by Martin Limon
The ville on this late Friday afternoon was subdued. No hustle. No bustle. Just the smell of fish and fresh vegetables from the Itaewon market and the feeling that bars and whores and GIs were as inevitable and eternal as the slow changing of the seasons.
The early-morning sun had melted some of the ice but now the sky was overcast again and a slight wind had picked up and the ice on the roadway had refrozen into a smoother, slicker consistency. I slipped two times trudging up the hill to Itaewon.
The doors of the American Club were barred and locked. The King Club was open. Instead of my usual beer, I had a straight shot of Korean-made bourbon. It was rough but I held it and then I had another. The stuff can grow on you.
The jukebox spun out some good sounds and a couple of girls at one of the tables were giggling and looking at me and trying to get up the courage to talk to me or hoping that, better yet, I would talk to them. The place was warm and cozy and, as the bourbon started to seep into my body, I wondered what I was worried about. I told myself that I had no reason to feel anxious.
I wished that Miss Pak Ok-suk were here, to dance for me, in her tight blouse and miniskirt. But the Jade Lady was relegated to my dreams.
Freezing air burst into the room, trailing a bustling little woman, hair in disarray, eyes wide. She spotted the two girls at the table in front of me, sat down, and immediately launched into breathless exposition.
Something had happened. Something big.
I tried to pick out the words but she was running them all together and waving her hands for emphasis. The girls ignored their Cokes and sat with their mouths open, all their attention focused on the ranting woman. The young man behind the bar and the adolescent girl who was the daytime cashier also stopped what they were doing and listened.
I managed to pick out a couple of words. Something about her apartment. Her landlady. And then I realized what it was. Her rent had been raised. That’s all. Nothing serious. It didn’t affect me in any way. But I also realized what I had been so anxious about all day and if I hadn’t been so tired and so nervous and now so drunk, I might have realized it a long time ago.
Kimiko.
I finished my bourbon and headed towards the door.
Snow had begun to fall. Very lightly. It was a rough climb heading up the hill towards Kimiko’s hooch because the road was slick and the fresh snowflakes were not making it any easier. The long gray stone walls loomed up ahead of me. For some reason the gate to Kimiko’s hooch seemed farther up the road than it had been before, farther from the main road and farther from the pulsating life of Itaewon. But that was impossible. Gates in stone walls don’t move. It had to be my imagination, or the cheap bourbon.
When I reached the gate, the rusted metal swung back easily at my touch. I clanged it shut behind me, making sure the latch caught.
It seemed that no one was home. All the hooches were closed and shuttered. The burned-out hooch, Miss Pak’s hooch, was still blackened and charred. Fresh petals of snow landed on the scorched wood, as if to mock the ruins, and then melted-disappeared.
I almost turned around and walked out, but something made me decide to check Kimiko’s room. An obsessive sense of detail that the Army had drilled into me. Someday I would get rid of it. I hoped. As I crossed the courtyard, I made the only footsteps in an untouched field of white. The door to Kimiko’s hooch seemed to be stuck but I pulled and it rattled and then the door slid back.
She lay there in a long white dress. A dress I had never seen before. She was flat on her back on the cold vinyl floor, a pillow under her head. Her hands were crossed serenely across her stomach and her long black hair had been combed and neatly arranged beneath her. She wore no makeup, the first time I had ever seen her this way. Her mouth and eyes were closed and it seemed that calmness had finally overcome her. She was almost beautiful. Except for the huge gash across her neck.
But there was no blood. Only caked flecks along the jagged opening. And there was no blood on the floor or on her clothes. It had all been wiped up, cleaned, and someone had washed her and put on the fresh clothes and combed her hair and set her here, on display-like some great leader millions of people would file by to pay their last respects. But there were no other people. Just me.
Just me and what was left of the woman Kimiko.
Curiously, I didn’t feel bad. Maybe this was what was best for her. But I guess that sort of instant reaction is always there with people like Kimiko. Others just wish they would go away, that they wouldn’t be seen anymore, that they wouldn’t flaunt their needs in public anymore. I didn’t exactly miss her myself. It was a relief that she was no longer around, no longer able to cadge drinks and embarrass me when I was trying to impress other women. And I tried to harden my heart with the thought of her blackmailing and the way she had used Miss Pak-Ok-suk for her own designs. Still, she looked small lying there.
18
When we strolled into the American Club, Ginger didn’t come running down the planks, and when we sat down at the bar and ordered a couple of beers, she continued her halfhearted conversation with one of the retirees down at the end of the bar and sent the young girl who was her assistant to fill our order.
Ernie hit the beer pretty hard. The girl had hardly finished pouring for us when it was gone. Ernie ordered another, fished some money out of his wallet and, without asking me, told the girl to bring us two shots of brandy on the rocks. Korean brandy is pretty jagged stuff, but this brandy was not too bad. Probably California brandy poured into the Korean-made bottle, so Ginger wouldn’t have to pay import tax.
When we finished that shot, Ernie ordered two more, and another beer for me and another beer for himself, then set about busily pouring and slurping, hunched over the bar like a craftsman at his workbench.
“Building a drunk, eh?” I said.
