Yin Yang Tattoo

by Ron McMillan

  Fourteen years later, I could replay every last frame of that video in my mind.

  An announcement crackling from muffled subway train speakers jolted me back to reality. I pushed through the crowd to the carriage doors, joined the busy station platform, and began to work my way back above ground.

  Bright sunlight washed over the southern suburb of Seogyo dong. From the station exit I imagined that I followed my own well-worn tracks from years ago to a three-storey concrete building in a crowded lane parallel to the main road. On the second floor, whitened window frames were filled by bold red Korean lettering. Tae Kwon Do.

  The old man at the local store by the building’s entrance did a double-take as I nodded to him and skipped up the stairs. I was excited in that way when you are about to be reunited with a dear friend after a long absence. He was a creature of habit and, six days a week, this was morning work-out time. Later would be time for a sauna and perhaps a massage followed by a rich lunch of bulgogi, but at noon, I was certain he would be in the dojang working out. As I tripped up the stairs, the sounds exploding from the gym told me my guess was correct. I slipped quietly along the corridor and put my head around the door jamb.

  Mr Cho wore a fresh tobok held in place by a black belt worn grey from years of use and thousands of washes. He was practising a three-kick attacking combination. A right front snap-kick, followed by a left front side-kick feint that morphed into an airborne spinning right back kick, a deadly tui-dollyo-chagi that folded the heavy leather bag in half, rattling the sturdy chains that attached it to the ceiling. Even before the bag began to unfold itself Mr Cho was back in the ready stance, gauging the bag’s movement, preparing for the next explosion of strikes.

  I stepped into the doorway and my reflection in the full-length mirror on the far wall immediately caught his attention. He stopped in mid-kick and walked over, hand outstretched. Pushing fifty, he had the body and feline grace of a young Jackie Chan. His face was unlined and he still wore his jet-black hair long. He shook my hand hard and pointed to the backpack hanging from my shoulder.

  ‘Your tobok?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He welcomed me to his gym. I paused in the doorway and, from etiquette engrained by years of training, bowed deeply to the Taegukki. I tried not to dwell on the last couple of times I had looked closely at that flag. While I stretched and warmed up, Mr Cho continued to beat lumps out of the bag, talking to me calmly between strikes.

  ‘When did you arrive in Korea?’

  ‘A couple of days ago. I’m here on a photography job, and I didn’t call because I wasn’t sure when I would have time to visit.’

  We caught up on what he had been doing since I last saw him during a trip to London three years before. He told me of his son and daughter, now both in middle school – I was living in Seoul when they were born – and of his wife, recently taken to classical flower-arranging lessons. He rolled his eyes at that one. Mrs Cho was a lovely woman, but given to immersing herself in one expensive pastime after another, none of which lasted more than a month or two. Not that Mr Cho couldn’t afford it. He assured me his three bars and two nightclubs were doing just fine.

  I was too ashamed to admit that for the past couple of years my Tae Kwon-do work-outs had been sporadic at best. Technically I was mostly all there, but in terms of fitness and speed I was far from my peak. We worked out together, going through a solid ninety-minute routine, with me taking increasingly frequent breaks to regain my composure. Kicks, punches, combinations, patterns, bag-work and sparring, we did the lot. My lungs screamed and muscles complained at every leap and lunge, and only pride prevented me from folding to the floor in defeat. Mr Cho shook his head knowingly as we donned protective gear for a sparring session that I fervently hoped would be brief.

  I have more chance of punching a rainbow than I have of laying a foot on Mr Cho. He, however, picked me off at random, every touch from foot or hand a gentle hint at the enormous power that resided in his slender frame. He barely broke sweat, and at no time did even a hint of exertion disturb the grace and precision of his every move.

  From the dojang we went directly to the local bath-house for a soak, and on to Mr Cho’s favourite bulgogi-jib for a high-protein lunch of marinated beef broiled on a burner mid-table.

  There, I asked if he could look after something for me, and handed over the video camera and tape, bundled up in the plastic laundry bag. He looked in the bag and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I have a problem, and I don’t want anyone to find that.’

  ‘Is it serious?’

  ‘It could be very serious.’

  ‘It will be safe with me.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Cho.’ Thanks for asking no questions.

  He smiled in a way that I always interpreted to be fraternal. Fifteen years ago, when I was the eager student taken under the Tae Kwon-do Master’s wing, he used to jokingly introduce me to other Koreans as his ‘little brother from Scotland’. Back then I found it embarrassing, but in present circumstances, the protectiveness of an adopted older sibling felt good. I hadn’t shared with him the true extent of my worries but if I did, I was sure he would be there for me.

  When I walked into the hotel in the late evening, it was hardly a surprise when at least three different pairs of eyes locked onto me. They already knew I had gone out. Where I had gone and whom I had met was what they couldn’t know. In one hand I held a plastic bag full of cold beers. I waved to my onlookers with the other, but none of them waved back. At the front desk I picked up a message from John Lee, confirmation that photography was to re-commence tomorrow and that he would pick me up at 08:30. I needed to relax and try to get my mind around what was going on, and one of the luxuries I associated with five-star hotels was nursing a couple of cold beers while I took a long, hot-as-I-could-bear soak in a bubble bath. Soon I was near-submerged in scalding bubbly water watching rivulets of condensation run down mirrors and tiled walls and beer bottles that nestled in a full ice bucket positioned within easy reach.

