Dong Hwa seemed content to have the attention of his wife back on himself. Akemi was feeding me with her chopsticks, while teaching me to hold and maneuver mine properly. I ate more chicken than everyone else at the table, which seemed to fascinate all of them. At moments I would catch each of them separately or in pairs or sets staring at me. “You must be really hungry,” Black Sea said. When I had seen him yesterday, he had hair. Tonight he had a Caesar just like mine and rocked a white washcloth in the back pocket of his jeans same as me.
“His body is big, so he has to eat,” the girl with the killa eyes said, gesturing and flashing her newly manicured nails. Akemi’s eyes moved on her. Akemi said something to the girl in Korean. The girl answered back and then they were talking.
“What about after this? You wanna come check out the music scene, and check out a few parties, right?” Black Sea said.
“I got my wife,” I told him.
“You can bring her,” he urged.
“Nah, why would I bring her to a party?” I asked him.
“Then come alone, take a look around.”
“You got shorty right there. What you gonna do with her?” I pointed out.
He smiled. “She’s thinking about you.”
“She shouldn’t. I’m married. I’m happy. I got more than enough.” Black Sea looked like he was thinking.
“Is she a good girl?” I asked him, referring to the girl with the eyes.
“Korean girls are a whole lot of work. But they’re good girls,” he said.
“Then get to work, my man,” I said. We laughed.
“Tell me where the party’s at, I’ll take my wife home and come through late just to check out the music,” I told him. “But if I don’t come through, you’ll understand. Don’t hold it against me,” I said.
“You got it,” he said.
* * *
At Dong Hwa’s apartment, he and I sat alone in the living room.
“Is your wife enjoying my wife?” I asked him.
“Thank you, I meant to thank you. My wife is so happy. She is treating Akemi as a dong-seng, not like a niece.” I understood Sun Eun and Akemi were like sisters, not aunt and niece.
“Good. I’ll be here to get her back tomorrow evening. Oh, and I’ll need you to set up the meeting with her grandmother. I decided I’ll take Akemi up to Seoul. I can’t plan to stay in Busan too much longer,” I said.
“Oh, I see. Jamgganmanyo,” the professor said, getting up. Jamgganmanyo means “wait a minute.” It’s the same phrase as the Japanese chotto matte.
He went into the back of his apartment and Akemi came out front. She sat down next to me and leaned against my body.
“Mayonaka,” she said.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Akemi Mayonaka miss,” she said, always putting her English verb at the end of the sentence and out of order. I don’t know if she was upset that I didn’t show up the night before to check her, but I hope she knew for sure that I’d wanted to and wasn’t playing around. I hugged her. One of the sons showed up in the living room.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Chonin Kim Jun Hwa Midah,” he answered.
“Kim Jun Hwa, do you speak English?” I asked him.
“Very little,” he said shyly, seeming much younger and softer than any Brooklyn male at thirteen.
“How do I say in Korean, ‘I love you’?” He looked around the room and everywhere except at me. Then he said “sarang hamida.” I repeated his words, trying to get the pronunciation right, to Akemi. She smiled so much. Then I asked Jun Hwa, “How do I say, ‘Akemi, I’ll love you forever’?” He said “Akemi dangshin sarang hamnida youngwonhi! ” I repeated it. We all began laughing. “Now say in Korean, ‘Don’t worry. I will never leave you. If I go anywhere, I will always come back to you.’” He said, “Nanun hangsang dongsingeote dola olgeoya.” I repeated it. Akemi slid her arms around me.
Dong Hwa and Sun Eun came out together. The professor looked oddly at his son, as though he thought he had missed out on something. They both sat down. Akemi eased her arms and body off of leaning on mine. Now we were five on the floor.
“We contacted Akemi’s grandmother. We can all go to Seoul tomorrow night. We’ll meet her Monday afternoon, but my wife and I will have to return to Busan immediately after the meeting.” He was checking for my reactions. I could tell there was probably more to it, so I didn’t say anything. “We decided that we all need to be there when she first sees Akemi and hears the news. It’s better this way. We have to be sure.” The professor sounded worried.
“What time tomorrow night?” I asked.
“If we leave at eight, we’ll get there before midnight,” he said, and then laughed at his use of my name in another manner.
“Alright then, in Seoul I’ll buy our airline tickets to the US. Akemi and I will fly out from there,” I said.
“We’ll see,” the professor said. “We don’t have a way of knowing what will happen in Seoul.” He said it in a way that didn’t sound like he thought I needed his permission to get the tickets to leave, but like he was expecting or feeling that something big or unusual might happen.
As I started to leave, Akemi said, “Please stay,” her eyes pleading. I knew she wanted to be with Sun Eun in the days but definitely wanted to be with me in the nights. I looked at Dong Hwa. This was his apartment, his space.
“You and I can sleep here in the living room, and Akemi and my wife in the back,” Dong Hwa said.
I smiled. “We’re married, Akemi and me,” I reminded him. Why would I want to stay with him, when I could stay with her?
* * *
Late night, the apartment lights were all off, Dong Hwa was asleep on the living room floor, as he wanted it, and I was sitting on the couch in the living room, thinking.
