The incident had reminded him of how, twenty years earlier, he had passed a similar love note to a pretty teenage Asian girl who worked in the town library. Though he had left his phone number on the note, she had of course never called him.
He felt more confident – or at least, less intimidated – writing his feelings rather than uttering them, and so it was that he had been able to strike up a relationship with an Asian woman at last via the internet. He had met An, who lived in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, through an online dating service. They had emailed each other back and forth for six months until finally he had made use of his three weeks vacation and his savings to plan a trip to visit her. Over time, they had gone from affectionately calling each other “anh” (you, male) and “em” (you, younger person) to, playfully and romantically, “ong xa” (husband) and “ba xa” (wife).
Friends and family had warned him, concerned, that this girl – much younger than himself, and perhaps too sexy in her poses and attire in the photos on the dating service site – was merely after a green card, only using him as a ticket to the US. One Vietnamese coworker had even advised him that An could be a prostitute, claiming that many poor girls in Vietnam resorted to selling their bodies. Ford had tried to convince them (and himself?) that she had true feelings for him. Yes, he was certain her initial goal had been to find a Western man. But his initial goal had been to find an Asian woman. The point was: of all the people in the world, they had narrowed their choices down to each other.
But he had been ejected from her country, rejected, and thus delayed...and so here he was, gazing somewhat covetously at a busy Korean factory girl instead of into the eyes of his would-be Vietnamese ba xa.
After a time his mind drifted from the pretty young woman’s monotonous movements, and in fresh boxer shorts only, he left the bathroom and plopped back on his little bed’s firm surface, pointing the remote at the television again.
The cable offering was very good, and he found himself surfing through a wide loop of programs as he would at home. Briefly, and with surprise, he watched a stand-up comedy show from the US, with Korean subtitles, but he preferred to observe their own programming. It proved pretty Western, not as exotic as he might have expected. Listening to their language, and glimpsing their world through the admittedly unreliable lens of television, he again couldn’t help comparing them to the Japanese; their modern culture seemed very “pop”. He liked the way the women spoke as if they were singing, especially when they trailed off at the end of their utterances.
He was delighted to see a commercial advertising candy for Halloween; Halloween in Korea! It was his favorite holiday, and its apparent acceptance here was unexpected. The commercial featured a lovely young Korean woman in a witch’s black hat and outfit, but wearing a long blond wig.
He viewed a string of music videos and concluded that Koreans liked their videos in the form of little movies, highly melodramatic, their women crumbling into tears throughout. When not weeping, Korean women were portrayed to him – largely through commercials – as exceedingly cute, whimsical creatures, silly and child-like. But then he chanced upon a very erotic movie that he would classify as a hard R-rated, bordering on soft porn. A fairly grim plot involving murder was mere buffer between endless sexual situations that almost had Ford groaning in self-pity. Would this be him in a few days, if he could return successfully to Vietnam, An’s legs wrapped around him like that, An’s face contorted in bliss? Finally he could endure the movie’s torments no longer, and switched to a documentary on octopuses, whose more stolid activities soothed him.
Still, he reflected that the teary women in the videos, the frolicking hip creatures in the commercials, and the sweat-drenched nude vixens in that rather dated-looking soft porn movie all taken together conveyed a heightened sense of femininity, a trait Ford attributed to Asian females and which was one of the elements that most drew him to them...however terribly mawkish those videos, and overly cutesy those commercials. In his perception, native-born Asian women embodied all the stereotypical feminine qualities, turned to volume 11. Gracefulness, physical beauty, devotion to their men and their children, but also negative stereotypical qualities like cattiness, jealousy, and vanity. Over the years, he had been most beguiled by foreign and non-Caucasian women (women from India, black women, Hispanics, but most particularly Asian women) because of their very foreignness. To him as a man, women were already a mystifying alien species, and adding another culture or even race into the equation only seemed to pump up the male/female dynamic to a more extreme level of intensity.
He got up several times, once to attack a cockroach on the ceiling with a complimentary can of hair spray. Poisoned and shellacked, it dropped to the floor but vanished before he could crush it with something other than his bare foot. Another time, he returned to the bathroom to urinate, and found a very odd insect in the toilet, with long rowing frog-like arms. He flushed it down the drain, but felt vaguely sorry that he had thus far killed two Korean animals (or maybe just one, as the body of the first had not been discovered).
Sliding aside the frosted window panels again, he saw that the window of the factory had gone dark. Second shift had ended, then. He felt a bit disappointed, and lonely. Except for the insects he had battled, that distant woman had been his only companion...but she had been as far removed from him as An was. He shut the window and returned to the TV to find a wrestling program hosted by Koreans but in which the wrestlers all seemed Caucasian. Currently, and freakishly, an obese white man in a baseball cap, shabby blue jeans and work boots was wrestling with a blond woman dressed in leather. Though he didn’t care for wrestling, Ford gaped numbly at the screen as the slovenly fat man slammed the sexy woman onto her back and fell heavily atop her.
