by Junghyo Ahn
Yonghi and Ollye had packed up some American cigarettes, C-ration cans and slabs of chocolates and gone to Kamwa village where Ollye had once lived. At the village, Ollye visited several of her old neighbors to ask if anyone might sell or lease a boat to them. A fisherman suggested that they go down river to Kangchon and find the old man who worked for the Buddhist temple during the winter. He would not need his boat until next spring.
Most villagers of Kamwa and Kangchon shunned the two women because of Yonghi’s bold “Western” attire and unwomanly aggressive manners, but the old man agreed to lease his boat to Ollye because he had been a long-time friend of her father. The old man also liked the American cigarettes they had brought for him. Besides, the money they offered him for a lease of two months amounted to the sum the old man would earn by a half year of fishing.
“Why don’t you open the window, Sis?” Yonghi said, emptying the full ashtray, a jam jar, onto the earthen floor of the hall outside the door. “The cigarette smoke is suffocating me.”
Ollye staggered up, trying to stretch her short skirt with one hand to hide her naked knees. She lifted the window and propped it open with a chopstick. When she sat down again next to Sarging Fist Nose, she felt somewhat cooler but her dizzy head would not clear. She knew she would not last long in this business. She was simply not cut out for this kind of life. And she had to start a new life before Nanhi was old enough to understand what her mother was doing. She did not want her daughter to suffer the way Mansik did now. Mansik was always glum these days and rarely answered her. He even skipped his meals because he was too frustrated and angry to have any appetite. The return of Sister Serpent to Kumsan had certainly been the last straw for Mansik.
The old man had been so pleased with the deal and their gifts that he volunteered to deliver the boat to Cucumber Island. When the boat arrived safely at the islet and the old man had gone to town to return to his home by train, Ollye and Yonghi had loaded their trunks and the sign on the boat and crossed the river. They were surprised to find how exhausting it was to row a boat; it took almost a half hour for them to reach the opposite bank, pushing and pulling the heavy creaking oars as the old man had showed them. They moored the boat by the tree near the snake hunter’s shack and went to the Chestnut House where they were going to stay until the riverside hut was ready.
When Yonghi entered the Chestnut House, Mansik had been feeding his rabbits. “Hello, boy, long time no see,” she said cheerfully. “But we’re going to see each other a lot from now on.” Taken aback at the sight of the Yankee whore walking side by side with his mother, the boy looked at Yonghi, at his mother, and then at Yonghi again. “You’re not going to say hello to me?” asked Yonghi, reaching out to pat his head. The boy stepped back, dodged, and stopped short when his back touched the wire netting of the rabbit cage. He glared at the woman as if she were a criminal. “What is the meaning of this, Mansik!” Ollye tried to scold her son, but she was not sure if she was entitled to. “She’s your mother’s friend.” Mansik ran out of the house and did not return home until dark.
Yonghi and Ollye went back to Cucumber Island the next day to settle matters such as paying the remaining installments of rent, arranging to purchase drinks and Yankee food, and notifying the steady customers of the new location of the Club. Yonghi instructed Sundok to change the name of the old Dragon Lady Club to Club Goldfish “so that all the customers coming here will drink like fish to make us rich very quickly” and left her in charge. Then the two women went to town and hired a carpenter and two workers to remodel the snake hunter’s shack. First of all, Yonghi wanted the kitchen converted to a room with cubicles for entertaining soldiers. They did not need the kitchen because they would have their meals at the Chestnut House and they could cook the snacks which went with drinks with canned solid alcohol fuel. They decided not to entertain any customers at the Chestnut House because Ollye needed a place to keep her children apart from her shame.
The hired hands finished their work in four days, and the two women started working on the house themselves. The rooms where they would sleep with soldiers were papered with comic books and the Stars and Stripes. On the rear wall they hung a framed photograph of a bengko moving picture actress called Betty Grable. They had failed to locate an inexpensive second-hand wind-up phonograph yet, but they would manage with music from the AFKN Yankee military station on a Zenith radio.
