by Junghyo Ahn
“Who said you could make such a decision for us?” said Chandol.
“Yeah, who said you could?” Kijun chimed in. “You think you’re the captain or something?”
“Mansik used to be such a good friend to us,” Kangho said, ignoring Jun. “Why don’t you give him a chance and try to understand—”
“We don’t have to understand anything about him,” Chandol interrupted Kangho. “And you stay out of this business, Kangho. I’ll take care of him myself.”
Chandol beckoned Mansik over. Mansik hesitated for a moment, sensing something was going wrong, then went over to Chandol.
“Stop there,” Chandol said. “That’s close enough.”
Mansik stopped.
“Why are you here?” Chandol asked.
Mansik said nothing. He knew he should not have come. He had known all along that things would turn out this way. It was too late now.
“I guess you came here to play with us, but we can’t play with you,” Chandol said. “We all know that your mother fucked a nigger. And you still expect us to play with you?”
“Yeah,” Kijun added. “My mother told me your mother will have a black baby because she fucked a black man.”
“You shut up, Toad.” Chandol silenced Kijun and then went on. “I know that Kangho went to see you last night and told you to come here today, but Kangho’s words are cancelled by me. I heard your mother is whoring in Texas. Think, boy, think. How can you expect us to play with a whore’s son?”
Later, Mansik could not remember exactly what had happened after that. He was running across the sand. He ran like a whipped dog. He did not cry. He was too confused to cry. He just ran. And someone, perhaps Kijun, chanted at the top of his voice somewhere in the distance behind him:
Mansik mommy U.N. lady,
Mansik mommy Yankee whore,
Mansik mommy U.N. lady …
• • •
Ollye and Sister Serpent entertained their bengko customers in a narrow room illuminated by a red-painted electric bulb. On one wall there was a pinup poster showing a young American girl in short pants doffing a military helmet coquettishly. The bare planks of the opposite wall were decorated with a one-page calendar. Several dresses in bright colors hung from nails on the rear wall.
“You mean beer still tastes bitter to you?” said Yonghi maliciously, maintaining a false snaky smile on her lips so that the Yankee soldiers would not notice that she was berating Ollye in the middle of their drinking party. “You should be quite used to all sorts of strong liquor by now, much less this mild beer. Look, Sis, you shouldn’t frown like that in the presence of the customers.” She poured another cup of beer for her soldier and went on, “You should give a smiling impression to all your customers all the time and you have to keep drinking a lot. You can charge them for all the beer you drink, remember? Smile, I said. I’ve told you a hundred times to keep smiling, haven’t I?”
Yonghi’s room had a regular door with a latch and a handle, but the room she rented to Ollye had no door of any sort. They had not yet been able to get plywood to make one. A single straw mat was draped over the entrance like a curtain to screen the room from the alley. They were sitting on the board floor around the low plank table loaded with beer cans, bottles, dried cuttlefish, salted peanuts and anchovy mixed with roasted kelp.
“Hey, drink can do?” said Ollye’s customer, whose nose looked like a clenched fist. In Texas Town, the bengko soldiers spoke Konglish, Koreanized English.
Ollye understood that the soldier wanted to know if she could drink and she replied with the bengko words taught her by Yonghi and Sundok, “Okay. Can do. Sank you.”
Sister Serpent displayed a satisfied expression at her answer. Ollye could not see Sundok in the room. Where did she go? Where had she … Oh, yes, now Ollye remembered. She had left the room early with Sarging Buffalo, who had preferred to retire to the back room with Sundok after only one can of beer. That terrible Sarging Buffalo would torture Sundok all night again, and Ollye knew Sundok would be too tired tomorrow to get out of her bed until late afternoon.
Yonghi’s tall sarging, who was too tall even for a Yankee, scooped a spoonful of jam from a glass bottle and offered it to her smiling red lips. Yonghi asked her tall sarging, Where your homutown? The tall sarging said Omaha, and Yonghi asked Fist Nose, Where your homutown? Fist Nose also said Omaha, and they laughed.
