly the unconscious face before us. Kong. The brother of the smiling woman. He was an Asian man, or an American, depending on your point of view. His nose was broad but slightly pointed, his eyes were Oriental, but deeply recessed in his skull, and his lips were full. The hair was brown, almost as dark as a Korean’s, but the tips of each strand curled.

  “Half-Miguk,” Ernie said.

  I thought of the photographs I’d seen of Miss Yun. He looked like her. She had been a beautiful woman, and he wasn’t a bad-looking man. He looked like the little boy he’d been in those photographs: frightened, worried, clinging to his mother’s skirts.

  “Who else is up here?” I said.

  “That’s it.” Ernie wheezed. “The sister left. Couldn’t stand the rain.”

  Ernie grabbed a few strands of broken wire. Together, we rolled the brother over and tied his hands behind his back.

  I was exhausted. Ready to crash right there. But I knew we had to transport this guy to the nearest Korean police station, turn him in, and then convince somebody to police up the dead body of Mr. Yun Guang-min. After that, we’d spend the next couple of hours giving our report. A long night but it had to be done. I had just started to twist wire around his wrists, when I heard the footsteps behind us.

  Ernie and I both turned.

  With the full moon framing her head, a blonde woman stood with her shoulders thrust back, pointing the barrel of a pistol at my nose.

  She was smiling.

  Ernie and I rose slowly to our feet, holding our hands out to the sides.

  With her free hand, she motioned for me to pull the .45 out of my coat pocket. I did as I was told, holding the weapon butt first.

  She pointed at the ground in front of her, and I tossed the weapon down. She bent at the knees, careful to keep her pistol pointed at us, and picked up the .45. She stuck in her belt, behind her back.

  All the while she was doing this, she kept smiling gleefully, the madness in her eyes flaming.

  “You know nothing,” she said, still smiling. “You don’t know how many times they beat up my brother. He come home from school, every night, bleeding, cut up, bruised. One time they break his arm. Another time they break his, how you say?” She pointed at her side.

  “Ribs,” I said.

  “Yes. Hurt every time he breathe. No can go doctor. No have money. Me? I’m okay. Kids make fun of me, other girls laugh at my hair, but nobody beat me. Just boys all time touch, pinch me, say my mother yang kalbo. You understand?”

  “Foreigner’s whore.”

  “Even teacher one time say why I don’t go back my own country. My father country. I no say anything. Too ashame. I don’t know my father. Where he go? Who he? What his name? I don’t know. I ask my mother, she slap me. Later, I ask my mother if my brother’s daddy same same my daddy. She slap me again. Then she cry. How I know who my father is? And then my mom get sick. Can’t work in nightclub no more. Can’t earn big money from GI. GIs who come to our house every night, sleep in bed with my mother, make a lot of noise.”

  She inhaled and exhaled, heavily, as if asthmatic. Smiling all the while.

  “And me and my brother, we lay on floor next to bed, hold each other, try to sleep but we no can sleep. Drunk GI wake up, tell my mother to do things she don’t want do. And then they fight and GI try take money back, but my mother won’t let GI have money, and they fight more, and finally my mother do what he want her do. And before finished, my brother, he already sleep. Me? I no can sleep. I listen my mother. After finish, after GI sleep, she cry. Once I go to her, touch her arm, ask she not cry. She slap me. Tell me go back to sleep. But Ai-ja . . . ” With her free hand, she pointed at her own nose. “Ai-ja no can sleep. Ai-ja never sleep. Ai-ja always watch out for GI. Watch out for woman who no help my mother. Woman who always take things my mother get from GI boyfriend, things out of PX, sell to this woman. Later, when money gone, does she help my mother? No way, José. Karra chogi, she say. Get lost. So we leave and my mother every day she more sick. Every day she catch GI, but sometimes they no pay her and what you gonna do? We stay in yoguan at first during winter time, sleep outside during summer. But next winter money all gone. Snow come, we sleep outside. Sometimes, my brother he get angry. Taaksan angry. He punch GI. But GI punch him back and brother fall down, no can get up. When he’s older, he get up, punch GI. Sometimes, he win and GI run away. Is my mother happy? No way. She slap my brother, tell him go away, she no can feed him no more. So he stay away all day, but at night he find us and he sleep with us on sidewalk.”

  Her brother started to rouse himself.

  “Pretty soon he wake up,” the smiling woman said. “He all the time wake up. Even big GI knock him down, my brother he tough. He all time wake up.”

  The moon hovered behind her head, and her smile was as bright and broad as the red face of the lunar orb. But the storm clouds off the sea were on the move again. They rolled inland and started to blot out the moonlight. The darkness deepened, and more drops of rain splattered the mud.

  “And then VD honcho come,” the smiling woman said. “What’s his name?”

  “Fairbanks,” I said.

  Ernie’s eyes darted, looking for escape, but even Ernie knew he couldn’t outrun a bullet.