Since they did not have electricity in the county, Sister Serpent lit the main room with two kerosene lamps while paper lanterns with candles inside were placed on tall wooden stands in each of the two “customer” rooms. Yonghi contrived the paper lanterns herself with some pieces of wire and willow branches, and Ollye was impressed by Sister Serpent’s extraordinary skill in drawing orchids and bamboo on the wet rice paper with a rat-fur brush.
“Oh, sure, I’m good at many other things besides whoring,” Yonghi said when Ollye complimented her on the paintings. “I’m a good cook, too. I would have made a wonderful wife for that son of the pear orchard owner if the war had not broken out.” A shadow of resentment passed over her face when she said that. “Well, that’s life,” she added, cheerfully.
Late one afternoon, Yonghi had rushed into the Chestnut House, excited and happy, laughing and calling, “We don’t need to row the boat any longer, Sis! We don’t need to worry about drifting away down the river and we don’t need to tire ourselves out rowing the boat back and forth.”
“What are you talking about?” said Ollye, incredulous but delighted, for she was doing most of the rowing.
“Come on out,” Yonghi said. “Look what I’ve done!”
Ollye went to the new Dragon Lady Club with her and saw a man fixing a thick hemp rope across the river between a steel pole driven into the ground among the reeds on Cucumber Island and the tall plane tree on the river bank near the Club. When the rope was properly fixed and fastened tight, the worker attached big steel rings at both ends of the boat, the rope passing through the rings.
“Look, Sis, you can move the boat this way.” Yonghi gave a demonstration. “Instead of rowing, you just sit down here and pull the rope like this. See? The boat glides easily!”
Ollye tried the rope. They could cross the river in five minutes.
“Can you guess where I got this rope and the posts, Sis?” Yonghi said with a playful but proud smile. “I got them from Camp Omaha. Two free fucks.”
Yonghi murmured something coquettish and Sarging Fist Nose burst into a loud laughter, the beer glass suspended in the air an inch before his lips, shaking. Sarging Mike also laughed, and Yonghi laughed, and Ollye laughed too with perfect timing. The laughter died down and it turned silent. Nobody said anything. The two soldiers and Sister Serpent stared at Ollye. Ollye wondered what was wrong.
Sarging Mike said something in a low voice and the three stared at her again. Then Yonghi said with a frustrated expression, “He’s asking you, Sis.”
“Me?” said Ollye, confused. “What did he ask me?”
“Didn’t you understand his question?”
“No.”
“Why did you laugh, then?”
“You told me I have to laugh when everybody else does. What did he ask me?”
“Never mind,” Yonghi said. “Just say you like it.”
Ollye did what she was told to do. “Yes,” she said. “Namba wang. Okay.”
The three laughed again but Ollye, instead of joining their laugh, picked up the glass before her and gulped the beer; she was not sure if she was supposed to laugh now or not. Ollye realized that she did not know what was going on around her and she felt left out. She did not belong here, she thought. Or anywhere.
Sarging Mike chattered on for some time alone. Sarging Fist Nose said something. Yonghi said something. Sarging Mike said something again. They continued chattering for several minutes without laughing. Ollye felt drowsy. She felt her head grow heavy. She would be happy to go to her room with her soldier so she could lie down.
TWO<
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The more you hate someone the more he haunts you, it is said. It was true for Old Hwang. Day after day first thing in the morning when he opened his gate, he saw the Chestnut House and the snake hunter’s shack. He had to start each day provoked by the sight of the two houses he hated most. Exasperated, he would turn back into the Paulownia House, shuddering, before beginning work. When he was doing calligraphy or reading Confucian classics in the guest room, he kept the doors closed not just because the November weather was rather chilly for his aged knees but more because he abhorred the sight of those two hateful houses.
The villagers now called the snake hunter’s hut the Imugi House. Imugi are serpents that have failed to become dragons because of some curse. It was their nickname for the wicked crafty woman who had managed to persuade Ollye to become a Yankee wife.
Old Hwang hated every single thing the Serpent Woman did.
