by Mark Sampson
Meiko was not with her unni on the evening she brought her empty box to the podium and found it unattended because the manager had gone on a break. Meiko was in her stall, crushed under a noncommissioned officer, her legs wrapped limply over his pounding hips, when she heard strange words reverberating down the wooden hallway. At first she didn’t realize what they were, but then it dawned on her: those were Korean words; those were Korean sentences. She needed another second to realize that it was Natsuki who was screaming them.
“The ledgers! These aren’t the same ledgers we had in the other house! Hey! Hey everybody! Listen to me! They aren’t keeping records! These aren’t the same ledgers!”
Meiko heard the clomping of boots in the hall even as her officer’s thrusts grew toward their crescendo. Natsuki, shut up! she wanted to scream, but the man’s lips muzzled her mouth. Oh, Natsuki, please shut up. They’ll kill you, don’t you know. Shut up! Stop speaking Korean!
More yells in the hall, more boots on the floor. “You didn’t take the ledgers out of the last house, did you? You let them burn. You let our records burn!” The sound of the podium banging down onto the floor. It matched the sudden yelp of pleasure that the officer hovering over Meiko gave as he finished his business. When enough of his strength melted away, Meiko scrambled out from under him. Pulled her skirt down over herself and dived through her curtain.
In the main chamber she found a naked Natsuki throwing ledgers at the soldiers who had surrounded her. Other girls had come out of their stalls to see what the commotion was. Natsuki was weeping and holding open a ledger with just a couple months’ records in them, wagging it at the Japanese faces closing in on her. “You lying bastards!” she sobbed in Korean. “You haven’t been keeping good records. Everything I’ve worked for.” She backed toward the corner. “Look at me. I was a woman. I wanted to be someone’s wife. Someone’s mother. You have taken it … taken it from me. No man will want me. No child will spring from my womb. Look at what you’ve taken. You haven’t been keeping good records of what you owe m —” An officer finally tackled her to the floor. Pinned her down and then raised her up.
“Everyone, out in the courtyard, now!” the manager screamed at the girls. “Every last one of you!” He pointed at Natsuki’s squirming limbs as the soldier lugged her outside. “Look at that girl. Do you think this will stand? We’ll show you want happens when you speak your doggerel language among these men.”
This is pointless, Meiko wanted to yell at him. You don’t speak Korean and most of these girls don’t speak Japanese. Nothing was exchanged here. Just let Natsuki go. Beat her and put her to bed. Tomorrow is another day.
But the girls, in various states of dress and dishevelment, were herded out the doors, down past the muddy square, and to the edge of the easterly forest with its burnt, bare trees. The men made the girls line up in an oval in front of a large trunk, its branches a gleaming black from some long ago blaze. Meiko looked over and saw the camp doctor, the doctor who had shown her such kindness, who had given Natsuki the choice — the hook or the injection — standing on the edge of their gathering and arguing with the soldiers about what they were about to do. And the soldiers, just boys really, were laughing at him, laughing at his foolish pleas. Soon the manager came pushing through the oval with Natsuki over his shoulder and some hemp rope dragging behind him. Meiko watched the men tie the ropes to her unni’s wrists and ankles. Natsuki was screaming at them, but not with words that sounded like Korean or Japanese. Meiko crushed her palms into her face as the men pulled the ropes tight and strung Natsuki upside down among the lowest branches. Meiko couldn’t help it — she let her fingers run down her face to stare at her naked friend, and for a moment their eyes met. Die quickly, she wanted to say. Please don’t fight them. And Natsuki looked back as if to say — Live slowly, Meiko. Live a long time, despite what you’ve suffered. And remember this always. Remember the records they didn’t keep.
