Yin Yang Tattoo

by Ron McMillan

  Schwartz turned to me, pointing at his watch. ‘You have to get a move on. The meeting – ’

  ‘The meeting will not start without them. Now, to real film.’ They sat up in their chairs. ‘I’m going to take a couple of rolls of film, so we’ll be here for a few more minutes. That way we get a selection of good shots where nobody is blinking, and the second roll is in case anything happens to the first one at the lab.’ This was standard spiel, designed to let me feel for the limits of my subjects’ patience.

  ‘Do you really need two rolls?’

  No surprise that it was Martinmass, the limits on his patience there for all to see.

  I spoke to Chang:

  ‘The sooner we get started, the sooner you can be off to your meeting.’

  ‘This shouldn’t take long Geoff.’ Geoff scowled, and I fired the camera. He looked at me angrily. I fired again. Two-nil.

  ‘That’s the way. Nice and cheery.’ Bobby Purves was right, he was an arsehole, but on top of that, unless I was wrong, something more than an aversion to cameras was making him very uptight, and whatever it was involved me.

  As soon as I finished the second roll of film, Martinmass made a show of stomping from the room. Chang beckoned to Lee. Young Koreans, when under pressure to give maximum face to a senior of far superior standing, sometimes adopt a strange gait, a flat-footed scuttle with arms locked at the sides, palms facing downwards. It always makes me think of stray penguins desperately trying to catch up with the colony. Lee did that now, crossing the room in an ungainly flash, and Chang spoke quietly to him. Lee looked over at me, nodding as he spoke, acknowledging an instruction. At the door, Chang turned back:

  ‘Mr Lee will bring you to my office.’ He left the room without waiting for a response. People like Chang get to speak when they want and listen to the rest of us only when they feel like it.

  Twenty-five minutes later Lee left me with a trim, middle-aged secretary who hovered like an insect beside a strategically placed desk that controlled access to an executive suite. After giving me an unashamed look of appraisal, she pulled a freeze-dried expression that might have been a smile.

  ‘This way, please.’ Prim efficiency, not a hint of an accent. I walked in the wash of an expensive scent that failed to override the foul undertones of Marlboro Red. She led me along a broad carpeted corridor hung with original oil paintings until we stopped at a heavy wooden door. Placing herself between me and a wall-mounted security pad, she dialled a six-figure entry code, waited for a low buzzing followed by the clunk of powerful dead-bolts, and palmed the perfectly balanced door inwards.

  ‘Mr Chang will be with you in a moment.’ The big doors closed quietly, leaving me alone in an ante room slightly smaller than the Centre Court at Wimbledon. There were ornate Asian rugs, dozens of examples of Korean celadon pottery, several huge pieces of overstuffed furniture, and along the far wall, floor-to-ceiling windows that looked down over Youido Plaza.

  The Plaza was speckled with walkers and joggers and weaving, wobbling bicycles from hire stalls that lined one edge of the giant square. A long time ago I saw it loosely filled with a several hundred thousand-strong rent-a-crowd, bussed in from the suburbs to cheer for a Presidential candidate. He did the politician’s JFK waving routine, posed arms aloft for the phalanx of scuffling photographers and dutifully promised his delirious supporters a prosperous Korea free of poverty and corruption. The same man went on to win the election and rule the nation for a term marred by precisely the same kind of corruption that cursed all his ex-military predecessors. Astonishing degrees of change had arrived in Korea over the last quarter-century but some things, tragically, were too deeply engrained in the cultural fabric to disappear overnight.

  I had enjoyed my photography back then. Jostling for position with the Korean Press Pack might have been brutal at times, but it was good clean honest work, far removed from the shitfest I found myself in now.

  ‘It is a wonderful view.’

  Chang looked amused to have startled me. He had come through a set of doors that led to a private office. Right on cue came a soft knock at the corridor entrance and in came a short woman in company uniform, who somehow managed to bow repeatedly while porting a full tray. Chang pointed dismissively at a low table with soft chairs on two sides. She quickly poured two steaming cups of coffee, gestured theatrically at the dishes of sugar and powdered cream, and retreated backwards through the doors, still bowing.