Whenever he watched the two women and the foreign soldiers crossing the river, playfully pulling and tugging the hemp rope suspending over the water, laughing and chanting in unison, “Heave! Heave! Heave!", the old man was so infuriated that he suffered a severe pain in his stomach. The boat that the two women had secured for their own use was an outright challenge to him and his authority. If the drunken soldiers sang a bengko song crossing the river on their way back to Camp Omaha, he would be awakened—disturbed not so much by the song itself as by everything it signified—and he could not get back to sleep until daybreak. Whenever the two women and their Yankees sang or played the radio, the raucous sound seemed to hang heavily over the whole village like a dirty cloud of curses. On those occasions he wanted to rush to the Imugi House with the sharpest axe in the house and cut the rope and let the boat drift away, away, far away … But the old man was reasonable enough to realize that the Serpent Woman had every right to stay at the shack she had bought with her own money.
Kumsan village used to be so quiet in the long early winter nights that you could almost hear the rustling sound of the moonlight touching the withered trees. But that peace was gone now because of the screeching bengko music from the Imugi House. One night when he could no longer stand the noise Old Hwang sent Sokku to the women with an order not to play the music. The noise quieted down a little but even the faintest sound from the riverside house got on the old man’s nerves. It was complete silence that the old man wanted back. He felt his skin itch with goose bumps of detestation whenever he heard the women’s shrill laughter pierce the nocturnal silence.
One night when Imugi House seemed to have a particularly noisy customer and the old man could not fall asleep, he noticed a very strange sound as if dead leaves were rolling away on ice, or a huge serpent slithering over grass, or a stream flowing through a narrow channel. He did not know what the sound was and woke Sokku up.
“Do you hear that sound too, son?” the old man asked.
Sokku listened and said he could hear it. “Sounds like something rolling, Father,” he said.
“No,” said the father, turning toward the gate to go out. “I think it’s the sound of the river flowing very fast. Can’t you feel a sudden chill in the air coming from the direction of the river?”
The father and the son dressed quickly and were about to go to the river and see if anything was wrong when the boatman arrived at their gate, breathless.
“What is happening at the river?” the old man asked.
“I’ve never seen anything as strange as this, Master Hwang,” the boatman said between his gasps. “It has not rained a drop for over a week but the river is now rising as fast as after the most torrential rain.”
The news about the mysterious phenomenon circulated rapidly among the villagers; they gathered at the riverside by twos and threes, asking one another in worried whispers what on earth was going on, as they watched the swollen river rush by.
“This must be the doomsday before the new creation of the universe,” said an old man. “War is raging in this country and now the river is rising to swallow us all. What more proof do you need?”
“Maybe this is happening because the Imugi Woman has moved into West County,” an emaciated farmer said superstitiously. “That evil imugi is gathering the water here from all over the world so that she has enough water to swim around and leap high into the air and turn into a dragon.”
“The whole village may be flooded overnight if the river keeps rising this way,” said the village chief, frantically limping around among the nervous farmers. “We must stop this. We must stop this somehow.”
Nobody knew how to stop it. They could do nothing about the river except watch it rage. The thick, muddy water kept rising throughout the night to the level of the highest summer floods. The water finally started to ebb at sunrise and the villagers returned home, tired and relieved, to make up for lost sleep. The river resumed its normal level late in the morning but the water was still thick with mud. A dirty layer of sediment covered the dead grass and reeds like a slimy skin.
Old Hwang sent Sokku and the miller to town to find out what had caused the mysterious phenomenon. The old man secretly hoped that the bengko camp and the whoretown had been wiped out by the river, but Sokku reported on his return that the Yankees were safe and had suffered no damage. The camp was located on the highest spot of the islet. Texas Town had not been flooded either, to the old man’s great disappointment. The bengkos and the prostitutes had been puzzled and terrified, but that was all, the miller reported. Most of the floating bridge connecting the islet with Chunchon Railroad Station, however, had been swept away and lost.
Some of the Communist elements, whose retreat route to the north had been cut off by General Megado’s Inchon landing, were conducting guerrilla activities in the Hwachon area, the townsfolk said. The Communists had launched a coordinated attack on the power plant twenty miles upstream. When they captured the plant, they had opened the floodgates to wash away a National Army unit deployed at the riverside village of Sinpo, downstream.
