by Junghyo Ahn
The four boys, carrying the dented canteen and the pillow bread and other loot, followed the departing army. The soldiers in the jeep paid no attention to the boys. The Castle village farmers mutely watched the passing troops with indifferent or resentful expressions.
Following the marching soldiers, the four boys walked for more than two hours until their legs were stiff. They finally reached a bridge, over which, Chandol reckoned, the bengko trucks had entered West County. The U.N. troops crossed the bridge and marched onto a paved highway where they joined another World Army unit coming up from the south. Soldiers and vehicles were all moving toward Hwachon.
When they had crossed the bridge, the boys were too tired and hungry to march with the soldiers any longer. Chandol decided that they would make their lunch, under a poplar, from the cans and the pillow bread they had brought with them. And then they could watch the passing soldiers as long as they wanted, comfortably resting in the shade.
Growling, massive tanks rolled by, their blunt cannons poking into the air. Their heavy caterpillar treads left deep tooth-prints in the hot asphalt.
“There they are,” Chandol exclaimed. “Real tanks.”
“Yeah,” Kijun said. “Aren’t they splendid?”
Heavily loaded trucks crept by, some of them dragging fearful howitzers with long shiny barrels, muzzles capped with canvas covers. Some trucks had tent houses rigged in the back. And foot soldiers wearily trudged along the road on both sides of the truck procession.
“Don’t they look impressive!” Chandol said, pointing at the plodding soldiers.
“Soldiers are most magnificent when they march,” Kijun said.
“Why don’t you say something to the liberators, Toad?” Chandol urged. “You’re the only one among us that can speak to the bengkos in English, after all.”
As if stung by that remark, Kijun sprang up, waving his hand, and shouted enthusiastically, “Hello, bengko! Give me chop chop! Give me chop chop!”
A soldier driving a heavy truck with huge wheels threw a chocolate bar to the boys and Kijun ran after it.
“Wait a minute,” Chandol said. “You said those same words at the camp this morning, didn’t you? You say it when you want a bengko to give you something to eat. Why don’t you stop begging and say something new, something like ‘goodbye’, to the departing soldiers? Or perhaps you don’t know any other bengko words, eh?”
“I know other bengko words all right,” Kijun said, breaking the chocolate bar into four pieces to share it with the other boys. “How about this? 'Hello, bengko, bengko! Sonnomo betch! Sonnomo betch!'”
“Sonnomo betch?” Chandol said, intrigued. “That sounds like Korean. ‘Cabbages over the hill,’ right?”
“But it is English,” Kijun insisted. “My uncle told me that many town boys say it to passing bengkos and then run away. It must be a swearing expression because the soldiers always get mad when you say it to them.”
“Maybe betch is the bad word. Perhaps they hate cabbages more than anything else in the world, because their eyes have turned green from eating too much cabbage and they hate green eyes. They look like monsters because their eyes are such a strange color.”
The World Army soldiers were on an endless march, their heavy boots clomping on the tarmac, helmet straps cinched tight on their chins, their expressions glum or forlorn, their lips locked firmly in fatigue and boredom, their deepset eyes staring into the void ahead of them, so many identical helmets and rifle muzzles and loaded shoulders bobbing and streaming on and on.
“If you know any other bengko language expression, why don’t you teach it to us? I really like sonnomo betch. I must remember it,” Chandol said.
“I know gerrary. It’s got something to do with someone going away. When you go somewhere, people say gerrary to you. Or you say gerrary and someone leaves. I forget exactly which.”
“That sounds perfect,” Chandol said, “because the soldiers are going away and we have to bid farewell to them.”
So the boys used it. Waving their hands goodbye, they shouted to the soldiers at the top of their voices:
“Gerrary! Gerrary!”
“Gerrary! Gerrary!”