  ‘Sit down, Brodie.’

  Any hint of warmth in Chang’s manner was gone.

  Chapter Ten

  Chang fingered his coffee cup as the door from the corridor opened and Schwartz slipped into the room as if he belonged. He let the door close behind him, and stood leaning against the wall. Chang’s eyes flitted towards him before coming back to stare into mine.

  ‘You have an idea how important the Global Depository Receipt is to my company?’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘Its success depends very much on the quality of its marketing and presentation. Which is where you come in.’

  ‘Normally I would have no problem with that.’ Emphasis on normally.

  ‘But?’

  ‘The fake factory shoot.’

  ‘Ben said that troubled you.’

  ‘It involves me in something that could put me in jail, and I want no part of it.’

  There, I had said it. Chang shook his head and looked to Schwartz, who remained mute. Chang turned back to me.

  ‘We have a business arrangement – ’

  ‘To take photographs. Nothing more.’

  ‘At a day-rate far in excess of what you usually command in London.’

  Fuck, was there anything he didn’t know?

  ‘Rates vary from one project to the next.’ I sounded lame and I knew it.

  ‘Yesterday in Cholla province was a very small part of the assignment, one forced upon us by political realities. A representation of factories that exist already but which we have no way to photograph due to political sensitivities in the North. My company requires those photographs to make the GDR launch a success.’

  He made it sound almost plausible. Maybe the factories were in place on the other side of the border, and maybe I was making a big deal out of something that might, for all I knew, be a level of subterfuge common in such big share market deals.

  I stood up. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘You should also think about whether you need to be paid for this job.’

  The condescending smile on his face said he knew he had me.

  ‘Needing money is one thing, Chang,’ I said, the insult implicit in addressing him by his surname. ‘But agreeing to this is another thing altogether.’

  Chang shook his head and turned to Schwartz, who looked back at him, eyebrows raised in question. Chang nodded sharply. An unspoken instruction. Schwartz opened the door and left the room. I shivered involuntarily and headed for the same door. As I reached for it, Chang spoke again.

  ‘John Lee will pick you up in the morning, as usual.’

  He sounded very sure of himself.

  Chapter Eleven

  Long and thin and laced to a single main street like a rural village set amidst an urban sprawl of ten million, Seoul’s inner suburb of Itaewon always did have a split personality. By day it was an innocent shopping magnet, by night a seedy pit of after-dark entertainment.

  Nightfall had already drawn the curtain down on a day’s shopping, but I didn’t want to buy jeans or sneakers or a ski suit.

  I was after the darker side of the Ville and my priorities were plain. I was going to get hammered, and if even a hint of Itaewon’s seedier side remained, I might go there too. For it is in his cups that the reckless male finds his focus, making perfect sense of even the most casual back alley flophouse jump.

  First I had to eat, and for that I wanted to go truly local. Yong San Kalbi has traded from an Itaewon side alley since long before I first set foot in the country. Nearly every Korean neighb
ourhood has a kalbi jib, or ‘rib house’, a dining delight evolved from the village with refreshingly few concessions to the big city. Abject poverty sits vivid in the memories of Koreans who can recall the period immediately after the war, three years that tore the peninsula in two. In the first decades following the 1953 armistice – a ‘temporary’ peace agreement remains in place, more than fifty years later – millions of Koreans lived with poverty and hunger while farmlands were brought back to pre-war outputs, and from a flattened nation grew the beginnings of an export-driven economy. In a country where meat on the table was once a luxury, it is no surprise that restaurants overloaded with meat options are so popular today.

  The typical kalbi jib has basic sturdy furnishings and glowing charcoal fires in mini braziers that are wedged into holes in the middle of scarred and scorched tables. On offer is a selection of raw, marinated meats roasted above the coals to carbonized perfection and surrounded by spicy side dishes of chopped and pickled vegetables, sticky white rice in shiny stainless-steel bowls and tall bottles of chilled beer on demand.

