by Martin Limon
“Yes.”
The names were scribbled in hangul, the Korean script, and I sounded them out haltingly.
“Tom-son. Jo-dan. Pok-no.”
“That’s him. Pok-no. He’s the one who went out with Miss Won.”
The first two names were easy enough—Thompson and Jordan—although there must be a few hundred Marines on Okinawa with those last names. The last name, Pok-no, I couldn’t figure. Mr. Kim had no idea how to spell it in English.
Could it be phony? It didn’t seem likely that he would have passed off a false name with his buddies hanging around. Unless they were all in on some sort of plan. I figured it was more a translation problem than anything else. Some of the sounds of English don’t work all that well in Korean.
Mr. Kim offered us cigarettes. I refused, as did Ernie. Kim wrinkled his eyes shut as he lit up, and with the free side of his mouth he started to talk.
“They were three happy GIs, always talk too much and play around, and they made Miss Won laugh. I told her not to go out with GI. I told her many times, but you know young girl. They no listen nobody.”
“Had she been out with GIs before?”
“Never. He first one. Maybe I should’ve fired her.” He blew a smoke ring toward the wall-papered ceiling. “If I told her I fire her, then maybe she don’t go out with GI. She was a good girl. Send all her money home to her family.”
“What was her job here?”
“Help with receipts, clean up shop, wrap orders for GIs who want to mail things back Stateside. Not much. Everything I can do myself, but shop must have flower if shop want to bring in bees.”
During the Korean War, the country was completely flattened. In the twenty years since, the economy had improved, but not much. Attractive young women are an expendable commodity. Their main job is to work in factories or shops and save money for a dowry so they can get married. A woman doesn’t have any real status until she’s old and has a slew of grandchildren running around.
“How often did she go out with Pok-no?”
“Only once.”
“Once?”
“Yes. He was here from Okinawa for only a few days, but every day he come here and talk to Miss Won and after second day I let him take her to lunch. On third day he took her to dinner, but she come back after eat to work night shift.”
“What time did she get off?”
Kim’s eyes widened. “She don’t get off. After work she sleep here. Someone must protect shop from slicky boys. Me, I go home.”
“But you said she only went with Pok-no once.”
“I wasn’t counting lunch or dinner. I give her one day vacation each month. She was like little girl, very excited each time her day off come. She always go to country to visit her parents or to visit her sister at temple. She’s a …” He snapped his fingers. “How you say? Suknyo?”
He said the word in Korean, but I didn’t know it either. We looked it up in his Korean-English dictionary.
“Nun,” I said.
It wasn’t vocabulary that was often used in Songtan-up.
Ernie quit fiddling with the brassware, grabbed a folding chair, straddled it, and leaned forward at Mr. Kim.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “On their one date this Miss Won takes some Marine from Okinawa with her to her family in the countryside or to visit her sister who is a nun and then she comes back here the next day alone and that night kills herself?”
“Yes.” Mr. Kim nodded somberly. “She worked all day and that night. After I left, she locked up the shop and went out.”
“And the next morning the police found her body on the railroad tracks.” Ernie leaned back on his chair.
Kim nodded and smoke drifted out of his nostrils toward the soot-stained paper above.
Before we left, I jotted down an address, and Ernie bought one of the brass fists. Kim wrapped it up awkwardly with the paper wadded too tightly around the hard, pugnacious digit.
The jeep purred along the ribbon of asphalt that wound through the acres of wavering green rice paddies. Straw-hatted farmers, their pant legs rolled up past their knees, bobbed through rows of sprouting shoots. Long-billed white cranes lifted gently from the muck and mire and flapped serenely into an endless blue sky.
“Don’t they have any bars out here?” Ernie asked.
“Not for GIs,” I said. “Besides, you’re driving.”
“I won’t be for long if I don’t get a cool one.”