Suddenly I saw Akemi crawling by from behind the couch and out onto their enclosed glass terrace. Now she was seated on her knees behind a plant, waving me over. I smiled and walked over. She placed her pretty palms on the terrace floor, asking me to sit beside her. She was wearing unsexy pajamas, a big shirt and drawstring pants that were too big also, with huge red strawberries all over.
I knew what she was thinking. When the sun rises again, there would be no touching. She wanted to touch me. I wanted to touch her too. Off in the corner of the terrace shielded by the plants, with the terrace door shut, we sat down together. She crawled into my lap, put both her hands on my face and just stroked my skin. I pulled her close and stroked her hair and then her neck. I put my hands underneath her big pajama shirt and felt her goose bumps leading all the way up to her nipples. I stroked the bare skin of her back down to the top of the separation in her butt. Her body heated up. I wasn’t gonna make love to her while Dong Hwa was lying down asleep on the other side of the glass, even though we were shielded by the plants. She was breathing in my ear, which raised up my temperature and sped up my pulse. I started tonguing her and that felt good. She came closer, wrapped her legs around my back, and hugged my neck so tight. She pulled back and put her hands beneath my shirt. Her traveling fingers felt the welts and abrasions on my chest from dragging my body underneath the truck the night before. Soon I was under a full body search by her fingertips. Now I was lying on my back being licked.
It wasn’t difficult fucking face to face, my back up against the wall, her moving her hips so smoothly and continuously as though she wanted to heal me with her pussy. Our sex life was furious, more turbulence than any flight to anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, she had a love for me that no language could describe.
Chapter 10
REFLECTING
In the cool breeze before sunrise I ran Haeundae Beach, my same route. When I arrived in Kwong An Li, the banana and fruit and water vendor was just setting up. Probably he was surprised that I popped up in the early morning and that I wasn’t buying my usual after-sunset order. I simply said “Anyonghaseyo” and kept it moving.
I searched out a cab with the sig
n in the window that read We Speak English or International Taxi. There were many because Busan was designed to absorb the tourist treasure.
I hopped in. “Can you drive as directed?” I asked the cabby.
“Bo?” he said, which means “what” in Korean.
“I’ll tell you left, right, straight, whatever. Understand?”
“Agahsimidah,” he said, which means “I understand.”
I had my homemade map in my hand. I called out “left, right, straight, up, down,” and he followed.
We arrived at a place called Taejongdae Park. My cab driver said that he couldn’t drive his vehicle any further than that. I paid him and got out. There weren’t many more directions remaining on my mapped-out trip. Since no vehicle could move beyond the location where I was now standing, I walked the route following my map as I had written it.
Do Not Enter was written in every language, and every other sign said Unauthorized Area, in every language. Then I knew.
The military hideout that I was abducted to was somewhere right beyond the borders of Taejongdae Park. I didn’t have any intention of running up in there like a kamikaze or a one-man army bent on revenge. Instead I only wanted to know where I had been taken. I wanted to see it in the daylight, the route going and coming, neither of which I could see Friday night when I was captured or when I was blindfolded and driven back Saturday afternoon.
I didn’t say shit to anyone but I was astounded by the nerve of the general, as well as his range and power. The idea that someone could use military monies for personal reasons, and to smash or intimidate one young man on foreign soil was mind-blowing to me.
When I read the book about Naoko Nakamura and his complaints about American military bases on his Japanese land, I didn’t fully understand the insult of them. But now that I had been held on some kind of base, populated by American soldiers, or recent recruits, it was becoming more clear.
Chiasa said those bases were like little Americas inside a foreign country. She said they had their own separate world in there, and she was right. It was a mini America with Campbell’s soup, Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, and Duncan Hines cakes. There was no chicken galbi or kimchee or samgyetang in there. As far as authority, the American military could kidnap a person, play with him and his life, torture him, and then erase the incident as though it had never happened. If I ever broke my word and brought it up, which I would not, they would probably plaster pictures of my face in the press, portraying me as an insane guerilla terrorist, someone who had attacked them.
Standing on an observation deck inside Taejongdae Park, the part that’s open to the public, I felt close to the sky. I was the only one up there at this high altitude early Sunday morning. Reaching here had been another awesome climb up steep and some winding hills on paths built only for the fit and toned. Now I was here. As I glanced down at my sneakers, I saw the incredibly steep drop down into the sea. It was a drop riddled with the jagged edges of massive rocks. Even a professional diver would die here. He’d die because the drop down was too far. He’d die because the rocks were so sharp and random that one of them would detach his head before he even hit the water.
Billions of gallons of water moving: these waters caused my soul to move also. Akemi’s mother, Joo Eun, wrote it right. Everyone was nothing compared to Allah, who created the sky, the thunder and lightning, the oceans and mountains, the waterfalls and the sun and the moon and stars. No president or prime minister or king or diplomat or general or army could compare. None of them could bring into existence what Allah created. Allah was and is completely overwhelming and above comprehension.
But man was also created by Allah. It seems that man has always wanted to control it all. But who controls man when he becomes too corrupt? Is that the job of the believers?