Old Hwang hoped the bengkos had been frightened enough by the unexpected water attack to consider leaving Cucumber Island, but he was disappointed again. In the late afternoon, several helicopters flew in, sputtering noisily, to unload steel beams, and lots of trucks brought hundreds of wooden crates to the town ferry. A swarm of bengko soldiers reconstructed the floating bridge in a single day. In the evening, Texas Town was as full of whores and bengkos as ever. And Imugi House rang again with shrill laughter.
The old man knew he could do nothing about what was going on on Cucumber Island, but he had to protect Kumsan. He would have to repay the price of the snake hunter’s hut in order to drive the Imugi Woman out of his village. If he could expel her, Ollye would not be any trouble. At least that was what the old man thought.
Old Hwang went to town to raise the money to pay the prostitute. Nobody would lend him such a large sum, so he took a boatload of rice from the harvest and sold it to the grain retailers. Once he had enough money to pay the Imugi Woman, he felt infinitely relieved.
Sitting cross-legged before the red lacquer dressing stand, the first large mirror she had owned in her life, Ollye watched herself combing her hair not with a common bamboo comb but with an expensive yellow horn comb. The house was quiet because her children were not home; the weather was quite chilly but Mansik must have gone out with Nanhi. Dragging Nanhi by the hand, he went down to the stream every afternoon as soon as Ollye began painting her face. It was obvious that Mansik did not want his sister to watch their mother go through her ritual of preparation for a night of sin—the ritual of her transmogrification from an ordinary mother to a woman of shame. But Ollye no longer minded her boy’s efforts to keep the innocent little girl away from her; she had become accustomed to other people, including her own son, treating her like filth.
These days Ollye spent many afternoon hours powdering and painting her face. She had never known that “beautifying one’s face” could consume this much time, for until her encounter with Sister Serpent she had not
experienced this complicated process. Now she trimmed and adorned herself like a flower, using many strange cosmetics and brushes, drawing and rubbing different colors around her eyes and on her cheeks, nourishing her skin every other day by placing cucumber slices and tangerine peels all over her face. Even at her wedding held in the yard of the Paulownia House she had not been painted and decorated as elaborately and extravagantly as this. Dressing and making herself up had become a painstaking routine constituting the most essential part of her life.
When Yonghi bought the first pack of Coty powder for her, Ollye thought it was preposterous to use that heavenly powder to make up her face for a few soldiers, who wanted something other than her face after all. So she used to coat her face first with cheap Korean powder and then dab just one or two puffs of Coty upon it. What impressed her as much as Coty powder was Yankee toothpaste. The toothpaste from the plastic tube tasted so sweet that she could not resist, on several occasions, swallowing it after brushing her teeth; she had cleaned her teeth with salt most of her life.
She shook several drops of oil onto her palm out of the blue glass bottle, replaced the shapely bottle on the nacre dresser, rubbed her hands together and began to feed the oil to her hair, now permanented into numerous small curls the U.N. lady way. She used the fragrant oil contained in a transparent foreign bottle instead of ordinary castor oil. At first she had not believed any woman would use this expensive perfumed oil on something as insignificant as her hair. Now, she was doing it.
She looked at her own profile in the mirror. She always looked younger and healthier after putting on makeup. U.N. ladies had to do everything the Yankee women did at home to attract the soldiers, regardless of the time and money it might cost. She wondered when the Yankee women did work like farming and cooking and collecting firewood if they had to spend so much time every day to look beautiful.
Making up one’s face was vulgar, Ollye had been raised to think. But she came to believe that it was something highly elegant and truly feminine. Perhaps prostitution itself was not something as abominable and vile as people said it was. Maybe Yonghi was right in her belief that prostitution was as good for the women themselves as it was for men. Yet nobody but the U.N. ladies seemed to think the way Yonghi did. And whenever Mansik stared at her, she felt as if she had been impaled by the spear of his hatred.