After we slowed to read the signs at a crossroads, I motioned for him to turn right, and three kilometers later the village of Chunhua loomed ahead of us. The cluster of straw-thatched huts sat on a rocky promontory like a crown of thorns amidst the spreading wet fields.
Ernie jammed the jeep into low as we chugged up the one dirt road that led into the village. Pantless toddlers and flapping-winged chickens scurried out of our way. We stopped in the center of the cluster of huts and stepped out of the jeep. Old men in hemp cloth tunics and women cowled in white linen stared at us curiously.
As I turned my back on the dying roar of the engine, I felt for a moment as if we’d stepped back in time. Bright eyes peered at us from within mud brick walls. Then I spotted a rusty Coca-Cola sign and I snapped out of it. I flashed my badge to the proprietor of the open-stalled store and told him who I was looking for, and he yelled at a boy who went scurrying off toward the fields. While we waited by the jeep, a crowd of children too young for school surrounded us, and Ernie horsed around with them and broke apart his last few sticks of gum trying to make sure that no one was left out.
A thick-legged man trudged up the hill, his dark face hidden between his straw cap and his broad shoulders. He approached and spoke to me in Korean.
“I am Won Man-yuk. Hei-suk’s father.”
He nodded but kept his grip on the short scythe in his right hand and made no motion for us to move toward his home or out of the sun. If he could be direct, so could I. I spoke Korean.
“We are here to find out why your daughter killed herself.”
“The lawyer said he took care of all that.”
“He is taking half of what you receive for his troubles, is he not?”
“We are farmers. If it wasn’t for him, we’d get nothing.”
“Maybe your daughter killed herself for some other reason. Not because of the American.”
“She was a happy girl. She would never have killed herself if she hadn’t been involved with foreigners. It was our mistake for letting her work in the city. But we have other children. Other mouths to feed.”
“Did she ever bring the American here?”
“She didn’t ask.”
“Would you have allowed it if she had?”
“No.”
“She had only known the American for a few days. During that time you never saw her—or saw him. You have no way of knowing why she killed herself.”
“It had to be that. There could be no other reason.”
“The claim is for a lot of money. Would you move away from Chunhua?”
“No. I would buy more land.”
“Does your oldest daughter also send you money?”
His face hardened. “Don’t speak of my oldest daughter. She wastes her life as a hermit on White Cloud Mountain, tending to some old temple that no one ever visits.”
His knuckles bulged around the hilt of the scythe. I took a half step backward. Ernie moved around the jeep, but I waved him off.
“We believe that Hei-suk spent her last day with your oldest daughter.”
“Then she wasted her last day of life. Better if I’d kept them both in the fields.”
His dark face turned up at me, and in the shadow of his broad-brimmed hat, his black eyes burned like fire in a pit. The cracked flesh of the cheeks quavered and for a moment I thought it would break, but then his face set itself back into stone, like the granite outcroppings that form the foundations of the ancient village of Chunhua.
I didn’t know what else to ask him, and
I wondered why we had even bothered to come. A claim like this was a family’s only chance to pull themselves out of poverty, and they’d try to get it no matter what the facts of the case. Still, I had a job to do.
As gently as I could, I nodded and thanked him. We climbed into the jeep and rode away, the crowd of children running after us and the sturdy old farmer standing like a rock amidst the swirling dust.
The steep cobbled lanes of the village of Ok-dong had been carefully washed and festooned with bright blossoms and hanging paper lanterns in anticipation of the coming Festival of the Spring Flower. The aroma of boiling beef and onions wafted out of open-fronted noodle shops. Freshly scrubbed, lacquered wooden table of soju houses that serve rice wine beckoned with their smiling, silk-bedecked hostesses and the warbling sounds of female crooners crackling out of small wooden speakers.
“This place ain’t half bad,” Ernie said.
“Maybe we can stop on the way back,” I said, “but first we have to climb halfway up White Cloud Mountain.”