“It’s time.”
I waited. I knew he’d tell me about it when he was ready. He was ready.
‘The Nurse is much better now. But old Bohler did scare the shit out of her. She’s quiet most of the time now, and she doesn’t even want me to get close to her.
“She doesn’t look any different. But I guess it’s on the inside. Like maybe she can’t trust anybody anymore and maybe she can’t relax with a man anymore. To me, that’s always been the greatest thing about the Nurse, that she was so relaxed. She took everything in stride, nothing fazed her.”
“She didn’t seem so relaxed the night she came in here with a stick.”
‘That was different. We were supposed to have gone to see the chaplain that day, for the marriage processing interview, but I skipped out. We were busy and, besides, I didn’t feel like going.”
I took a sip of the brandy and had to widen my lips and pull in some air with it. Ernie was rough on her, very rough, but I wasn’t one to be casting stones.
“I can understand why you didn’t feel like going. After you hardassed Chaplain Sturdivant like you did.”
“He’s a jerk.”
“No argument on that one.”
Ernie waited and then he spoke again. “I don’t know about this marriage paperwork stuff. It’s too much of a hassle.”
“So’s marriage,” I said.
“Yeah.”
I guess I wasn’t helping much.
Ernie squinted at me, mulling over what passed for a thought. Was something eating me, he wanted to know. I shook my head no and tried to look innocent.
A scraggly-looking little country band came in and started tuning up. Another night in Itaewon. But this would be the first one in a very long time without Kimiko.
I didn’t tell Ernie about what I had seen at her hooch today. Better to keep him out of it.
Finally, after a number of dead soldiers had fallen off the bar’s ramparts in front of us, Ginger came over and stood in front of me.
“Miss Lim, she was never sure when she was going to see you and she was afraid she might have to get on the plane to Hawaii without saying goodbye.
She t
hrust something at me.
“Here.”
It was a little package made of brightly colored wrapping paper, intricately folded. I thanked her and slipped it in my pocket. Korean custom is not to open gifts in front of others. Good custom. Helps you stay hidden.
We had a couple of more brandies and a few more beers and then launched ourselves unsteadily out the door to hit as many bars in Itaewon as we could until we passed out.
In the morning I unraveled the package. It was a jade medallion. A little circle with one Chinese character in the middle.
The character was ai, which means love.
Riley met us at the snack bar and after getting himself a big cup of coffee, and loading it with about half a cup of cream and four spoonfuls of sugar, he took a sip and started filling us in.
“Bohler’s on his way back to the States, in disgrace. They’ve lined him up with a training job down in Georgia and it’s understood that he’s supposed to set himself up for retirement in Florida and be out of the Army within six months.”
“What about the Koreans?”
‘That was a little more tricky. They wanted to cooperate but they had a complicated public-relations problem on their hands. The Itaewon fire marshall reopened the investigation and came to the conclusion that although Miss Pak Ok-suk might have been having sex with someone earlier that evening, they believe that the man, whoever he was, left and that then Miss Pak, under the influence of alcohol and drugs, attempted to change the yontan charcoal by herself and dropped one of the flaming briquettes in the center of the floor. Possibly she thought that there was a metal pan there to hold it. And then she lay down on her bed and went to sleep.”
“What about the abuse to her body?” Ernie said.
“Never mentioned in too much graphic detail in the Korean papers. They ignored it.”
“And Spec-4 Watkins?”
“Charges against him were dropped. He’s down at Osan Air Force Base right now, under MP escort, being sent back to the States.”
“Are they kicking him out of the Army?”
“Not right away. They assigned him to The Presidio of San Francisco. Better to keep him on active duty, so they’ll have him under jurisdiction of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, until this thing blows over.”
“So it’s all just going to blow away, huh?”
“Except for you guys. They discussed sending you up to the DMZ-discussed it very seriously-but decided against it right now because if they do, you’re liable to start mouthing off to the wrong people.”
“Like our congressman.”
“Or a reporter,” Ernie said, looking encouraged.
“Right.” Riley sipped his coffee. “So they’re going to keep you here, keep an eye on you, and give you an attitude check. Your prospects around here, though, are not too bright after being foolish enough to lower the hammer on the chief of staff of the Eighth United States Army. But the one ray of hope is that they’ve definitely taken you off the shit list.”
“What? You’re kidding.”
“No. Seriously. They’ve taken you off it. And put you on a whole new list that they’ve created just for this situation. They’re calling it the disembowel-as-soon-as-possible list. You’re both tied for first place.”
“Anybody else on it?”
“No. Just you two.”
“You’ve been a great help to us, Riley.”
“Glad to be of service.”
19
The monks kept their vigil for two days and finally they took Kimiko’s body away, back to the mountains.
The landlady seemed relieved and had a couple of young men helping her clear the remains of Miss Pak’s apartment while she got Kimiko’s little closetlike room in shape for a new tenant. When she saw me she stopped what she was doing, tensed, and just waited. I nodded, turned around, and went away.
She didn’t nod back.
Palinki wasn’t the type to hound me about the. 45, so I held on to if for a while, keeping it in my wall locker, checking the cold steel and counting the cartridges every day, just to make sure they were still there.