Part II
TEXAS TOWN
ONE
The sky was a vast clear glass ceiling that might be shattered by the least vibration. In the willows by the stream, a bird sang. The pine needles had turned dusty green and the shade in the woods looked darker. Sitting on the stoop, Mansik stared at the field over the twig fence.
“Mother,” he called.
There was no reply from the other room. Ollye did not stir. She gazed blankly at the ceiling, lying on the floor as usual. Nanhi was playing alone with jackstones by the walnut stump. It was so silent around him that he thought he could hear the silence itself. The boy lived in such absolute silence these days that he sometimes had delusions of hearing things such as the glass sky quietly cracking at noon or the village women skulking around the Chestnut House, with intermittent muffled giggles in the dark, to spy on the cursed family.
“We have nothing to eat along with the rice, Mother,” the boy said.
A short silence ensued before Ollye reluctantly answered in a low, drained voice, “I know.”
They had not run out of the rice they had taken from the town granary yet, but Mansik could find nothing in the kitchen to eat with it except salt, soy sauce and pickled garlic. “Maybe I’d better go to the hills and pick some mushrooms,” the boy said.
After another short silence, her weak voice replied from the room, “Do you think you can go?”
“What do you mean? Of course I can.”
Then it dawned on the boy why she had asked him that question. She was wondering if her son had finally summoned enough courage to venture out into the world which denied their existence. Mansik stared at his sister who was trying to grab all five stones at once with her clumsy fingers.
“I’ll go to the hills in the afternoon,” he said. “I’ll go to the bean patch, too. And maybe I can get some potatoes somewhere.”
He took a deep breath to brace himself. I can go anywhere I want to, he thought defiantly. Nobody is going to stop me.
Two strange women came up the riverbank from the ferry. Their clothes looked scandalous. The boy had never seen anything like them in West County. Even during his occasional trips to the town with his mother, Mansik had never seen anybody dressed as outrageously as these two. At first Mansik thought they were twin sisters because both of them were in such odd but identical attire—short blue-black skirts that exposed not only the bare skin of their calves but the whole round shape of their hips, and brightly colored blouses without any sleeves at all that revealed the ugly marks of cowpox shots on their shoulders for everybody to see. Their peculiar hair, in permanent waves, resembled upside-down bells, and both of them wore pointed, glossy leather shoes with high heels as sharp as hoe blades unlike the beautiful and elegant white or turquoise rubber shoes with exquisite flower patterns he was accustomed to seeing.
The women, each about twenty years old, paused by the log bridge to discuss something, looking around Inner and Outer Kumsan alternately, and then over at the Chestnut House. Mansik was embarrassed because he did not want to be caught secretly watching them. Then they reached a decision and crossed the bridge. They headed for Inner Kumsan along the road lined with blooming Chinese asters. Mansik stood and craned his neck to watch the women as they went. They paused again before the rice mill, had another short discussion, and one went over to the wide plank door. The woman seemed to hail someone, and a little while later, the smaller side door opened and Kangho’s mother peeked out. They exchanged some words and the two strange women disappeared into the mill. Mansik was curious. He wondered why strangers from the town were visiting Kangho’s family.
Mansik watched the closed doors of the silent mill for several minutes, waiting for something to happen. The women came out of the mill and went over to the tobacco shop near the old ginkgo tree
. Mansik waited again, growing more and more curious. They took a little more time at the tobacco shop. When they came out of the tobacco shop at last, Mansik felt instinctively that these strangers were plotting something. The boy did not know what their scheme was, but he did not like it.
Now the two women retraced their steps along the road lined with Chinese asters back to the log bridge, crossed the stream, and came directly over to the Chestnut House. They stopped by the chestnut tree and one gestured at Mansik to come over to them.
“Mother,” Mansik called, sidling to the gate, his eyes still fixed on the women.
Ollye must have heard the footsteps coming up the footpath too, for she replied without much delay this time, “Yes?”
“We have visitors.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “They look very strange.”
“Find out who they are and what they want from us.”