3: Horrorwood
It was the vast eyes that drew Ford’s attention to the tall, modern building; they stared down at the streets of the shopping district Myeong-dong from the side of a multi-floored department store called Migliore. Though the rest of the huge advertisement was in Korean characters, the one English word HORRORWOOD dripped in red letters above the eyes, which had blue irises...something Ford, whose own eyes were blue, felt was rather odd considering the country he was in.
He had worked his way to this looming Western-style section of the great city through smaller side streets flanked with more modest places of business. These narrow streets were hilly, sometimes surprisingly so, and he wondered how cars made it up these slopes when it had snowed. He further wondered if the motorcycles that buzzed about, often on the sidewalks (he had quickly learned to be ready to dodge to one side at a moment’s notice), hibernated through or braved winter weather.
The architecture of Seoul – whether back or main street – amazed him. There were plenty of brick buildings and bland concrete apartment complexes (these, the result of Seoul’s massive rebuilding after the Korean War?), but encroaching on the sidewalk there would suddenly be an older, more traditional building capped by a pagoda-like roof with upturned corners. When the taxi driver had driven him from Gimpo Airport to the Vietnam Embassy, they had gone past an awesome walled palace or fortress, and elsewhere – in a downtown area filled with contemporary, gleaming business towers – the old South Gate of the city had risen on a steep green mound in the center of the street like a fabled temple on an island. While dwarfed by the more modern high-rises around it, the two-tiered ancient structure had still conveyed to him a sense of majesty perhaps even greater in power.
Having remained awake all night, waiting anxiously for a reasonable hour to venture forth, he had crept down to the otherwise unoccupied kitchen area at 6 AM, and had been immensely grateful for the freshly brewed coffee he found there. He sat before one of the two computers, and was soon reading his email. An had sent him a message, again expressing her disappointment, sadness and confusion about his nonappearance in Saigon. She also expressed doubt that he would show up and fulfill her dreams, after all. He wrote some lines to reassure her:
&n
bsp; “I am determined to get to you, ba xa, trust me. I’ve come too far to turn back now. I keep surprising myself; I’ve never even been to Canada before this trip, and I haven’t flown anywhere in 14 years, but I keep rising to every challenge that gets thrown in front of me. I’m staying calm and keeping a positive attitude. Are you proud of me? :-) But believe me, I am going to KILL that travel agent when I get back home.”
The travel agency had been recommended to him by several of his Vietnamese coworkers, as being run by a Vietnamese couple. The price had been good, but he was no longer fond of the soft-spoken young Vietnamese woman who had arranged his flight for him, though at the time he had been dazzled by her beauty and uncanny gray eyes (he had finally summoned the strength to ask if they were tinted contact lenses, and they were; he had told her they were pretty – the extent of his shy flirtation).
An had fretted, maybe not so jokingly, that he would meet some nice Korean girl during his few days in Seoul, and he almost chuckled aloud, “I wish” as he again reassured her, citing the chores that would be occupying him. “I still need to buy two new tickets,” he wrote, “to replace the one I already used going to Vietnam, and the one they took to pay for my flight back to Korea. That, and $30 for the new visa. Argh! I read in a book they gave me at the tourist center that I can access my bank account through global ATMs in convenience stores or the subway – I hope so, because this is more than I budgeted for!”
But he had several days to kill before the new visa would be ready, and he was not as yet in a hurry to complete his errands, so his first mission upon setting out on foot had been to grab a bite to eat. He was familiar with Vietnamese food from restaurants back home, but not Korean cuisine, so he didn’t gamble on any of the places that featured only Korean writing in their signs. At last he had bought a very tasty egg sandwich and a strong espresso at the homey-sounding Joe’s Sandwich. Around the corner from Joe’s and across a wide and busy street, he had spotted the rearing department store Migliore with the sign advertising HORRORWOOD, whatever that was.
One way to find out. The street looked too intimidating to cross, so he descended into the subway with the thought to ascend on the other side. This, he saw, as he cut through the station with its tiny mall-like shops, had been the wise course of action. He emerged virtually in the shadow of Migliore, and worked his way closer to it. Was HORRORWOOD an advertised movie, a TV special? A festival, a miniature theme park? He hoped it was an area of the store itself, devoted to Halloween costumes and decorations and the like. The thought of Halloween’s nearness made him a bit homesick, though he knew he would be home from his vacation before the holiday actually arrived.
By some elevators inside he saw a listing of the various levels, indicating that HORRORWOOD was located on the 8th floor, so he entered one of them and punched the appropriate button. He rode with a group of other passengers, all of whom got out at various floors before he reached his. He felt a bit awkward confined in the elevator’s cramped cabin with them. He had already determined, today, from passing so many Koreans in the street, that they were a very reserved people, not dazzled by the sight of a Westerner even though he had only glimpsed two other Westerners (eating in the sandwich shop) so far in Seoul. Pedestrians had seemed not only to avoid eye contact, for the most part, but inclined to act like he didn’t even exist, keeping their faces closed and – to his mind – dour and mask-like. Occasionally a man or woman had met his eyes, and he had nodded in greeting to one stern-looking middle-aged man but there had been no reaction. Well, what had he expected – that the populace would drop to their knees and worship the Great White God who had fallen from the sky? This was the eminent city of Seoul, not some rural Vietnamese town where the local girls might want to marry a Western man to escape their lives of poverty.