“These sargings are funny guys, Sis,” Yonghi said. “I asked them where is their hometown and both of them said they’re from Omaha.” Ollye could not understand why that was supposed to be funny and Yonghi explained, “They’re saying their home is here, Camp Omaha,” and Ollye still could not find anything funny about that and Yonghi said, “Why don’t you smile, too, once in a while, Sis, when they seem to be enjoying themselves? Just give a cute little smile when they laugh even if you don’t understand what they are talking about, will you?”
Ollye simpered belatedly and resolved to try to smile now and then. But she found it extremely difficult to control the timing of her smiles, control herself, or control anything when she had taken a drink. She tried to be a good U.N. lady, although it was difficult. But that was the only way to pay back Sister Serpent for all she had done to help her. Yonghi was, so to speak, her guide and mentor. Yonghi trained and educated her, provided her with a room, brought men and introduced them to her, and even coached her in the tricks and skills which would please the foreign soldiers. In addition to teaching her so many basic things, Yonghi sometimes helped her communicate with the customers, and it was also through Yonghi that she exchanged military payment certificates for real money. Ollye was totally hopeless without Yonghi, and she knew it, so it seemed fair that Sister Serpent took half of her earnings.
Sister Serpent seemed to know everything there was to know about this Yankee wife business. Ollye listened attentively to her lectures every day, but there were always more things for her to learn. “You have to be prepared for the venereal diseases, Sis,” she said one day. “You must have heard about ‘social diseases’ or ‘pleasure diseases,’ haven’t you? The most common ones are clap and pox. Gonorrhea and syphilis in Yankee words. Be careful not to contract them. If you get one of those horrible diseases, you could give birth to a harelipped baby, and I saw a girl with pox who lost most of her hair. So you have to use this rubber sack all the time.” She showed the white transparent balloon to her. “You wrap the male tool with it like this.” She showed with her fingers how to fit it and Sundok laughed and laughed during the demonstration. “If your soldier uses this, it will prevent not only diseases but pregnancy, too. Some of them prefer not to put anything on their instruments, so you’d better ask ‘Condom okay?’ when you have a new customer. If he says okay, you are okay, too.”
Ollye noticed they used the word “okay” surprisingly often in the bengko language. The bengko words Sundok and Yonghi and their soldier friends used most often in their conversations were “okay, okay” “hubba-hubba,” “namba wang,” “namba teng,” “gerrary,” “drink,” “kiss kiss” “cock,” “cunt” and “fuck.” These were the first American words she learned.
Yonghi taught Ollye the phrases she would need to communicate with and entertain her Yankee customers. “When a bengko says 'Slip with me?’ he wants to sleep with you. 'Slip with me’ means the same as 'fuck.’ Then you have to ask ''Long time, short time?'’ Long-time customers sleep with you all night but short-time customers have just one fuck and leave.”
Ollye had not had a long-time customer yet. At first she had thought it would be too embarrassing for her to hail the boatman from across the river early in the morning to go back home. And she was afraid to stay with a bengko all night. Yonghi knew this and assigned only short-time customers to her.
The beer upset her stomach so much that she felt her entrails twirl like eels on a frying pan every time she moved. But she did not feel as nauseated now as she had with her first drink. When Ollye had had to entertain her first customer, Yong
hi gave her a shot of clear apricot-colored liquor, telling her it would drive away fear and anxiety. It did make her feel less nervous, but unbearably queasy too. She dreaded what she was doing during the actual sex, even confusing the customer with the bengkos who had attacked her that night, and shuddering in abhorrence and terror. But she could not resist because she felt too weak, her head swimming as if she was stricken with malaria. She passed out in a drunken stupor. When she came to, the bengko was already gone, leaving only a pool of slippery fluid in her groin.
Sarging Fist Nose asked Ollye “How old you?'''’ and Yonghi interpreted; the soldier was asking her age. Ollye said, as she had been taught, “Tenti po,” which meant she was twenty-four years old. The bengkos couldn’t tell even if she cheated by ten years.
Ollye was too drunk now to hold her slippery glass straight and beer streamed down the back of her hand. Ollye was wearing Yonghi’s green satin dress with a large cloth rose on the chest.
