The Secrets Men Keep

by Mark Sampson

  I decided to change tactics.

  “So why is learning English so important to you?”

  “Because I want to do graduate work on American university,” she answered.

  “You want to do graduate work at an American university,” I corrected. She also struggled with her indefinite articles.

  “Yes, yes. I go to there and get my graduate degree. Start my career, my good job.”

  “As a ‘designer’.”

  “Yes, yes, as designer!”

  I didn’t know what a ‘designer’ was, but it seemed like every Korean girl I met wanted to be one.

  “Have you been to America before?” I ventured, experimenting with the present perfect tense. Her eyes rolled up to her brow with a look of unmerciful cuteness. I could tell she was hunting through her memory for a grammar lesson from grade school and couldn’t find it. She was beginning to look embarrassed, so I helped her out. “Did you ever go there, before, in the past?”

  “Ah! No, no. I didn’t went there. I go next year? It is my first time.” She touched her stomach with unease. “Oooh, the thought makes me feel nervousness.”

  “Yes,” I nodded solemnly. “First times can be very scary.” Looked up at her. Hoped for a fierce little flush, a tremor in her past. Even a mention of Aeiou. But nothing.

  “But I go because American university is good for my career. It’s important.”

  “But why is it important?” I said. I’d been in Korea long enough to already know the answer, but I wanted to see if she could articulate it in English. “Why don’t you just do graduate work at a school here?”

  She put a palm on her head and shook. “Ooh, very different, ah, difficult question.” She stammered for a while, assembling an assortment of infinitives, adjectives and nouns, none of them being ‘to gain a competitive edge’. But by the end, I sort of understood.

  “Plus, you’ll have a wonderful time,” I said. “You may even marry an American.”

  Ji-young crinkled her nose. “Ah no! American boys, I hate them.” Then she looked me square in the face, that sultry glimmer returning to her eyes, and said with a voice like cream: “I like Canadian boys more better.”

  And God help me, I blushed.

  ~

  You got to figure we owe it to this place. After all, isn’t what we do here a kind of pillaging? Every day, more of us get off those planes at the mud-flats of Incheon. Crushed by the weight of our student loans back home, we come here to vacuum up money and leave our language in its wake. Is this not just another incursion, this time by the downtrodden, the unemployable victims of high tuition? Where else can a three-year degree in philosophy garner you a $50,000 salary? I figured visiting all those museums and temples, all those pagodas and forts was a way I could give back. At first, it didn’t matter that the landmarks here were not the originals. I didn’t care. I wanted to stop myself from becoming one of those expats: the ones who spread this global contagion of English and then spend the profits in American pubs in the foreign quarter. It seemed wrong to me.

  One time, I got a lead on a small temple in a suburb of Seoul that was supposed to be 900 years old. This little gem had evaded the travel books and scuttlebutt of the pubs, had come to me via a nine-year-old student of mine. I got all excited. It didn’t matter that I was working 12-hour days in the hottest part of the summer, or that it took nearly two hours on a crowded subway to get there, or that I needed to hike up a crumbling fortress wall for another hour to find it. I had to see this temple. So on a rare free Saturday I made the trek. Suffered through two wrong subway transfers, got lost in the “suburb” (population: 900,000) looking for the fortress wall—but finally made it, a sweaty, exhausted mass of excitement. And of course, the kid had been wrong. Had mixed up his numbers. The little heritage sign in front had an English translation that said the temple was 90 years old, not 900. And besides, the Japanese had burned it to the ground the last time they invaded, and it had since been rebuilt.

  That’s when I knew I needed a vacation.

  ~

  Aeiou and I had been drinking in a soju bar at the top of Hooker Hill. On weekends, he was not wont to do more than skim the surface of local customs, but admitted he had a weakness for Korea’s national poison. Most of our conversation remains lost to me because soju will leave big smoking craters where my memory used to be. But I recall fighting the urge with zero success to bring up Ji-young over and over and push Aeiou about precisely how he had made her acquaintance. I thought, What difference did it make? She was a private lesson on the side, and therefore off limits. I wasn’t mentally attracted to her any more than I would be a fifteen year old. And yet, I had to know the origins of their relationship. Aeiou was, of course, not forthcoming. He had endured my sly navigating of the conversation the first few times, but by the end grew bored and suspicious. “Look at you, man,” he said lecherously each time I brought up her name, and would say nothing more.

  Later, we stumbled down Hooker Hill, past the brothels en route to the main strip. Always an eye-opening experience.

  “Hey Aeiou, good to see you. You wanna come in for a good time?”

  “How’s it going, April? Nah, not tonight.”

  “Hello there, Aeiou. Who’s your handsome boyfriend?”

  “Don’t waste your breath, Jenny. He’s impotent!”

  “Ooh, a challenge!”