The woman in the purple blouse was tall and slim, her left eye conspicuously narrower than the right, and she had a way of looking at people sideways with her chin pulled in. This woman had painted her eyelashes thickly like caterpillars and her lips as red as blood, like a shaman. She also had shiny glass pieces suspending from her earlobes and a pearly necklace resting on her bulging breasts. And she wore a small, personal watch on her wrist, while only four families in Kumsan village even had their own household clocks. She held a large black velvet purse in her hand.
The other woman clutched an identical large black velvet purse. This woman, in a red blouse, was as heavily made up as the first, and had a mole on her high forehead. She had a baby face with chubby cheeks and a plump chin, and her expression was alert although her eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. This young woman’s blouse, like her companion’s, very clearly showed the shape of her big breasts. Mansik supposed they were not decent women, because all respectable ones did their best to completely conceal the existence of their most feminine parts in loose dresses. Most shocking of all for Mansik was the fact that their sleeveless blouses even revealed the shameful hair under their armpits whenever either one of them lifted her hand.
“You must be Mansik,” the woman in purple said, tapping his nosetip. At first glance Mansik had recognized her as the leader of the two.
“Who are you?” said Mansik, recoiling. Now he was sure he did not like this strange women. “My mother wants to know who you are. And what do you want from us?”
Ignoring his questions, the woman in purple peered into the house to catch sight of Ollye. “I’ve got something to talk about to your mother,” she said. “Will you tell her that we came to see her?”
“Mother,” he called. “Come on out here. They want to talk to you.” Ollye kept silent for a while. She said at last, “Let them come in.”
The rusty hinges of the gate opened with a cautious creak and Mansik stepped aside so that the visitors could enter. As they waited in the yard, Ollye, pallid and emaciated, came out to the stoop, tidying herself. She led the visitors into her room and Mansik sat down on the edge of the stoop to find out what these two women were up to. The woman in purple introduced herself and her friend to Ollye.
“My name is Yonghi and this is Sundok,” she said.
The woman in red nodded her head hello. Not prepared for visitors, Ollye squatted defensively near the wall without replying.
Yonghi tried to be sociable. “My name means ‘Dragon Girl.’ My father gave me that name because my mother had an auspicious dream of a golden dragon soaring to the blue sky while she was pregnant with me. But I’ve never made anything close to a heavenly dragon.” She chuckled and so did her friend. She went on, “My friends call me Serpent, because that’s the thing I’ve made closest to a dragon. Some of my friends call me Loach, because they believe I haven’t even made a snake!”
These two women were shameless and insolent enough to joke and laugh about their personal lives—intimate matters—at a stranger’s house on their very first meeting, and Ollye tried very hard not to look directly at the bare skin of their exposed arms and chests.
“Tell me why you wanted to see me,” she said, watching her young daughter trying to feed jackstones to the rabbits in the yard.
“Well, well, well, you know,” said Yonghi, stealing a sidelong glance at Ollye. “We didn’t know anything about it when we arrived here but …” She paused for another quick squint. “We’ve been enquiring about getting a room or a house in this village and learned of it at the tobacco shop by sheer chance.”
“Learned of what?” Ollye said. She did not understand because she was not listening attentively.
Yonghi restrained herself, not too sure how to approach this naive country woman. She glanced at Sundok, hoping to detect a hint in her friend’s expression. Sundok offered no clue. The woman in purple turned back to Ollye. It was this hesitant silence, not Yonghi’s actual explanation, that enlightened Ollye as to what the visitor was trying to tell her. Yonghi was relieved when she noticed by the subtle change of her expression that Mansik’s mother had finally got the message.
“I am so sorry for you,” the stranger said solemnly. That was enough compassion for courtesy, however, and she instantly resumed her aggressive approach, getting down to business. “So I thought I might be able to help you somehow and decided to visit you. I have a proposition to offer you.”