“Be careful, Sis,” Yonghi said with a fake smile. “Don’t spill the beer and spoil my dress.”
“I’m sorry,” Ollye said. “I’ll be careful. I think I’ll never learn to drink as well as you do.”
“You will learn to drink all right,” Yonghi said. “In time you’ll get used to everything.”
That was true. She was indeed getting used to everything—even to sleeping with the foreign soldiers. But she still could not overcome the shock that had stunned her yesterday afternoon when she had found scribbled on the wall of the tobacco shed near the ferry: Mansik mommy U.N. lady, Mansik mommy Yankee whore. What worried her most at that instant was the possibility that Mansik might have seen it. If he had not, she wanted to remove it before he had the chance. She dashed down to a rice paddy, grabbed a handful of mud, dashed back to the tobacco shed and erased the charcoal scribbling by smearing mud over it. Now she blushed again, hot anger surging to her face, as she vividly remembered the scribbling. It was in a child’s handwriting. It had been scrawled there by one of Mansik’s old friends to humiliate her son.
It seemed the whole village knew what she was doing. Nobody could expect the boatman to keep his mouth shut for long. Ollye had bribed the boatman with American cigarettes to keep him silent about her secret trips to Texas Town but Yom must have decided that her time was up. So what? Though they had branded her a filthy woman, Ollye thought they were all accomplices in her fall. She hated the villagers. She hated the villagers, the bengkos, the child who had scrawled the dirty words on the wall of the tobacco shed, and everybody around her. She hated the boatman who must have passed the word around that she had become a Yankee whore.
She considered entertaining long-time customers now that she no longer had anything to keep secret. She could not make much money working with short-timers only. But if she were to entertain long-time soldiers she would have to live at the shanty town. She did not want to bring her children to be raised in such a place. She could not make decisions because everything was so confusing and she was so drunk.
Old Hwang would have heard of her activities, too. He might forbid her use of the boat as he had denied it to Yonghi and Sundok. There was no doubt about it. Sooner or later she would not be allowed to use the boat. What would she do then? They might get a boat of their own, as Yonghi had suggested. It sounded like a perfect plan. When they found a boat, they could leave this shanty and move Dragon Lady Club to the riverside house. They could bring the customers across the river. Old Hwang and the villagers would raise hell. Who cared? Ollye was no longer afraid of anything the villagers could do to her. Maybe she was too drunk to fear anything now, but somehow everything seemed to have become easy and simple.
“I think we will retire to my room, Sis,” Yonghi said. “It’s not good business to keep them awake when they’re not drinking any more. Why don’t you give your sarging a good time, too? Looks like he has a great big erection.”
The tall soldier and Yonghi scrambled to their feet, the soldier staggering but Yonghi as sober as an icicle, and with giggles and murmurs they disappeared behind the veneer door. As soon as they were left alone, Fist Nose started to take his pants off, saying “I wanna fuck you. I wanna fuck you.'''’ OUye thought it was funny that any man took his trousers off before his jacket; this soldier took his trousers off first, and then his shorts. In a moment the bengkos male thing was exposed; it dangled down under the jacket like a greased sausage. Then he took off his socks, his jacket and his shirt. He came over to her and pulled the green dress with its cloth rose over her head. She had nothing under the dress, because Yonghi had told her that was one sure way to win a steady customer fast. Yonghi had also told her to learn to have some fun out of the business.
The bengko hastily mounted her, his rubbery thing slipped into her, and the floor seemed to roll and pitch like the deck of a ship in a storm. She recalled what Sister Serpent had told her that afternoon. She did not know why she suddenly remembered her words at this particular moment, but she did. As Fist Nose kept pumping she feared her entrails would squeeze out of her anus under his heavy weight. You should make a careful choice of your customers, Yonghi had advised her. There are two kinds of U.N. ladies, you know—those who entertain the white Yankees and those who entertain the blackies. At some larger Texas Towns, there’re even separate sectors for the whites and the blacks. The whites never sleep with any girl who has ever entertained a nigger. The whites treat the niggers like dirt, you know. The girls who entertain whites can switch to blacks any time they want, but the blackie whores can never sleep with a whitey. So, if you ever allow yourself to go with a black soldier, you will be a nigger whore for good. Ollye told her that one of the two bengkos that had raped her was black. Yonghi warned her not to tell it ever, ever to anybody, if she wanted to remain a white whore. Fist Nose kept pumping and squeezing her and Ollye could no longer stand the punishment. She started to vomit violently with the bengko still on her.