  Unbeknownst to Aeiou, we had different destinations in mind and would part company at the bottom of the Hill: He was off to find a dance club, and I was off to find my bed. I used to go to the discos with Aeiou a lot when we first became friends, before I grew tired of them, and his routine for picking up Korean girls never wavered: dance, dance, dance, encroach, encroach, make sure she spoke enough English, impress her with the few Korean words he knew, encroach some more, start dirty dancing, ask her why they were pretending to have sex on a dance floor when they could do the real thing in his apartment—she’d giggle at that!—dance some more, then hit her with the big line, “So you comin’ home with me tonight or what?” Nine girls out of ten would go stomping off in their Prada heels, but do it eleven times and you just might have ­success.

  “Aeiou! So nice to see your face. How come you never stop by anymore?”

  “Sorry, Rachel. I’ve been busy. Give my best to Vivian, would ya.”

  I looked at him. “You know, it appalls me that you’re on a first-name basis with these girls.”

  “Oh relax. I only go to them as a last resort. It’s not like I’m a degenerate.”

  We reached the bottom of Hooker Hill. A place of food vendors, drunken expats, and vomit. The circle the life.

  “I’ll hail us a cab,” Aeiou said above the din.

  “Man, look, I’m going home. I can catch the last subway if I hurry.”

  “What, you’re not coming to Stompers!”

  “Aeiou, tomorrow’s Sunday. I have to teach Ji-young.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Ji-young, Ji-young, Ji-young. Why does it not surprise me that you’d fall for the first hot student I throw your way?”

  “I’m not falling for her,” I lied. “But I would like to know. When you met her, did you, you know, I mean, did you ever . . .” What was the right word: did you ever invade her?

  “If you’re not falling for her, then what’s it to you?” he said.

  I thought of my 90–year–old temple on the outskirts of Seoul. “You’d never understand. But c’mon: would you humour me?”

  He put his hands on my shoulders and looked at me drunkenly in the face. “Dude, she is Buddhist. Bolted at the knees. Don’t waste your time.”

  “Look, I don’t want to—”

  But he was already bounding to the curb and flagging down a cab. I put my face at the rolled-down window as he slithered onto the leather back seat. “Not that I want to make a play,” I said as he closed the door, “but jus
t in case: what’s the Korean word for ‘flirt’?”

  Aeiou shook his head with a smile. “Damned if I know!” And the cab sped away.

  ~

  She and I moved on from prepositions and articles, to current events. I had a copy of the Korea Herald spread out on our table at the café.

  “So question: if the North ever did attack again, what would you do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, where would you go? Seriously. You know, China’s closer but I think you might be better off in Japan. Or would you go all the way to America? Or even Canada? We have a decent track record with refugees.”

  Her expression was a sign of improvement: confusion not due to the language barrier, but rather my stupidity. “I don’t go anywhere,” she answered.

  “You wouldn’t go anywhere?” I corrected and questioned simultaneously.

  “Yes, I wouldn’t!”

  “Then what would you do?”

  That same look again. “I would pick up a gun, and fight for my country.”

  Her answer flattened me. I imagined this pretty-in-pink Korean woman, this little girl, with ammunition belts crisscrossing her diminutive torso and a machine gun in her hand. I pictured her standing brave in an apocalyptic wasteland that had once been a city block of her favourite beauty salons and Espirit outlets. And suddenly I couldn’t look at her at all, not without imagining us doing something on that table other than reading the paper.

  “You have a red face,” she beamed at me. Then she brushed my hand with hers. Oh God.

  “Ji-young, I have to ask you,” I crackled. “I’m interested in old Korean things. Places, really. Temples, forts, whatever. Do you know of any places like that?”

  “Of course. Seoul has many.”

  “No, what I mean is old old places. Landmarks that haven’t been rebuilt umpteen different times.”

  She looked confused.

  “You know, something original. Something that survived all the wars and invasions.”

  She looked confused.

  “Something not rebuilt. Something built once and only once.”

  “Ah, I understand!” she said, although I wasn’t clear if she did. “You need Gukboeksa!”

  “Gukboeksa? Never heard of it.”

  “I go there many times. I take you there, okay.”

  “Alright.”

  “Oooh, but it’s more than two hours. We should go on Saturday instead.”

  Saturday? More than two hours? Were we just switching days and extending the time, or did this mean more? And if so, did that not violate the tutor-student relationship? (Was I worried? Had I not, a moment ago, imagined us violating the tutor-student relationship atop this table?) And worse, should I ask if she’s going to pay me?

  “Yeah, okay. Saturday it is.”

  “Good,” she beamed again. “It’s a date!” Another expression I taught her.

  ~

  Huge sweeping mountains covered in thick evergreen rolled all around us. Looming in the distant valley were grey-on-grey assemblages of apartment buildings, an oval Samsung logo stamped on each of their sides. Out here, Korean moms in their sun visors and bun haircuts power-walked along the trails, their arms jabbing epileptically in front of them to maximize the workout. At one point the path grew treacherous and I went first before helping Ji-young up the rocky incline. We held hands longer than necessary, yet after letting go she showed no discernible reaction. Later, we found a rest stop to have our bottled water and to talk. I mentioned my recent visit to the soju bar with Aeiou, and once again her response to his name was visceral. I asked Ji-young if she had ever considered dating him. “He’s very charming,” she replied, (another word I taught her). “But I watch enough Western movie to know charming doesn’t always meaning good. Sometimes outside is charming means inside is . . .” and she mulled for vocabulary, “like . . . bugs.” Overall it was a sophisticated, metaphoric thing to say; a great leap forward in our ability to communicate. If only I could screw up my courage and say something charming and not the least bit bug-like.

