Jade Lady Burning

by Martin Limon

  She was more careless now because she hadn’t counted on a second set of pursuers.

  The jeep hummed through the frigid Korean countryside. The rice paddies were brown and frozen, and most of the trees had long ago dropped their leaves for the winter. Smoke curled from straw-thatched houses, sturdy oxen pulled wooden carts, and heavily bundled children skated on smooth fields of ice.

  Ernie had the heater on full blast but it was still cold in the jeep.

  “That must be her plan,” Ernie said. “Freeze our balls off before we get to wherever she’s going.”

  Kimiko had walked a couple of blocks down the Main Supply Route and then caught a local bus that took her to the Central Seoul Bus Station. It had been a little rough tracking her there. Ernie kept the jeep idling while I scouted around, trying to keep my big six-foot-four body from being too conspicuous. Luckily, it had been easy to spot her from a distance in her Buddhist nun outfit. Unless I had gotten her confused with another nun, in which case we were screwed. But I didn’t think I had. She bought a ticket and boarded a bus heading north. We followed at a respectable distance. There were a number of stops—it wasn’t an express—and at each one Ernie held back a little, keeping the jeep across the street on the blind side of anyone getting off the bus, while I trotted across the road and hid behind whatever was available to see if Kimiko got off.

  So far she hadn’t.

  I also kept an eye on the back windows of the bus to see if anyone was showing any curiosity about the jeep that was following them. So far no one had.

  If the bus driver was anything more than somnolent he must have noticed that we were following. We weren’t trying to be subtle about it because we couldn’t afford to lose her. There was no indication that it bothered him, though.

  As we traveled north it became increasingly obvious that this road, known as the MSR, the Main Supply Route, had been built by, and for, the military. Small compounds appeared with greater regularity as the bus drew inexorably closer to the Demilitarized Zone.

  I read the signs in Korean: “slow, compound ahead.” As we passed, the armed soldiers blew their whistles and waved us on. Every half mile or so there seemed to be another installation.

  One small compound was American. The tall guard at the gate wore a fur-lined winter cap. Its upturned bill made him look like a cossack. Over the guard shack a large sign read: INFORMATION ON NORTH KOREAN INTRUDERS WELCOMED AT THIS GATE.

  Then came the roadblocks. Korean soldiers with M-14 rifles peered suspiciously into the bus and then motioned the driver forward to continue the northward journey.

  And then the tank traps. Huge cement blocks, weighing tons each—formed enormous overhangs across the road. Loaded with explosives, they would be blown by the last retreating South Korean units—the final attempt to block the advance of the onrushing North Korean tanks.

  The bus swam upstream against a river of Korean soldiers. Most had huge packs on their backs, some humped commo gear, and some had machine guns balanced like scales across their shoulders. But they all had a somber and weary look, as if they’d been on this road for years, centuries, a never-ending stream of young men going off to cram their bodies into the insatiable maw of an impervious history.

  They were on maneuvers; they had left their base camps and they were moving out. Behind them the deep rumbling of tanks came toward us, the sound carrying like tremors through the cold, packed earth. They lined both sides of the road, and when Ernie followed the bus to a turnoff, he had to flash his lights and wait until there was a break in the endless files to make his left turn.

  And then there were no U.S. military compounds, no signal sites, no antiaircraft artillery batteries. Just flat farmland with a few rolling hills between valleys.

  In a few more miles we’d come to the foothills of the mountain range that ran along the Korean peninsula like the jagged spine of a long-dead dragon. Where was she going?

  The road through the wooded hills narrowed, and gradually there were fewer villages and fewer stops for us to worry about. When the incline really steepened, the road started to twist like a snake as the bus climbed the mountain out of the misty valley. There must have been only a few people on the bus now and Kimiko had to be one of them. Kangnung sat on the other side of the mountain range near the coast of what the Koreans call the East Sea. The rest of the world called it the Sea of Japan.

  Suddenly, the bus stopped. There was no village nearby that we could see. Nothing.

  Ernie reacted quickly. He zipped past the bus to an outcropping of rock beside the road, and backed the jeep up behind it. We were concealed. He shut off the engine.

  The bus idled but not for long. The driver shifted gears and the big powerful diesel groaned slowly up the side of the mountain, picking up speed as it went. We chanced a look.

  Across the road, a grove of poplar trees rustled in the breeze, but there were no buildings and no one there, only a wooden sign and a small footpath that led off past the poplars into the evergreens.

  Ernie looked at me for a decision. We could always catch up with the bus but we were taking the risk that Kimiko would get off while we weren’t watching. I told him to wait while I investigated.

  The sign was painted with an inverted swastika, the ancient symbol for a Buddhist temple that predated the Nazis by about two and a half millennia. The sign, sharpened at one end like an arrow, pointed up the path. The fresh imprints of two small feet led away from the bus stop. Soft-soled shoes. I trotted back to the jeep feeling particularly proud of the Indian blood of my ancestors from Mexico.

  Of course, the pathway had been carefully raked and any idiot could have followed those tracks. The Apache trackers didn’t have to worry about their place in history.