Part III
THE CHILDREN
ONE
The river was silent in the dark behind them, but from the direction of Texas Town the three boys could hear a throbbing female voice on an old squeaky phonograph. At times the sound rose and then faded as it was swept away by the wind. Shivering in their wet nakedness, the boys hurried down a narrow path through the reeds.
“This is an awfully cold night to go to watch anything,” said Chandol in a low voice, pressing his navel with his index finger to stop the night air from getting into his insides and loosening his bowels.
“But it’s worth the trouble,” said Jun with a chuckle, following close behind Chandol. “I’ve never seen anything like what the U. N. ladies do with the bengkos.”
Kangho kept apprehensively silent, hiding his crotch selfconsciously with his folded hands. He was not too sure about this whole thing. This adventure was unlike anything they had ever done before. Neither the Autumn War with the Castle boys nor the raid on the dump was as dangerous and strange as this new game of theirs. If they were ever caught by the bengkos, the soldiers would be so mad that they might shoot and kill them.
The three boys had sneaked out of their homes. They swam across the river to Texas Town when the whole village was asleep, for the boys knew the boatman would tell Rich Hwang of their visit to the islet if he spotted them. Bong had been left behind because he could not swim well enough to reach Cucumber Island and also because Chandol decided that he was too young for this adventure.
They quickened their pace. They wanted to see the whores as soon as possible. The breeze felt as chilly to them as air right before it snows on a winter morning. When they reached a sand dune by the shanty town, they looked at one another, their eyes glinting.
“You boys wait here until I pick the house,” Chandol said and crawled up the dune, wriggling his hips sideways like a lizard.
Lying flat on top of the dune, Chandol surveyed the whoretown which was colorfully decorated with signs and painted pictures and electric bulbs, deciding which house they would peep into tonigh
t. There were almost fifty shanties in Texas Town now, and the soldiers, in their garrison caps like origami boats, slouched around by twos and threes among the crowded shacks, glancing at the young girls sitting on plank benches in the alleys. The whores, displaying their half-exposed tits and open thighs and whatever they had to offer, invited the bengkos, “Hey, Joe, buy me drink, okay? Buy me drink, okay?” A girl laughed shrilly somewhere unseen and a soldier swore “Goddamn!” somewhere else.
Chandol quickly made his choice. He knew there would be a lot to watch with this particular couple. The tall soldier and his whore played with each other in a way conspicuously different from that of other soldiers and U.N. ladies. There was lots of pulling and tugging and pinching and hugging and hand-holding going on among the Yankees and the whores but this lanky soldier and his pancake-faced girl really knew how to play with each other. The soldier was so tall that her head barely reached his shoulder and his hand could reach around her neck down to her breasts. He kept squeezing and kneading them through the neck of her loose scarlet blouse all the while he was chatting and laughing and walking with her to her house. The girl, in a Chinese skirt, that was slit on both sides to reveal most of her legs, apparently liked what he was doing to her; she giggled, clinging to his waist tightly with one arm, her free hand playfully rubbing and stroking and jerking the bulge in the soldier’s pants between his legs. The couple disappeared through the strings of wooden beads covering the doorway of a frame house which looked like a compost shed.
Chandol quickly slid down the dune backward to the waiting boys. “We’re going to have a nice show tonight. Come.”
The three boys crawled around the dune and approached the house. Like most shanties in Texas Town, this one had no fence around it. The boys crept to the back of the house and concealed themselves in the dark, pressing their backs against the wall.
“Somebody must be lookout,” Chandol whispered.