  Our trail climbed higher and higher into the hills, further away from any signpost of civilization. Based on all this wilderness, I grew optimistic about Gukboeksa’s authenticity. I began to doubt if Ji-young would drag me all the way up here if she hadn’t understood what I was looking for. As we scaled closer to our unseen zenith, I began asking questions to make sure. Some she understood and answered, others she couldn’t and didn’t. Still, I wasn’t satisfied. I was about to press further when she stopped walking and looked at me with another of her indecipherable glances.

  “Do you know what I am like about you?” she said.

  “What’s that?” Cool, and oh so nonchalant.

  “You really care about the Korean things.”

  “Really?” I asked. “And what, most foreigners don’t?”

  “No. Other foreigners don’t aren’t like that.”

  “Which ones? You mean like Aeiou?”

  “Yes, like Aeiou,” she nodded. “I don’t am like him.”

  I was puzzled. “You don’t like him? Or you’re not like him?

  “He meets Korean girl, and he only cares about her sex.” A monstrous flub of the language, and yet wholly accurate. “You meet that girl and you don’t caring about her sex. You want the Korean things. So I am like you.”

  I swallowed. “Ji-young, are you flirting with me?”

  “Flirting?” she asked, tilting her head. “Wha’s mean?”

  But it was then that I noticed how much the pristine forest surrounding us lived and breathed with an existence of its own, unmarked by gunfire and cannon balls, by foreign intrusion and the great ruse of progress. I decided not to spoil it.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Is Gukboeksa much further?”

  “No, no. Only over that hill.”

  We made our way up and across the bluff, then back down into a clearing within the dense evergreen. There in the middle of it was one lonesome building, a small Buddhist temple. Its iron pagoda roof was rusted to a dull red, its burgundy pillars chipped and splintery. All along its ancient stupa, tall gangly weeds reached for the heavens; upon the temple’s ruddy siding the symbol of the Yin-Yang faded to near invisibility. And inside the door, a shining gold Buddha.

  “Most Koreans don’t aren’t come here; they think it’s ugly,” Ji-young said. “But I think is beautiful.”

  “I agree,” I mumbled, soaking it in, ready to admit that I had seen nothing more beautiful in the last 18 months. Standing there with Ji-young, her face soaked with impenetrable expression, made it seem even more beautiful. Soon, she smoothed out her shorts and eased herself down onto the grass to pray before Buddha. It was a series of chants and full-body bows, and I felt like I should leave her to it.

  I approached the door to the temple and caught the thick pungent aroma of incense. It smelled like it had been burning in there for a thousand years. Next to the platform was another of those Korean heritage signs, its post hammered into the ground. I moved to read it, my heart picking up pace. I was about learn how well Ji-young had understood my query. But the sign was written entirely in Korean. Not one English word in that array of perpendicular characters forging out with its own grammar, its own vocabulary and idioms. Nothing. The best I could hope for were a few numbers scattered throughout the text. The one at the top was 1247; I was no anthropologist but maybe that was when this temple had been built. In the middle, a 58, a 17. Okay, no problem. But then, down near the bottom, written as if an afterthought, was one last number: 1960.

  1960.

  What did it mean? Was it possible that that was a date of reconstruction, that the dilapidation before me was due merely to forty-odd years, not hundreds? Or maybe it was only the date that they declared Gukboeksa a heritage site and put this sign up. I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. I
was glad there was no English to tell me the truth, to burst my bubble. I was glad the sign was written entirely in Korean.

  Ji-young, having finished her prayers, came over to join me. Took my shaky hand into hers without hesitation.

  “Is this what you wanted?” she asked.

  I looked at the sign, at the temple, and into her face. Felt secure in the vagueness, in the timeless secrets all around me.

  “Yeah, pretty much,” I said.

  CYCLE

  Muizz is tagging along to the Tim Aspen meeting because he’s a sports fan. That’s the only reason. I have to keep it in mind.

  He invites me out to eat beforehand, to an upscale lunch spot near the office. I don’t know its name; my colleagues in the marketing department just call it Home of the $35 Hamburger. I really can’t afford to eat here. But Muizz said he’d pick up the tab, said he had budget. (Nobody’s had budget, for anything, since last September.)

  We get seated on the patio under broad imposing umbrellas. The wait staff are dressed uniformly in black and are all impossibly attractive. One of them stops by our table and we order a couple glasses of Riesling. Above us, a mélange of skyscrapers reach for the heavens—the RD Waterprice Tower, the ManuFord Centre, RIBC Place.