We had stopped at the police station, and then told us that a Taoist nun by the name of Won Un-suk did indeed live on the mountain. Her official occupation was listed as the tender of the Temple of the Jade Emperor.
The crisp-suited young police officer could barley contain his mirth when we asked about her. Most of the inhabitants of Ok-dong considered her eccentric at best, but they tolerated her because her little temple sometimes caught the overflow of tourists who came to Ok-dong to visit the much larger Buddhist temple farther up the mountain.
“Did you see the American who visited her last week?” I asked.
“Of course. We always notice such things. Now some more Americans only a few days later. Ok-dong is becoming an international attraction.”
He gave us directions to the nun’s hooch, and we walked out of the station.
“Real wise-ass,” Ernie said.
“Everybody’s gotta have some fun.”
As we climbed up the steep mountain path, the chatter and the clanging of pots in the village of Ok-dong below gradually gave way to the rustling of wind through pine trees and the scurrying of squirrels through brush. Ernie wiped the first beads of sweat from his brow.
“Why don’t we just write up the report that it was a suicide brought on by statutory rape and let that farmer have his claim? Why go to all this trouble?”
“I want him to have the claim, too. But remember, there’s a Marine who could get burned.”
“He deserves it, going after the innocent stuff when there’s all those business girls in Song-tan willing to give him what he wants for a few bucks.”
“Besides,” I said, “this case doesn’t seem right. Why would she take it so hard so quickly? For all we know, he hadn’t even left Korea when she killed herself.”
“Eyewitnesses say she walked onto the tracks and nobody else was around.”
“So it wasn’t murder. Still, before you kill yourself, you at least brood about it for a while.”
“How do you know?”
“Some of us brood all our lives and never work up the courage.”
“Jesus,” Ernie said. “We really do need to stop in one of those soju houses. If the rice wine doesn’t perk you up, the girls will.”
“All right. On the way back, I promise.”
At a bend in the pathway a sign pointed up toward a plateau above the pines. We followed it, and when we crested the ridge, we came upon a small wooden hut surrounded by a carefully tended garden of sprouting turnips. I shouted as we approached.
“Yoboseiyo! Won Un-suk keiseiyo?”
A tall, thin Korean woman with a scraggly bobbed hairdo and loose blue cotton skirt and tunic emerged from the hut. Her full lips worked hard to cover her big front teeth but slid back into a broad grin when she saw us. Her eyes sparkled and she seemed to be having trouble keeping from breaking into a laugh. I saw the resemblance to the stern farmer we had met at the village of Chunhua, but she was like an inverted image of him, one that saw the gaiety of life rather than just its grimness.
“Are you Won Un-suk?”
She nodded. I showed her my badge, but she waved it away, still smiling up at us.
“You’re here about my sister,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Come in. Come in.”
The floor of her little hut was immaculately clean and covered with a smooth thick layer of oil paper. We took of our shoes and entered and sat down cross-legged while she happily buzzed about preparing some Black Dragon tea. A brass pot of water was already hot, as if she had been expecting visitors. As she worked, she talked.
“My sister came here to visit me on her last day of life.” She turned and flashed a quick, toothy smile. “For this I am very pleased. She brought an American. He had less hair than you do and was very lean and strong. My sister, I think, was in love with this man, which is a very happy thing but also a very dangerous thing. Don’t you agree?”
I nodded. Ernie just stared at her, slightly dumfounded by her bright manner, although he couldn’t understand the rapid Korean that she spoke.
She unfolded the legs of a small oak table, set it in front of our knees, and poured cups of warm tea. I didn’t bother to interrupt her. She seemed happy to have visitors and happy to talk about her sister.
“Many people visit me. The Temple of the Jade Emperor is very popular. Of course, sometimes people expect something a little more elaborate.”
She waved to a small hand-carved shrine in the corner. In it sat a statuette made of jade. A somber old gentleman in thick robes, his eyes closed, was apparently meditating.