  The squeal of an ill-fitting aluminium door drew an automatic staff chorus of welcomes. The restaurant was one large room with an uneven concrete floor and maybe fifteen heavy tables, six of which were busy with locals, mostly men doing the after-office male bonding thing, drinking hard and loud and unabashed in their enjoyment. I made my way to a corner table next to an open window, not that it would make much difference. Going home smelling like a barbecued garlic clove was fundamental to the kalbi jib experience.

  A short waitress in her thirties with chunky legs, flat shoes and a glaring squint plonked a heavy glass of barley tea in front of me and waved at a menu framed on a concrete pillar.

  A few seconds later she scurried off to deal with an order for a double portion of pork ribs, one bowl of steamed rice, the full array of side dishes and the coldest tall beer she could find.

  I picked at the side dishes while a charcoal brazier was summoned and carried in at arm’s length by a wiry young man in sooty t-shirt and blackened jeans.

  The waitress returned carrying an alloy platter draped with pork ribs beautifully filleted to leave a long tress of transparent marinated meat clinging to each short bone. Using metal chopsticks she painstakingly arranged ribs on a silver grille that sat above the glowing coals. As the meat readied I got the standard demonstration of how best to enjoy it. She palmed a lettuce leaf, smeared spicy bean paste across it with the back of a spoon, swept a piece of sizzling meat through the mix of coarse salt and sesame oil, and added it to the leaf with some diced spring onion. Next, she carefully folded the leaf until it was a tightly-packed bite size and placed it, loose ends down, on my rice. I picked up the package in my chopsticks, popped it in my mouth, and met her enquiring look with enthusiastic nods. It had my approval, and she was visibly pleased.

  When she got over the initial surprise that I could converse in Korean she chatted incessantly, telling me she was single and that all her free time was spent at a nearby church where the minister was a very great man. She loved her church which was like a second family to her. She repeated this several times in slightly different language, as if unsure that I could grasp its importance.

  I was glad when at last she left me alone. I felt for the lonely soul, her peasant roots and sad looks condemning her to a lowly job and a solitary life in a society where women who failed to marry and to breed barely merited inclusion on the social register.

  My thoughts turned to Jung-hwa. She would be nearly forty now. I wondered if she had children, and what life was like with a bastard like Schwartz for a husband. Better than anything I ever offered her, was the obvious answer. When I picked up the beer bottle it came off the table too quickly; I had already drained it. Shameless drunken escapism screamed loud, and I was in Itaewon to wash away fears old and new. I called for the bill, tipped the waitress generously, and hurried out in search of a glimpse of my past.

  On that first night in the Cowboy Club, the sexy Miss Kim surprised me. We danced and drank and talked and laughed and danced some more. I remembered the tease and the seeming promise of the slow numbers, ‘Careless Whisper’ and ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’, songs that today still take me back to that dingy club all those years ago, still inspire a memory-driven stirring of the loins.

  The surprise was in her refusal to come home with me. She took no offence at the request, but no matter how hard I pushed the point, she held her ground. At three in the morning, I walked her to a cab. She lived with her family so I couldn’t have her phone number, but she did take mine after a little persuasion and promised to call. As she waved at me through the back window of the taxi, I almost believed her. Then she was gone, without so much as a goodnight kiss. Bobby and I eventually rounded off the night at the infamous Flower Shop. Not many flowers, but a great deal of money changed hands in the Flower Shop’s back rooms. We each took a shop girl through the back for a short time. How short was immaterial, since I was so drunk that when I awoke the next morning I would never have recalled even being there if not for the wilted carnation pinned to my shirt pocket. I couldn’t remember a single thing about the whore I had been with, but clear and sharp was the memory of Miss Kim’s amused expression when I forced my telephone number on her as she clambered into the back of the taxi.

  One morning a few days later, the phone woke me early. On the telephone her English became even more self-assured, and we talked and laughed like old friends. She agreed to meet me that Friday night.