“A proposition?” It was Ollye’s turn to study the visitor’s expression to seek a hint.
“Yes. And a good one too,” the visitor said. “Since you’ve gone through such a terrible ordeal, you might want to leave this village.”
“Leave this village?” Ollye said, puzzled.
“That’s right. Leave. You know. Leave here and forget everything. You can settle down at a new place and start a whole new life, if you want. You must have thought about it a lot.”
So far Ollye had not considered the possibility of leaving West County. If she left she believed she would wither and die, like grass uprooted. She could never leave the County. Never.
“Why are you making this offer to me?” Ollye asked, brushing her hair back with her bony fingers. “Why is it your concern if I leave this village or not?”
The woman in purple once more studied Ollye’s eyes to determine if she had given too many hints and cornered herself. She did not think so. “You have to dispose of your house if you leave this village,” she said. “And I want to buy your house in that case.”
“Why do you want to buy my house?”
“Because I need it.”
“Mother,” Mansik called, rising slowly from the stoop, looking out at the road with a worried face.
“What is it, Mansik?”
“Look,” the boy said. “Out there on the road. Master Hwang is watching us.”
Ollye looked over the fence at the road and saw Old Hwang, standing in the road staring at the Chestnut House, his face red with anger. The old man must have come from the rice paddies where he had been working, she supposed, for he had a wet sickle in his hand and his rolled-up sleeves were stained with mud.
Mansik was surprised by his mother’s indifference to the old man. This was the first time she had ever ignored the old master.
Ollye turned back to her visitors. “Why do you need this house?” she asked.
The woman in purple seemed to vacillate for a moment as if choosing whether or not to tell her the truth. She decided to be honest but discreet. “You’ll have some visitors here soon,” she said. She wanted to reserve some information for the time being.
“He’s going away,” Mansik said, stretching to watch the old man strut away.
Ollye did not even bother to look. “What visitors?” she asked Yonghi.
“Why do you care? You must want to leave here with your son and daughter and forget the whole thing. We need a room or a house to do some business with the visitors who will come here soon. We’ve been looking around this village for a house to rent or buy, but didn’t find anything sati
sfactory … until now.” It was obvious that Yonghi was determined to buy the Chestnut House. “Now you know the whole story. And I want to know how much you want for this hut.”
“I didn’t say anything about selling this house,” Ollye said. “Nor anything about leaving this place.”
The woman in purple was becoming desperate, thinking Ollye was driving a hard bargain. Maybe the prospect of selling was too sudden and her offer too generous for this woman, Yonghi thought.
The harder the strangers tried to persuade her, the more suspicious Ollye became. The woman in red joined in, but Ollye would not change her mind, because she had absolutely no idea where she would go if she sold the house and left the village.
“Well,” the woman in purple finally said, picking up her velvet purse and rising to leave, “I’d better admit that I lost this time. Let’s go back to town, Sundok.”
Ollye was about to say goodbye to the departing visitors when Sundok, stepping down to the yard, spotted a hovel on the riverbank about five hundred yards downstream.
“Look, Sister Serpent,” she said to Yonghi. “That’s a very nice location, isn’t it?”
Shading her eyes from the sun’s glare with her hand, Yonghi took a careful look at the distant thatched hut. “I can’t see what shape it’s in at this distance, but its location is terrific,” she agreed. Squeezing her plump feet into her tight leather shoes, she asked Ollye, “Who lives there?”
“A snake hunter,” Ollye explained. “An old man who catches snakes to sell at the snake soup house at Central Market. He used to live at a house near that tall ginkgo tree over there, but the neighbors built a new hut by the river and asked the old man to go and live there. They were afraid that snakes might escape from his house one night and …”
Sundok, who was not a bit interested in snakes, interrupted Ollye’s explanation and suggested to Yonghi, “Why don’t we go take a look at the hut, Sis? Maybe that shack is just what we’ve been looking for, after all.”