  “Yes, Fairbanks,” the smiling woman said. “He come. Say my mother have TB. She say ‘bullshit.’ We cry, we scream, we punch but they take her anyway. Where? We don’t know. Me and brother, we don’t know.”

  Her smile was broader than ever now. So broad that I honestly believed the flesh on her face might rip open.

  “So me and my brother,” she said, “we run away from, how you say? Koai-won?”

  “Orphanage,” I said.

  “Yeah. We live on streets of Seoul. My brother, he run fast. Sometimes he see old people with money, he grab money and run. Or he grab food and run away, but sometimes KNP catch, lock him up, but next day let him go. I wait outside, then we together again. Later,” she said, “I start make money again the way my mother’s boyfriend teach me.”

  At her feet, her brother groaned. He raised his head from the mud, shook it, looked around, and sprang to his feet, flinging loose wire from his wrist. Without speaking, his sister gave him the pistol. He grabbed it and aimed it at me and then Ernie.

  “Kei sikkya,” he spat. Born of dogs.

  The smiling woman s
aid something to him in rapid Korean. He backed up a step.

  “Here,” she said, pointing at the burial mound. “Me and brother get money and we pay at temple for this place to put my mother.” That explained why she no longer had the white box wrapped in black ribbon. “Bald men come and say a lot of thing I no can understand and they light fire and wave, what you call?”

  “Incense,” I said.

  “Yes. Incense. And they do lot of pray and we put mother in ground.”

  Then she stepped away and I could see what rested against the side of the burial mound. A photograph. I strained to make it out. The rain came down harder.

  “My mother,” the woman said. “She was beautiful, right? All GI likey.” Her smile was a mad leer.

  Her brother growled. She turned to him. “Anyway, we do now.”

  “Do what?” Ernie said.

  “You,” she pointed at Ernie with the barrel of the .45. “You lie down here. In mud.”

  She pointed at the side of the burial mound, near her brother, just a few feet from the dead body of Mr. Yun. The brother waved his .45 also, and Ernie complied, lying down face first at the edge of the mound.

  “You,” she said. “You Sueño, you face my mother.”

  She knew my name. I was surprised at that. I shouldn’t have been. These two had done their homework. Why did they want me and Ernie? Maybe because Ernie was fair, like the smiling woman, and I was dark, like her brother. We were stand-ins in this ceremony we were about to perform for the fathers they’d never known. That was what she’d meant in the back alleys of Itaewon when she told me she had a job for me.

  I shuffled sideways until I was standing before the photograph.

  “Now,” she snarled. “You do seibei.”

  She wanted me to lower myself to my knees and bow to her mother. I hesitated, thinking about it.

  “Now!” she screamed, her face angry, but smiling. When I still didn’t move, her brother jacked a round into the chamber, moving a bullet inches closer to Ernie’s head.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

  She chanted some singsong Korean. Not the ancient ritualistic incantations I had heard earlier at Suk-ja’s brother’s house. Simpler words. Words I could understand.

  “This man, this GI, pays homage to you, Mother, for all the bad things he did to you.”

  I knelt, but didn’t bow my head to the ground.

  “He looks like my brother’s father,” she said. “That’s why we have chosen him to take his place in sacrificing to you.”

  I glanced at Ernie. His eyes were wide with fear. I nodded my head slightly.

  “Bow!” the woman shouted.

  “The hell he will,” Ernie said.

  “Sikkya,” the brother hissed, and stepped closer to him.

  “You’re both nuts,” Ernie continued. “You understand?

  Dingy dingy.”

  It was luck, nothing more. I rose to a kneeling position and moved at the brother, preoccupied with Ernie. I knew Ernie would lunge at the woman. Not a move we’d rehearsed. But in general, if you make a play for someone who has the drop on you, go for the opposite person. Counter block, as they say in football. You go for the one guarding your partner, your partner goes for the one guarding you.

  We had to try something. When she’d said sacrifice, both Ernie and I knew it was all over. These two were crazy beyond redemption. And they were desperate. They knew the KNPs would catch them soon enough, so there was no bargaining with them.

  They’d be executed for their crimes. Hanged. Their fate was beyond doubt and they knew it, but if they could take revenge on all the GIs who’d abused them and their mom over the years, now was their opportunity.

  On Chusok, no less.

  Kong swiveled. I was dead. Just as that reality was sinking in, Ernie lunged toward the woman.

  But as he did so, the world exploded into light. Lightning.

  I dove to my right, landed on my knees, leapt back to my feet. I plowed into the brother and he was on the ground again. He went down easy; he’d been hurt the first time. I had the .45.

  Ernie clutched the woman from behind, a forearm around her neck.

  At the bottom of the hill, gears churned. Around a bend, headlights flashed. The lights turned toward us, a line of them. As the beam from one pair of headlights flashed on the vehicle in front of them, I could read the stenciled hangul.

  Kyongchal, it said. Korean National Police.