  I awoke spitting bubbles, dizzy from the heat. My watch and the scorching water confirmed I had only dozed off for a few seconds. I heard a knocking sound from the room door, the noise that had, fortunately for me, disturbed my sleep. I shouted:

  ‘Who’s there?’

  No response. I shouted again, this time in Korean. Still no answer. Who could this be? If it was Kwok, he would announce himself, as would anyone on the hotel staff. If it was another body part delivery, it was time for a change of hotel.

  I drew myself from the slippery tub, torn ribbons of weightless foam floating behind me as I plucked the heavy robe from the hanger behind the bathroom door. Foamy puddles formed around my bare feet as I put one eye to the peep-hole. Nothing. Even if the corridor lights were still out, I should be able to see something. More knocking, this time louder, a heel-of-hand hammering that shook the heavy door.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  Silence. This was starting to piss me off. More knocking, incessant now, a regular pulsating enraging thump thump thump. I thought of calling down to reception. ‘A naughty man’s knocking on my door, and he won’t tell me what he wants.’ Yeah, right.

  I plucked the security chain from its resting place on the jamb, and slotted it into the metal channel on the door face. Turning the handle very slowly, I eased the door back while I squinted through the growing gap at the door’s edge. The security chain tore loose as the door exploded inwards and clocked me a crunching blow above the right eyebrow. I half-spun and hit the carpet face first.

  The door rang like a gong as it hammered against the stopper. I couldn’t look back in case I turned straight into a kick, and in any case my eyes were still full of soap. Footfalls drummed on the carpet and the door slammed shut. Before I could move, every last fragment of breath blew out of me as knees landed full-force in the middle of my back. A wiry hand gripped my shoulder, turning me over into the attack. Another hand reached into the bath robe and took a firm grasp of my balls. Sti
ll gasping for breath I brought an arm up to protect my face, but it was too late. Lungs already empty and air sources cut off, I began to suffocate.

  The hand on my shoulder had moved to cover my mouth and nose, while the other hand tugged at me aggressively. Only when a tongue flicked against my teeth and I finally awoke to the taste of lipstick did I even begin to understand. Abruptly, the smothering sensation stopped and I heaved for breath as two warm hands cupped my face, thumbs gently clearing bubbles with a tenderness that instantly took me back to childhood bathtimes. At last I was able to open one eye, and it looked straight into one of my attacker’s.

  ‘Oreh-gon mannee hamnida, neh?’ Long time since we did this, eh?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Like foreground detail in an oil painting, two hundred feet below us the swimming pool glistened, a tungsten-cyan rectangle that shone from the shapeless black of the hotel grounds. In the distance, traffic pinballed along riverside expressways, its muted drone interrupted only by sofa and shoulder blades playing a rhythmic beat-squeak on the hotel window.

  Jung-hwa perched on the sofa’s seat back. I stood ankle-deep in velour, fingertips splayed across the glass. Her legs were clamped tight around my hips and her shoulders drew twin channels in condensation that beaded the cool pane. Long fingernails gouged parallel stripes down my back, and widescreen chaos was reflected in the window behind her.

  From a cut on my brow, blood snail-trailed across an eye that was already swelling to a close, fresh blued bruising under stretched skin, a schoolyard shiner in the making. Behind me the hotel room looked like a tornado had passed through it.

  Heavy curtains hung askew, one of them partly dislodged from its runners. The entire contents of the writing desk – telephone, notepads, menus, blotter and more – spread across the floor. A chair lay overturned, its seat pad dislodged and propped against the brass limb of a standard lamp held at a crazy angle by the short cord that drew a treacherous line to the wall socket.

  The door to the mini bar hung ajar, a triangle of light bleaching scattered ice cubes, shadows pooling into the carpet pile. The whole room flickered to the images of a television pay-channel, hardcore porn playing silently to an audience of none. The huge bed in the centre of the room looked like the eye of the storm had passed over it. Blankets, sheets and feather bolsters tumbled in chaotic disarray. The bathroom was out of view, but I knew that it held more of the same. I would have to remember to tip the chambermaid, I thought, as Jung-hwa threw herself giggling onto the sofa.

  I was smiling, not from amusement, but in welcome recognition of something very special. Everything, even Jung-hwa’s entrance, was just like things used to be. Unpredictable, impulsive, and as uninhibitedly sexual as ever.

  What we had going here wasn’t exactly a meeting of great minds, but a long time ago we had something pretty wild going for nearly five years. After a decade away, I had a fresh taste of everything I missed.

  I didn’t know it at the time but fifteen years ago, when Jung-hwa led me home from the NFL Club to a wild night thrashing around my flat, we were etching out a pattern. A pattern that survived, never mind the confusion it wrought in those around us, and one that suited us equally.