A soldier pulled his ceremonial sword from its scabbard and climbed onto a crate that someone had set up at the tree’s base. He grabbed Natsuki’s left breast and hacked it off. The whole tree shook, the branches knocking together like bones. He let the breast fall to the ground like a clump of sand before grabbing her right one and doing the same. Natsuki continued to her yell her non-language as the soldier climbed back down to watch her bleed. Seconds passed but she didn’t even lose consciousness. Another soldier appeared with the poker from the main building’s charcoal stove, its iron point a blazing orange. He scaled the crate and then smiled down at all the terrorized girls watching, as if this were his moment of fame. He reached around to drive the hot poker between Natsuki’s spread legs, shoving it into her like a penis. She sucked a glorious mouthful of air and then wailed a sonorous melody that echoed off the mud. The soldier held the poker there, tight, shaking it with little quivers of his forearm before pulling it out. Another gasp, almost silent, and then Natsuki resumed her monologue of gibberish. The soldier shook his head in disbelief, threw the poker to the ground, and then withdrew his pistol. Meiko’s eyes were streaming. Just die, Natsuki. Why have you chosen this moment to fight them? Just die. The soldier slid the pistol’s barrel into her smoldering vagina and yanked the hammer back. When he pulled the trigger, Natsuki’s narrow hips blew apart like a cake dropped on the floor. The tree shook as if pounded by rain. The man climbed down and joined the others to watch. There was another beat of silence and then Natsuki picked up her soliloquy, speaking in a tongue that did not exist. The man with the sword spit out a Japanese expletive and then approached the tree with his weapon raised over his shoulders. For as long as Meiko lived, she would remember this — that it didn’t look as if he cut her head off; it looked as if he had knocked it off, as if his sword were a club and her head a piece of hanging fruit. It fell and bounced like a child’s ball onto the mud. And then everything was still. Everything was silent.
Where to let her eyes fall now? Not on the tree. Not on the butchered body that lived in its branches. Meiko instead let her eyes take flight like a crane to the edge of the oval. To the kind, powerless doctor standing there with his shoulders slumped in defeat. And why? Why? Because he was not looking at the tree, either. He had been staring at Meiko the entire time.
Chapter 6
Rob Cruise laughs at me, and then laughs again.
“Rob, shut up.”
“You got the whole ‘pull back,’ didn’t you?” He mimics Jin’s facial expression perfectly. Justin and Jon can’t help but chuckle.
“I said shut the hell up.”
Rob blows cigarette smoke out my open bedroom window and into the evening’s smoggy showers.
“I hadn’t been on a date in a long time,” I tell them.
“You never try to kiss a Korean on a first date.”
“Rob, what are you talking about? You slept with her the first night you met.”
“That’s different.”
Justin and Jon laugh again. Everybody knows things that I don’t.
“Ahh, Michael, don’t look at me like that. Jin and I never dated. We fucked, once. Ages ago. You’re trying to date this girl. The rules are different.”
“He’s right, you know,” Jon says. “For Koreans, dating’s all about going for coffee for six months and then you’re magically engaged.”
“But don’t get us wrong,” Rob goes on. “Jin’s not like that. She’s a cool chick — very modern, very Western. I love the fact that she’s fluent in English. Did you know it only falters when she’s pissed off or horny?”
“Rob, don’t tell me these things.”
“Do you want my advice?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well I’m gonna give it to you anyway. Because you’re smart about so many things, Michael, but you are fucking stupid about this. Don’t invest too much in Jin. I know you’re sweet on her, but that chick’s nuts. I mean, serious fucking issues.”
“Hey, I’ve got issues.”
“Just stick with me, man,�
� Rob says. “Play the field. Let me help you. You got so much going on, Michael. You deserve more. More than chasing after some girl who doesn’t know if she’s coming or going. And more than being stuck in this dry spell,” he motions vaguely at my groin, “that’s gone on for how long now?”
“Rob, I’m not a fucking frat boy. This isn’t just about sex for me.”
“Bullshit,” he says. “Bullshit. Bullshit. Everything here is about sex.”
Later, we gear up for the bars. While Jon and Justin are putting on their shoes, I pull Rob aside.
“Say, Rob,” I ask him, “how’s your little … problem?”
Makes a sweeping gesture at his own groin. “All cleared up.”
“Listen. When you and Jin, you know … is it possible that —”
“No. Not a chance. Believe me. Don’t worry about it. Seriously. Don’t even let it cross your mind.”