  Ernie chained the jeep and we started after her. A few yards up the footpath we heard it. It wasn’t just a sound but a long low reverberation that passed through the brush and the forest that surrounded us and then entered our bodies, seeping into our bones and our innards, lifting them gently on a slow wave and then passing serenely by.

  A gong. It was calling supplicants to prayer.

  That was us, a couple of supplicants. The kind who sit on a stool waiting for the bar to open, hoping the bartender won’t be upset at the intrusion and will slam a cold one down in front of us, like some sort of nugget of holy wisdom.

  From the low timbre of the gong I figured we weren’t very far at all from the temple. I didn’t want to stumble upon someone too soon, so I motioned to Ernie for us to get off the footpath, and we crashed straight up a hill through the underbrush until we found a good vantage point.

  The temple was made of wood that must have come from the surrounding trees. Except for its enormous size and the smooth, finely shaped slats, it would have looked something like a log cabin. There was a gateway, a large courtyard of raked gravel, and then the main hall. The roof of the hall was shingled and turned up slightly at the ends like the raised toe of a young girl in a traditional dance. Life-size figurines of monkeys lined the roof, protecting the holy place from demons. The foundation of the big hall was made of squared stones neatly fitted together.

  Out back were what appeared to be living quarters and to the left, offices or study halls. Fallow but neatly outlined fields stretched out for a couple of acres until they were overcome again by the forest. The place was simple, elegant, and Spartan.

  Shaved-head monks in blue robes floated towards the main hall.

  “Looks like boot camp,” Ernie said.

  A large wooden mallet swished through the air just inside the open doorway of the main hall and the gong sounded again.

  “Must be chow time.”

  “Prayer time.”

  “For me,” Ernie said, “it’s chow time.”

  We hadn’t eaten all day and it was almost noon. Sacrilegious. I hadn’t expected to shadow Kimiko all the way out here. And there weren’t any Burger Kings in this neighborhood—or on this continent, for that matter.

  “We�
��ll get some chow in one of those villages we passed.”

  “They better uncork another pot of kimchi because I’m half starved.”

  Gray robes fluttered amidst a sea of blue. Her arms were entwined with two monks who walked on either side of her.

  “That Kimiko sure makes friends easy,” Ernie said.

  Once everyone was inside the temple they bowed, knelt down, and started chanting. After it had gone on for about twenty minutes I paced around the edge of the hill, trying to find a better vantage point to view the layout of the monastery. The stone foundation beneath the main hall was about four feet high and there were a couple of buildings directly behind it and attached. My guess was that there was a basement or some kind of underground storage beneath the main hall, otherwise the foundation wouldn’t have been as large and sturdy as it was.

  A cliff dropped off behind the monastery. It looked sheer from where we stood and opened onto a panoramic view of the valley below. The hills surrounding the monastery, including the one we were on, were steep and enclosed the monastery grounds in a cozy little basin. The open fields between the ground and the hills provided plenty of time for the monks to spot anyone approaching. All in all, the monastery was the perfect place to stash something.

  Maybe that’s why Kimiko was here. And maybe that’s why those hoodlums who searched her room had found nothing and Kimiko had seemed unconcerned that they would. And it would explain why she had been so careful to shake her pursuers before setting out for this fortress in the woods.

  When the chanting was over, Kimiko came out into the courtyard, bowing to the two monks who had escorted her in. They bowed back deeply.

  “She must have laid it on heavy when they passed the contribution plate,” Ernie said.

  The monks escorted her to the open gate and bowed once again as they separated. We waited until she had passed our position and then we scooted quickly around the waist of the hill.

  Kimiko led us up a narrow path and in a few minutes we were on top of a small hill covered with a neatly tended lawn and a few benches facing out toward the huge valley below. Vegetable fields and small clumps of fruit trees reached across the valley, and in the distance gradually rose the magnificence of the mountains.

  The hills on the sides of the valley were covered with saplings, barren now except for the pines. The large rounded slope to the right of us was spotted only with shrubs and four large white placards evenly spaced. Each placard had a neatly printed word written on it in Korean script.

  The signs were a warning to keep away. Like many other spots in Korea, this hill had been so laden with undetonated bombs, mines, and explosives of all kinds, that the government had not even bothered to clear it but had just decided to keep people out—a lethal reminder of the war that had so devastated the peninsula. There were also small burial mounds scattered all around it. Each mound was about six feet in diameter and four feet high. Some of the richer families had built small cement pagodas and even statues of the deceased atop the mounds. We heard the clanging of cymbals and the wailing voices of mourners. Two monks with shaven heads and purple robes led the procession, each swinging a censer filled with incense. Behind them walked the chief monk. Behind him were six men carrying a huge red palanquin. It was engraved with gold dragon’s heads, and elaborate Buddhist symbols. A bell atop it rang discordantly.

  Behind the palanquin came the mourners. They were wailing and moaning and all of them were dressed head to toe in clothing made of drab yellow sackcloth. Among them was Kimiko, now wearing a sackcloth hat.

  The procession continued down the dusty pathway to the other side of the hill and we followed. There was a long chanting ceremony led by the monks, and finally they lifted a body out of the palanquin and lowered it into a waiting hole cut into the side of a mound. Kimiko stood rigid.