  Once or sometimes twice a week Jung-hwa would pop into my life, as often as not unannounced. It was never difficult to hunt me down, to intersect a track that was predictable yet somehow never felt monotonous. Friday nights I would be sucking gassy draft lager with friends at a window table in the Bavaria Bar. I always found a seat with a view downhill towards the human chaos of the main Itaewon drag, where I would watch Jung-hwa turn heads the moment she emerged from a taxi. Men nudged one another as they tracked her, eyes narrowed, lips pursed. Streetwalkers made no attempt to hide long looks of envious appraisal.

  She would make a dramatic entrance into the seedy Bavaria, cut a track straight to the table where I stood waiting, and kiss me. Koreans don’t kiss in public, and this was never a modest peck but a lusty full-on-the-lips, arms-round-my-neck cinematic clinch that brought near-silence to the noisy bar. Impervious to stares radiating from all corners, she would slowly break the embrace and almost reluctantly join us.

  Strictly territorial, the males around the table displayed little curiosity. I was one of the boys and I was seeing her regularly, and that was enough. Their Korean girlfriends, despite natural inquisitiveness, knew little more. Jung-hwa never brooked much casual chatter, and the other women eventually gave up trying. After a couple of drinks and to no obvious dismay we would beg off. We went drinking and dancing, always at a venue of her choice. Sometimes it was the mainstream joints like the NFL or the King Club, but on other nights she would be of a different inclination, one that I could never predict, and which forced me to cast off self-consciousness like an extra layer of clothing. As the only white man weaving through a forest of enormous blacks (the term ‘African-American’ had yet to be embraced) in the Sunshine Club, the only Scotsman with no cowboy hat in the Dixie Bar, or just the only man not bending genders in the transvestite Love Dash, I learned to go with the flow.

  After a couple of hours of drinks and sweaty dance floors, we would reach an unspoken decision, two minds on one track. Time to go.

  In bad weather we joined the scramble for taxis, but whenever possible we walked the mile-and-a-half to my place. This was a teasing thing, prolonging the wait until the privacy of my flat set us loose. Heightened anticipation never failed to add flush to the moment, even if it was prone to the occasional backfire. Like the time we were disturbed by a fresh-faced kid of a beat cop, baton drawn, unsure how to deal with the couple apparently wrestling, partially undressed in a doorway not far from his darkened police box. While I tried to re-gain some composure, Jung-hwa engaged the young cop in conversation like he was an old friend who should have known better than to disturb us. Soon we were on our way, gently admonished, shoulders rigid until we turned the corner and collapsed in fits of giggles. For months afterwards we made a point of walking past the police box, never failing to elicit a comical salute and a beaming grin from our uniformed friend, who gladly accepted our gifts of hot coffee, cold Coke or steaming-hot dok-bo-gi rice cakes.

  Back home we’d go through my flat in a frenzy that knew few taboos. She was mesmerising in action, and I thought I saw in her a determination to satisfy not only the two of us but some imagined observer, like an actress playing to her audience. It was a recurring impression that never dulled my passion, for if she was acting out a script in her head, it was surely not Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  I emerged from the bathroom to find Jung-hwa propped up in bed, sheets and blankets strewn around her. The television was switched off, and she rummaged in her handbag for cigarettes and lighter. She offered the open pack to me.

  ‘I gave up.’

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘Only after sex.’

  She fired the lighter and drew hungrily at the smoke. ‘Aah, luxury.’ She blew smoke at the ceiling.

  ‘Luxury?’

  ‘I don’t smoke much now. Ben hates it.’ She drew again on the cigarette, her silence heavy with unstated resentment. An electronic squeal of complaint came from the phone that lay upside-down on the floor. I picked it up, returned the receiver to its hook, placed the telephone on the desk, and pointed to what was left of the mini bar.

  ‘Thirsty?’

  She nodded and I stopped to pick up the ringing telephone. As I put the receiver to my ear, I signalled to her to keep quiet, but I might as well have asked her to make love in silence.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Ben Schwartz. ‘Who’s there with you?’ I shook a frantic hand across the bed.

  ‘Ben?’

  Eyes round as a cartoon cat’s and shining with mischief, Jung-hwa held a hand over her mouth.

  ‘Who’s there with you?’

  ‘If there was anyone it would be none of your fucking business. It’s the television.’

  ‘Didn’t sound like the TV. Why has your phone been off the hook?
’

  ‘None of your fucking business.’

  Jung-hwa started to lose control, her mouth covered now with two hands. I pushed the button to disconnect the call, placed the handset in its cradle and padded, barefoot, into the bathroom. Even before the door closed behind me, the phones began to ring. I examined my battered face in the bathroom mirror for five rings before I picked up the receiver and held it six inches from my ear.

  ‘You hung up on me.’ He was nearly screaming. I stuck my tongue out at the mirror.

  ‘Tell me what you want, or I hang up again.’

  ‘Did anyone ever tell you you’re an asshole?’

  ‘The pleasure has been entirely yours. I’ll be seeing you – ’

  ‘Wait. Did you get the message from reception?’

  ‘The message that John Lee is picking me up in the morning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I got the message. Anything else?’ An electronic tone buzzed in my ear. He had hung up. That would teach me to show more respect.