I wasn’t sure why but it was important to me.
Ernie and I went on a huge drunk, reeling from bar to bar, starting early in the morning, sometimes taking a nap in the afternoon, and then getting drunk again at night. When we went back to work Monday, we were just going through the motions on the black-market detail and found plenty of time to slip away to little isolated draft-beer halls out in Itaewon and have a few cold ones for lunch. We went on like this for quite a while. I can’t say how long now. The time faded into a dismal blur.
Ernie never once mentioned the Nurse.
Finally one morning I woke up and was sick about how I’d been acting. I made a special effort to get over to the gym and see Mr. Chong for the noon tae kwon do workout.
“Where have you been, Georgie?”
“Busy.”
“You should not get so busy. It is dangerous.”
I sobered up, worked out steadily, and my midsection started to firm up again. It was as if my body had taken hold of my fate and slowly its resolve started to become apparent to me.
Mr. Kwok, meanwhile, had made more and more inroads into the economic life of the village. A couple of his competitors had closed down and a couple more had sold out to him. He closed their clubs down for a while, remodeled them, and reopened the doors with big, flashy grand openings. I started hanging out in the ville, supposedly for the black-market detail, but mostly watching his comings and goings. I kept particular track of his thugs, sipped on Coke, and somehow stayed sober.
The winter should have been over but a last flurry of cold, ice-laden air whistled through Seoul. The snow wasn’t heavy but just enough to make the roads slick and life a little uncomfortable. I loved the long overcast days and the freezing crispness that seemed to tighten and enflame my body.
I started carrying the. 45.
My Spartan regimen had kept me a long time without a woman, and one late afternoon, while slogging through my black-market rounds, I turned-without thinking about it much-down the alley that led to the hooch where the girl lived, along with her sisters, in the brothel behind the Sloeeyed Lady Club.
She was wary. I had cut out on her before, without giving her any money, and made her lose face. This time I gave her the money up front and went into her hooch to relax while she got a pan of hot water ready.
She was very young, very small, and I was very excited. When I finished, I got dressed and went back to the latrine. Most of her sisters were out, or sitting quietly in their rooms, gossiping, playing cards. I found a toehold in the fence and climbed over.
Kwok was usually in his office this time of day. He got up late so the afternoons were like mornings for him. Time for the mundane things in life. Paperwork. Bills. The Hamboyance came after the sun went down.
His thugs were rarely around during the daytime. They slept even later than he did. Sometimes he had late-night things for them to do.
I climbed the rickety metal staircase on the outside of the building, unable to keep completely quiet but trying to keep my advance as rhythmic and as calm as I could.
One of the things that had bothered me from the first was the pair of straight metal tongs in the middle of Miss Pak’s room. Someone had found the half-submerged heater outside and then used the tongs to pull out one of the flaming briquettes and bring it inside and put it on the vinyl floor. Maybe Miss Pak had done it herself, if she was very drunk or very loaded on drugs. But that seemed unlikely because if she was that far gone she would have just passed out and not paid any attention to the underground heating system. If, however, she had actually tried to change the charcoal briquettes in the heater, it would have been second nature to her to replace one of the flaming briquettes with a new one and leave its red-hot embers in a metal pan outside near the stove. She was a farm girl, she knew how to do these things, and for her to have started the fire herself seemed unlikely.
Major General Bohler, however, had little knowledge of the workings of Korean households. This was his first tour in Korea-they didn’t need underground heating systems in Vietnam-and since he’d been here, his servants had done everything for him, including tying his jogging shoes.
If he had choked Miss Pak until she was either dead or she had passed out, it didn’t seem possible to me that he would have put on his clothes, gone outside in the freezing cold, searched around until he found the heater, opened it, used the tongs to pull out one of the charcoal briquettes, and then brought it back into the house to start a fire and destroy the evidence. He would have exposed himself to too many prying eyes.
It was more likely that he would have panicked and put his clothes on and run to the one person in Itaewon who could help him: Kwok.
I could imagine the frantic Bohler, telling Kwok that he thought he’d just killed a girl. The solicitous Kwok telling him to go home, that he would take care of everything, and then going to the hooch and
… But that’s where it broke down. Why not just remove the body? Business girls disappeared from Itaewon all the time.
So the blackened tongs festered in my mind.
But then we saw the photos. I felt sorry for Miss Pak, who was being so ravaged, but still it was exciting and I searched every part of her body. The clarity of the photos was bad, and Bohler was all over her, but I did manage to make out, in a couple of the shots, the medallion that she was wearing around her neck. The one that said ok. Jade.
It seemed sort of strange to me that a young girl like her, having money for the first time in her life, would buy herself such an oldfashioned piece of jewelry. Jade, from antiquity, and Chinese characters yet.
Not exactly trendy.
And if she did like that sort of thing, why wasn’t she wearing it when she had her photograph taken for the marriage paperwork? Maybe she hadn’t bought it yet, sure, but there was another possibility. Maybe a man had bought it for her. As a gift. And it wouldn’t have seemed appropriate to her to wear it in the photograph intended to accompany her request for betrothal to Johnny Watkins.