I nod, and when I look back up his grin is wide. “You are the same,” he sings at me, proud and, perhaps, relieved. “You are the fucking same.”
I am a little bit the same, I think. But I am also a little bit different.
Jin plays the cello. I learn this about her on our second date — dinner and a movie. I learn that she resents it a little despite her proficiency. Lessons were a childhood chore, her mother’s insistence. “I hated it,” she says. “She pushed me to practise every day. ‘Jin-su, it’s time for the cello … Jin-su, why aren’t you rehearsing?’ She was always bringing me out to play at parties to impress the neighbours.” I laugh. “You were what we call in English a parlour trick.” She lights up. “Yes exactly! I was a trick. Like a ten-year-old Mozart.”
On our fourth date, we visit the Korean War Memorial in Noksapyeong. It’s a huge stone museum laying out the entire history of conflict on the Korean peninsula, going back five thousand years. Jin is great at explaining her country’s violent past as we move through the sequential exhibits and dioramas. How does she know so much? Afterwards, we go outside and stroll around giant black statues of South Korean soldiers in various warlike poses. I ask to take a photo of Jin with them and she agrees. I pull out my cheap analog camera — “Ohh, Michael, you should go digital!” — from my satchel while she gets into position at the base of a statue. As I point and focus, I expect Jin to flash the traditional V-sign with her fingers and let out a gleeful “Kim’cheee!” — the Korean equivalent of saying “cheese.” She doesn’t. She remains still and serious. Then, right before I press the button, her limbs burst into action as she mimics the pose of the statue above her, mimics its stony, stoic face. I think I fall in love with her a little when she does this. I ask about it after I’ve snapped the picture. She says she finds the cheery V-sign annoying, goofy — like the honeymooners in identical clothes. “I’d rather have the photo capture my personality,” she tells me.
Several dates through February and March and I behave myself entirely. I don’t try to kiss her again, or anything. Jin seems fine with this arrangement — she is a paragon of personal control. I’m once again curious how Rob could penetrate that citadel of restraint. The boys offer no help: after each outing, I return to Daechi to endure their chants of “Did you fuck her yet? Did you fuck her yet?” I can’t bother explaining to them that something else is happening. Jin and I are growing into each other a bit, leaving our mark on one another in gentle, benign ways, like you do with someone after a few dates. I’ve mastered chopsticks, thanks to her, and expanded my Korean vocabulary five fold. In turn, I’ve converted her into a coffee drinker following an afternoon visit to my apartment. “I was strictly, how you say, a green-tea person before this,” she says, taking generous sips from one of the pink mugs that came with the apartment, “but you make excellent coffee, Michael.”
Rob Cruise watches these developments from his island of sexual bravado. If he’s jealous of the bond that Jin and I are forming, he hides it well. He seems stumped that I would persist with a situation that hasn’t led immediately to sex. But of course he’s stumped. He doesn’t understand that my five-year dry spell has been so much more than a lack of physical contact. It has been everything in my life, a weight that sits atop me and will not go away. I often refer to it as my permafrost.
March 21, 2003. A date of demarcation — for me, for Rob Cruise, for the world at large. For Rob, this Friday marks his final day at ABC English Planet; he’s managed to finish his twelve-month contract without getting fired, and intends to fling forth into a brand new life, into days that will finally be under his control. For me, it’s my thirtieth birthday. A segregation between a decade of potential and a decade of rapidly closing doors. Still, there is a festive air in the halls of the hagwon, and a crew of us will be heading into Itaewon after work.
Rob has been ecstatic these last few days about his accomplishment. He has been in Ms. Kim’s bad books practically since his arrival. The two of them have jousted about the school’s pedagogy during countless staff meetings, arguments that leave the rest of us cringing as if doused in cold mud. For properly trained teachers like Rob and Justin, much of what we’re asked to do in the classroom makes no sense. Rob has practically made a game of how far he can defy Ms. Kim — but has known, rightly, that she holds all the cards. In the hagwon system, the school controls your work visa, rents your apartment for you, and can fire you without cause at any time. The flipside is if you can survive your twelve-month contract, you’re legally entitled to a thirteenth month’s pay as severance and a free plane ticket home. This is what Rob has been holding out for, and it’s vital to his “master plan.” He intends to return to Canada for a couple of months, then fly back to Seoul on his own dime, teach under-the-table privates until the fall, then start the new job he’s lined up for himself: a permanent position teaching ESL at Seoul National University.