  The vehicles formed a line at the bottom of the hill, and uniformed officers climbed out. Behind them, leaping out of a taxi was Suk-ja. My relief at seeing her was quickly overcome by the men who climbed out of the cab with her. The two missing bodyguards of the late Mr. Yun.

  Suk-ja had been working for them all along. She’d been sent to follow my investigation, hoping to get a line on the whereabouts of the smiling woman and her brother, so Mr. Yun’s thugs could put an end to them.

  Where else would she have found the money to buy her freedom from the Yellow House? Only from the casino owner, Mr. Yun. And the phone call she’d made earlier this evening from Itaewon. To Yun’s thugs.

  While Ernie and I searched for the smiling woman and her brother, what else had Yun’s minions done? They’d murdered Haggler Lee’s serving girl. She hadn’t been shot with my .45. Her throat had been cut. Nothing like the other killings. Probably the brother had bought the dumplings, delivered them to Haggler Lee’s apartment, and, pretending to be a delivery boy, gained entry. Why kill the serving girl? He hadn’t. He’d waited there with her, holding her hostage. Hoping for Haggler Lee’s return so he could have Lee perform his ceremony. And then he would have been ritualistically murdered like all the others. But he’d been interrupted. Suk-ja had earlier tipped off Mr. Yun’s thugs that Ernie and I thought Haggler Lee would be the next victim. Yun’s thugs barged in. But the brother ran to the balcony and escaped down the vine-covered trellis. That’s why the window was broken outwards and the vines had been pulled down to the ground. The man they sought had vanished. Yun’s bodyguards hoped the serving girl knew something. They tortured her with burning cigarettes. Nothing. So they killed her.

  Could I prove all this? Probably not. I’d report my suspicions to the Korean police, but what was the chance of justice being done?

  Ai-ja gazed down at the police cars below.

  “So,” she said. “They will hang us.”

  She was smiling when she said it. Her smile seemed saintly.

  I glanced at her, then at her brother. He was dazed, kneeling. A few feet from him lay the bloody corpse of Yun Guang-min, his uncle. I knew what I had to do.

  “We have a few minutes,” I said.

  “For what?” Ernie asked.

  “I’ll show you.”

  I fired a shot downhill. The policemen crouched.

  “What?” Ernie said. “Are you nuts?”

  “Stay back, you bastards!” I fired again.

  This time the KNPs scurried back to the cover of their vehicles and began radioing headquarters.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Ernie screamed.

  “Just a few minutes,” I said. “That’s all I need.”

  “For what?”

  Ernie’s mouth fell open, but he didn’t try to stop me as I sloshed in the mud back toward the burial mound.

  I grabbed Ai-ja by her thin arms and dragged her over to her brother. Together, we helped him up and walked him over to the mound with the photograph of their deceased mother. In the ruckus, the photo had been knocked over. I set it upright and stood the smiling woman and her brother on either side. The KNP radio squawked below. I resumed my position in front of the photo. They both faced me.

  “They’re coming up the hill again,” Ernie said.

  “Hold them back!” I shouted.

  Ernie’s eyes widened. “You’re nuts!”

  “Keep them back!”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Ernie turned and fired a wild shot over their heads.

  Poli
ce shouted and sloshed in the mud.

  “They gone?” I asked.

  “Not gone. But they won’t move out from behind their vehicles for a while.”

  I turned back to Ai-ja.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Say the words.”

  She was confused at first, but then she seemed to understand. Haltingly, she started to speak.

  She chanted the words of contrition. I fell to my knees in the mud. She continued to smile, speaking of all the sacrifices her mother had made and how the entire world had turned its back on her. When she finished, I performed the seibei as it was supposed to be performed—bowing solemnly again and again, taking my time.

  When I was done, I stared up at her and her brother. She was crying, but still smiling. Her brother’s face was twisted, as if he couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. I looked away and stared at the photograph of their mother held between them.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to it. “On behalf of my countrymen, I apologize. We were wrong, very wrong, to treat you and your son and your daughter as badly as we did. We should’ve taken care of you. It was our responsibility, but we didn’t live up to our responsibility. For that, I shall always be ashamed. And I humbly apologize.”

  I bowed again.

  I rose to my feet, and waited. Their heads were bowed.

  “You don’t have to hang,” I said.

  She looked at me, a quizzical expression on her face.

  In answer, I pointed toward the cliffs behind us.

  “The Yellow Sea,” I said.

  For the first time since I had seen her that night in the King Club when she drugged my drink, the taut flesh of her face relaxed. The smiling woman dropped her smile. She looked at me, face calm, lips straight. She was radiantly beautiful.

  Her brother looked back and forth between us, more confused than ever.

  Facing me, she lowered herself to her knees and bowed her forehead three times into the mud. When she rose, she said, “Thank you.”

  She smiled again. A real smile. Not one of madness. I savored it, like the beautiful face of the autumn moon.