“The Jade Emperor. What you Americans would call the god of the universe. Of course we Taoists realize that even the gods are subject to the whims of the Tao.”
She flashed one of her gleaming smiles.
I noticed another shrine on the opposite wall. Made of inlaid stone, it was a type of mosaic of a beautiful woman floating above the clouds, her long silken garments trailing gracefully behind her. The nun continued her monologue.
“They stayed for a while and had tea. My sister was very proud of her young man.” She smiled again. “Pride is a very dangerous thing, don’t you agree? After tea they left because he was anxious to get down to all the excitement of Ok-dong. She was very disappointed by this because we don’t get to visit too often and of course we will get to visit even less often now.”
I began to understand why the young policeman in Ok-dong found it so humorous that a couple of American investigators were planning to visit this hermit of White Cloud Mountain. She turned her smiling eyes on Ernie, who wasn’t paying any attention to her chatter but merely sipped contentedly on his tea. She looked at me.
“He is a student of the Tao.”
I glanced at him. “Yes. I think he is.”
Ernie looked up, realizing we were taking about him, but turned back to his tea.
“A very advanced student,” the nun said. For once her face turned solemn and she nodded slowly. “You must be wondering why my sister would kill herself. Of course, the answer is obvious. Love with a man will only lead to pain, and the sooner you get the pain over with, the sooner you will be able to resume your journey toward the eternal principles of the Tao. The great sage Lao-tze would have nothing to do with love, he was much beyond that, and eventually he found the Jade Elixir of Immortality.”
She thrust her finger into the air and waved it like a baton, her wide mouth sparkling below.
Ernie set down his tea. “Don’t you give a damn that your sister’s dead?”
She turned to me, puzzled. I translated. She smiled back at Ernie. “She’s much better off now. She escaped the illusion of love. Quite an accomplishment for one so young.”
Ernie swiveled his head. “What’d she say?”
“Never mind, Ernie. This broad’s crazy. I’ll just ask one more question and we’ll get out of here and down to that soju house.”
“Good idea.”
I turned
back to the nun and spoke again in Korean. “When did you last see your sister?”
“When she walked down the mountain with the American.”
I nodded. “Thanks for the tea.” I pulled out some Korean money, a thousand won note, and slid it under the teapot. Laughing, she pushed it back at me.
“Oh no. Only devotees have to make contributions. You came as guests. This isn’t necessary.”
I picked up the wrinkled bill and shoved it back into my pocket. On the way across the turnip garden she smiled and bowed to us like a woodpecker after termites.
We went back to the soju house in the center of Ok-dong, and soon a bevy of giggling hostesses were sitting around us. “We had another American here,” one of them said, “just a few days ago.”
“Did he have short hair?” I asked. They nodded. “And a Korean woman with him?” They nodded again.
“She became very upset and left after only about an hour.”
“He stayed here alone?”
“Not alone!” They all laughed at this. “He had us to keep him company.”
“He spent the whole night?”
“Not the whole night. After a while he left with the Moon Goddess.”
I asked her what she meant by that, but they all giggled. Ernie was horsing around with the other girls and making them laugh and somebody turned the music up louder so I couldn’t talk anyway. After a few more shots of rice wine I figured it must be one of those obscure Korean literary allusions. I tried to forget about the investigation. It was clear what had happened. The boyfriend, like any red-blooded Marine, had forgotten his little girlfriend from Songtan when he’d encountered the beautiful courtesans of White Cloud Mountain. She had lost much face and left on her own. Maybe she was crazy, like her sister, or intense to the point of madness, like her father. For whatever reason, she couldn’t take her first amorous rejection, and she returned to Songtan and did her job like the well-trained child of Confucius that she was, and when the night closed around her, she went to the railroad tracks and waited for the train and walked out in front of the whistle and the clanging and the barreling light.
I tried to put these thoughts out of my mind and laugh along with Ernie and the girls. At first I couldn’t, but after a few more shots of soju I managed.