There was a heavy wind way up high where I stood. Although it was too early for tourists, boats and ships from China and Russia were crossing the waters right before my eyes, their holds filled with cargo. I guess the world could be a sad place for any man who didn’t understand the hustle and how to hustle, or how to get involved and get a piece of the action. A man like that would be the same as a roach—no, an ant, uh-uh, a tick.
Then my personal thoughts came to the surface. What would Chiasa say if she knew that her father was someone who would stick his hands in and try and rearrange someone else’s fate?
I wasn’t as vexed with the general as I was with Nakamura, though. I believe in fathers and fatherhood. If a man can’t or won’t protect his women and daughters, his existence is pointless. At least the general was making himself clear before the marriage, before inking his approval and applying his stamp, before the agid and the nikah, and before I had gone into his virgin daughter. Because of course once all of that had taken place, there would be absolutely no turning back.
I thought about Akemi, my wife. She was certainly enough. Having Chiasa had nothing to do with Akemi not being enough. It had to do with a separate bond that was created by a circumstance beyond my immediate control. The same way that Chiasa had been given to me in the first place, I was sure that she was mine whether or not my eyes would ever see her again.
Chapter 11
BLACK SEA
Black Sea and me met up. “I got something I want to show you. Maybe I can get your opinion,” he said.
“No problem,” I told him. We hopped on one of those crazy city buses and played the back.
“I want to come to the US,” he said.
“For what reason?” I asked him.
“To make money, hook up with some real movers in hip-hop, dance in some videos.”
“So you’re gonna work in some laboratory during the day and rock your Kangol and Cazals and Adidas at night?”
“De!” he said, hyped up, which means “yes” in Korean. He pulled a flyer out of his pocket. “I’m throwing a party on this Friday night. Run through?” he invited me.
“I don’t know if I’ll still be around on Friday. I gotta get back to New York.”
“So if I make it out there to New York City, will you show me around to, like, the real spots? Not like the Statue of Liberty and shit like that?”
“I’ll show you around. You decide what’s real and not real for yourself,” I told him.
“Maybe you could be my manager. That would be great. You hook up all my business. Keep ten percent for yourself,” he offered. I just laughed at the thought.
We got off in Seomyeon, which was a section of Busan that was like Shinjuku, where I first stayed in Japan. We moved past a bunch of busy businesses, beer spots, sneaker joints, vendors, and curious cats playing go on a card table set up on a curb. Eight minutes in, we came up on a record shop. He stopped before heading in.
“Look through the glass,” he told me. I looked.
“What am I looking for?” I asked him.
“A shorty,” he said, imitating my talk from last night at the chicken galbi spot. I looked again. There was a shapely eighteen- or nineteen-years-young African girl in there. She was dark like chocolate with almond eyes, rocking one pretty afro puff at the top of her head. Her jeans were tight enough to stop traffic. She was playing a record. She tapped her fingers on the counter, then tapped her foot, and soon her body bounced. She smiled wide and threw her head back and then threw her shoulders into her dance right behind the cash register where she was working.
“That’s you?” I asked him.
“I want. I wish,” he said.
“So what’s stopping you?” I asked him. “Are you afraid of girls like them Japanese boys?” I knew that would get him tight.
“I’m not afraid of her. It’s my father, my mother, my whole family. They would kill me. Worse than that, they would disown me.”
“So what are you gonna do?” I asked him.
“That’s why I’m asking for your opinion.”
“Have you said anything to her?” I asked him.
“Anyo!” he denied it strongly, like a man accused of some crime. �
�I just go in there every couple of days and buy records from her. If she’s not here, I leave and don’t buy until she comes back.”
“How serious are you about her?” I asked.
“I brought you all the way over here to see her,” he said. “I haven’t brought none of my boys over here to see her. Not once.”
“That’s a bus trip, that’s nothing,” I told him. “Would you fight for her?”
“Fight?” he said, like he didn’t know that for men, fighting was automatic.
“I’m a dancer, not a fighter. You look like a fighter!” he said.
“Yeah, I was your manager. Now I’m your security,” I joked. “Would you marry her?”
“Marry her!” he said, like he never heard of that concept before. “I just want to …”
“Play with her?” I asked him.
“I didn’t say that,” he said.
“If you want to find out your true feeling for a girl, just ask yourself, What am I willing to do for her? Would I fight for her? Would I work hard for her? Would I kill for her? Would I marry her? If you think about it, and the answer to all those questions that you asked yourself is no, she ain’t the right one,” I explained. He fell silent.
“If you couldn’t even imagine her as your wife, that means you’re setting up to disrespect her,” I said. He listened as though he was really considering my words.
“It’s not like that,” he said. “In Korea, nobody marries so young. We have to go to school forever, and then the military. Then we have to get a great job. Then when we are like twenty-seven or twenty-eight, our families start pushing us to marry someone who they think is best.”
“So what are we doing over here then? If you can’t imagine yourself marrying her?”
“If I did, we would have to move to China or something. No one around here would accept us,” he said. “There’s nothing more important to Koreans than blood.”
“Blood?” I repeated.
Midnight and the Meaning of Love Page 57