  The NFL was an Itaewon institution, one of the earliest American-run discos with decent music, cold beer and hot and cold running local women. Local men who made the mistake of trying to climb the club steps were politely turned away by the ever-smiling Amerasian bodybuilder who reigned supreme at the door.

  The club belonged to a football-mad American soldier-turned-civilian whose Korean wife handled the minefield that was licensing and local government and police corruption. She did such a good job that prosperity grew unimpeded for years until she caught her husband with another woman. Divorce negotiations started out nasty but soon fell away, and within days the club was closed down by police for a long list of ‘violations’. It was an act of contrived vengeance, Korean style. If the American thought he was going to keep the place to himself, then she had ways of showing him how far off the mark he was. It re-opened a few days later after a deal had been struck, one that reportedly cost the American a lot more than he had ever anticipated.

  Miss Kim arrived late, setting a precedent that she kept up for all the years we were together. She wore black again, another revealing low-cut number with strings for shoulder straps and a tight, fifties-style skirt that hugged her thighs and restricted her steps but didn’t stop her dancing sinuously for long spells.

  As closing time loomed I couldn’t decide. Go for broke and take the chance of spoiling a great night, or settle once more for the uncertainty of another phone call? Then she stood up, slipped one arm through the long strap of her shoulder bag, and looked at me, rising amusement parting her painted lips.

  ‘Taxi?’ I said.

  ‘How about your place.’ She said it with a smile that made me weak at the knees.

  I had tidied my room especially, and left the heating on to warm the freshly laundered Korean bedding that lay on the hot papered floor. Not a lot of sleep was had that night, but we did stay warm.

  After that we met at least once a week, almost always in Itaewon, usually ending up on my warm floor. In bed just as out of it, she had a strength and confidence that belied the blinkered stereotype of the demure Asian woman. We explored endlessly, experimented tirelessly, and often exploded together in spontaneous laughter.

  Sometimes we met during her lunch break near the import/export company where she worked. These were quick hot hours of passionate surrender in a small inn on a back street in the thick of Dongdaemun Market, leaving us no time for lunch before she repaired her make-up and hurried to her office and I went bac
k to spend the rest of the day teaching English, deliciously conscious that I smelled of her sex.

  I wandered from club to bar, led by discarded pockets of memory fogged by alcohol and years of separation from Itaewon’s singular brand of hedonism. Two hours later I sat next to the window in the top-floor Starship Bar and looked out over the lights of the city and down on the glow of the clubs and the action on the streets.

  I checked my watch. Nearly eleven o’clock, time for a change of scenery, and the Nashville was only a couple of hundred yards away, but in a separate world. Another Itaewon survivor story, the Nashville was a cluttered bar that served mostly middle-aged Westerners, civilian beer guzzlers whose personal sporting efforts stretched no further than the bar’s pool table and darts boards.

  Bobby Purves sat at a round table bent under the strain of chunky glass mugs full of foamy draft lager. When he weaved over to meet me I knew he had had a few.

  ‘Hey-up, Jock, you look like you’ve already sunk some piss.’

  I looked around the room. ‘Then I’ll fit right in.’

  I waved through the smoke to the Korean barman, an old face I recognised from days gone by when I used to be here several nights a week. I held my palms horizontal, one far above the other, and waggled two fingers. He got straight to work. Drunks love a professional.

  ‘I was wondering if you’d drop in.’

  ‘Didn’t mean to. Got tired of my own company.’

  ‘How’s the job going?’

  ‘Alright.’ Beyond Bobby I recognised a face I knew. ‘I see our pal Martinmass is here.’ The grimace Bobby pulled was answer enough.

  ‘I had to photograph him today along with Chang. You’re right. He is a bad-tempered arsehole.’

  ‘He’ll be in a better mood tonight. See the guy trying to sit on his knee?’

  Beside Martinmass, a smooth-faced Korean in his early twenties and wearing a blue suit jacket buttoned up tight had his chair pulled close. He was hanging on the big guy’s every utterance.