He had experienced no outright hostility, though he had feared there might be some resentment, as America was extra unpopular right now due to the war upon Iraq. But he needn’t be perceived as an American, necessarily, right? He could be a German, a Brit, for all they knew. The cab driver who had taken him to the embassy had asked him where he came from, and when he told him the USA, the driver had thrust up his thumb and exclaimed, “Good number!” An encouraging reaction. The people he had needed to interact with had all been friendly and helpful. Again, what did he expect...that each pedestrian, and each person riding the elevator with him, would break into a wide grin and seize his hand in welcome to their country?
He stepped off the elevator on the 8th floor, and instantly saw that he was the only one here.
The walls of the corridor had been painted to look as if they were made of mortared stone. He walked across the empty, polished floor to a door, and – hoping he didn’t set off a whooping alarm that would summon security guards (or those dreaded Vietnamese immigration officers again in their brown Cub Scouts uniforms) – he tried to open it. It was locked.
He surveyed the dimly-lit tunnel of the hallway again. So it was a walk-through ghost train sort of entertainment, then? When it was operating, this hallway must be filled with eager young people waiting in line, clutching each other’s arms in delicious anticipation. But without whatever smoke and mirrors might be employed here, and the crackling anticipation of the patrons, the mock stone hallway was mundane, unimpressive, lonely.
Returning to the elevators, he found a sign partly in English that said the attraction would open at 11 AM. He saw by his watch that it was not even ten; he had thought it might be later, but then he had set out on the streets early, over two hours ago already. He glanced back down the hallway rather longingly. Should he go downstairs, explore the various levels of the store and return in an hour? As much as he wanted to, he decided not to give HORRORWOOD a look. He was a bit shy about the idea of waiting in a crowded queue and going through such an attraction companionless, here in an alien country. Maybe he’d come back before he left for Vietnam, he told himself...as he punched the button for a lone elevator standing apart from the others.
When the doors opened, Ford and a middle-aged woman surprised each other, she getting off as he got on. He realized from her pail and mop that she was a cleaning woman and this was a service elevator. She smiled at him shyly, nervously, as they passed, and he smiled back at her – guilty for having startled her, for being someplace he shouldn’t and using the inappropriate lift. Still, he rode it down to the next floor, where he got off to switch to an elevator reserved for customers...somewhat frustrated with himself that even selecting the correct elevator had become a hurdle for him on this, the other side of the world.
4: The Mask
On the street again, he took to letting his feet carry him pretty much where they would. He had decided to travel light, bringing his backpack but keeping it all but empty. He had brought his sunglasses and he put them on now, not so much for protection from the sun as to obligingly hide his too-bold blue eyes from the solemn dark eyes of uncomfortable pedestrians. If they were inclined to pretend they didn’t see him, then the dark glasses made him feel all the more like the Invisible Man.
He passed people who’d set up tables on the sidewalks to sell heaps of vegetables...steaming food on sticks...stacks of dried, mummified squid...cooked octopus arms almost as thick at their base as Ford’s wrist. Sunglasses, rugs, cheap jewelry, chintzy toys, souvenirs. Amongst the latter he saw some wooden masks that looked like full-sized versions of the framed little faces back at the guest house. He would have liked to stop to look at them, because he was very drawn to masks. In import stores in the US he liked to examine wooden masks from Ghana and Kenya, and at home above his computer he had hung a rectangular, primitive wooden face from Indonesia with protruding eyes, sharp teeth and a circle or halo attached to its top; he had no idea of its significance. He owned a molded iron decoration that had been painted with the pretty ghost-white countenance of a woman to resemble a Japanese No mask. Years ago he had hung several porcelain masquerade-style masks, wildly painted and streaming ribbons, but they seemed too g
audy to him now. Despite his interest in these Korean masks, however, he restrained himself – he needed to conserve his money for his “true” vacation in Vietnam.
He wandered from the broad main streets back into the maze of smaller, side streets. He walked past many courtyards, closed off by metal gates. He worked his way up steep, alley-like passages – a few times dead-ends so that he had to retrace his steps. Huffing his way up the steepest street yet, his feet beginning to ache in the stiff new black shoes he had bought only days before his flight, he saw a group of elderly blind people with canes, some of them holding hands to guide each other, gingerly working their way down. Apparently they lived in a home sadistically located on this terrible slope. On one building’s gray wall he saw a ragged old poster advertising the DVD or video for a horror movie he recognized as Freddy vs. Jason, though the writing was all in Korean.
Even in the most twisted and desolate back alley, Ford never felt that he was in physical danger, no matter how chilly the passersby might seem in this city. He felt safer here than he did in the cities back home.
He came upon an open market area that a banner strung across the street identified as Namdaemun Market. It was a maze in itself, of crowded stalls selling everything from clothing to imitation designer handbags to children’s toys, the streets comprising the market thronging with people. Ford found himself getting lost in the labyrinth of goods, doubling back through the same streets until he finally worked his way out.
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