At the end of the night, we all gather around for a small ceremony for Rob and a couple other teachers who have also finished their contracts. This is Ms. Kim’s ritual, perhaps to show she has a humane side: she hands out little presents in glittery gift bags to each of the departing teachers as thanks for their year of service. Rob accepts her gift with mock gratitude, bowing deeply to his nemesis and smiling his oily smile. She won’t even look at him. Then, before she’s even finished handing out the other two gifts, he does the unthinkable: he pulls open the gift bag and yanks out its contents, a felt blue box. He cracks it open to find a silvery pocket watch with the school’s logo engraved on the front. He takes the tinkling thing out and holds it up to show everyone while Ms. Kim tenses with horror. This is his final violation of her: in Korea, you never open a gift in front of the giver.
We file out of the school’s office building and head straight to the curb to hail a taxi. Because it’s my birthday, I’ve been allowed to pick where in Itaewon we’re going. I’ve chosen a proper pub called Gecko’s — no dance music or strobe lights anywhere to be found, just dart boards and wooden tables, and a good variety of beer on tap. I’m also keen that it’s got a big screen TV with access to CNN. After all, March 21, 2003, is not just my thirtieth birthday and Rob Cruise’s last day at the hagwon. On the other side of the world, Shock and Awe has begun in earnest.
Forty minutes later, we arrive at Gecko’s to find the place packed; as I suspected, a crowd of GIs and foreign teachers has assembled in front of the large projection TV to watch CNN’s coverage of Baghdad giving birth to balloon-like explosions. While the boys fetch me birthday beer, I find us an empty table and look around to see if Jin has arrived. I haven’t seen her in a week and a half; she’s been in Shanghai on business. I’m still looking when the boys return with sloshing pitchers and glass steins. Justin pours for me. “Is she coming out tonight?” he asks.
“She said she was.”
“It’s your birthday,” Rob Cruise says. “Maybe she’ll actually give you a hug or something.”
“Hey, shut up …”
Trumpets blare and there’s Wolf Blitzer in the CNN Situation Room. Iraq’s government is in disarray; no
body’s sure if Saddam is alive; American tanks are plowing northward from Kuwait; there are rumours of Iraq’s National Guard already laying down its weapons, of ordinary Iraqis unfurling American flags in welcome. It’s all framed like one big seduction, with Iraq in the role of not-so-coy mistress. I notice that the GIs here are gripped with obvious envy. They long to touch that flush of war — so much more appropriate to their training than the banal peace that has gripped Korea these last fifty years.
There’s a tap at my shoulder. “Happy birthday, Michael Barrett!” I turn and see Jin hovering over me. I rise from my bar chair and, much to my shock, she does hug me – a big birthday squeeze. Before I can even absorb the feel of her lissome energy in my arms, it’s over and she takes the empty seat next to mine.
“How was Shanghai?” I ask, sitting back down.
“Fucking awful,” she replies. “Fourteen-hour days and I didn’t make a single sale.” She looks at the TV. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, just a war,” Jon Hung replies.
“Just a war,” she repeats, eyeing the screen with a shadow of anxiety. She turns back to me. “Michael, I brought you a present.” She digs into her purse and takes out a gift: it’s an exact square (clearly a CD) and wrapped in baby-blue rice paper.
“Thanks,” I say, giving it the mandatory examination before moving it toward my coat pocket.
“No, no, open it now. I don’t mind.”
I shrug and begin to pull the wrapping apart to reveal Romantic Classics. I flip it over: Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Liszt, Chopin. “Jin, this is grand.” I reach over to hug her again and strangely, inexplicably, she tenses under the bend of my arm. When I let her go, she nods at the boys. “Did these layabouts buy you anything?”