  The body was placed in a stone sarcophagus, and two scruffylooking grave diggers began to shovel dirt to rebuild the mound.

  The procession reformed with the now empty palanquin and returned along the hill, curving down toward the main road. They trudged silently for some minutes. At the bottom of the hill, the mourners filed on to a large gray bus. There was a generous square door at the rear that was just wide enough for the palanquin. Once they got on the bus, the mourners whipped off their hats and began laughing and talking and lighting up cigarettes.

  Kimiko pulled off her hat and handed it to one of the professional mourners. She got into the front seat of the bus. We waited in the tree line. The bus took off, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. It swirled in the chill wind.

  We trotted across the road towards the boulders that concealed our jeep.

  Ernie got there first and let out a groan.

  The jeep had been jacked up on piles of flat rocks and the wheels were gone. Ernie walked around the vehicle, cursing as he went. The spare tire and the can of mo-gas strapped to the back hadn’t been touched, and neither had the chain that immobilized the steering wheel. The innards of the engine also seemed to be intact.

  We stared at the useless vehicle for a while, both of us wondering what to do next.

  “How much money do you have?”

  Ernie checked his pockets. “Twenty bucks.”

  “I got a little over ten. I’ll catch a ride to one of those villages back there and see if I can find us some tires.”

  “Without ‘em it’s going to be sort of hard to explain this shit at 21 T Car.”

  “We were on official duty.”

  “The first sergeant took us off the case.”

  “They couldn’t hold us to that. Even the first sergeant wouldn’t be that much of an asshole.”

  Ernie looked at me.

  I turned my head.

  “Well, maybe we just better get some tires.”

  It would be a long wait for the next bus. I was fidgety. Something was bothering me. I walked back to the jeep and saw the lug nuts. Six on each brake drum. We’d been had.

  The monks came out of the woods, laughing. They rolled the four tires towards us, and Ernie and I had to jump and dodge so as not to be hit.

  Ernie’s neck and face turned bright red until I could even see crimson beneath his light brown hair. He sprang across the road at the monks.

  All of them had their heads shaved and wore the same blue robes and leather sandals as their brethren in the monastery. Three of them were very young. Maybe teenagers. But I realized that with a shaved head and fresh complexion, an Oriental man was liable to look much younger than he actually was. They were probably in their early twenties. About the same age as me and Ernie. But they were acting silly. They thought rolling the tires down the hill at us was the greatest joke in the world. Cosmic, I guess you could call it.

  The tallest of the monks looked as if he was in his mid thirties. He smiled and remained calm as Ernie charged.

  Ernie let loose a big roundhouse aimed at the monk’s bulb head, but the guy just lowered his body slightly by flexing his knees and moved his right foot back. The blow missed his nose by no more than an inch and Ernie stumbled forward, tripping. He went down. Before Ernie could get up, the monk was on him. He twisted Ernie’s arm behind his back and braced a knee on his spine, then lowered his weight. Ernie couldn’t move. He sputtered and cursed. I stood in front of the monk, waiting for him to let Ernie go.

  Ernie calmed somewhat when he realized that he was helpless and that I was there. The monk stood up quickly, like a crane rising from a swamp, and stepped back.

  I helped Ernie to his feet and he cursed some more and dusted himself off. The monk’s face was calm with just the hint of a smile, but there was no anger at being attacked and no smug flush of victory at having bested Ernie. The young monks behind him were smiling. No malice there. Just sheer … enjoyment.

  The older monk spoke. “I am sorry we took your wheels. We will be happy to put them back on for you.”

  His enunciation was precise. He must have studied English at the university level.

  “Why did
you take them off?”

  The monk remained perfectly still. “It seemed the easiest way to delay you. You have been following our friend. We thought it best if you didn’t.”

  “Kimiko?”

  “Yes. I think that is her professional name.”

  “You know her profession?”

  “Oh, yes. Her life has been very hard. But she is a great soul. I think she is making progress—spiritually—and will probably achieve a more rewarding life in her next incarnation.”

  “No nirvana yet?”

  “Who can tell?”

  Ernie adjusted his clothes, trying to get the dirt off the back of his shirt, and glared at the erudite monk. “The closest she ever got to nirvana was when somebody overtipped her.”

  The monk glanced at Ernie but his expression didn’t change. “She has been a great supporter of our temple for many years.”

  “How many years?”

  “Since the war. The temple and outbuildings were completely destroyed during the fighting. Both sides saw it as a stronghold and a vantage point from which to track enemy movements. After they left, our sister helped us rebuild.”

  “She gave you money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because of her devotion to religion?”

  “Yes. But also because of our master.”

  “Your master?”

  “Yes. He reestablished the temple and died a few years after the war, after the work was finished.”

  “Why would Kimiko want to use her hard-earned money to help him?”

  “Because he was her husband.”

  Ernie continued his cursing as we sped down the road.

  “Take it easy, GI. It’s not every day that you get a free Zen lesson.”

  He glanced at me. “You talking about the tires?”

  “Yeah.”

  His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “Fuck a Zen lesson!”

  Quick learner.