by Martin Limon
Suddenly, the commander of the Itaewon Police Station stormed out of his office. He pulled a dented metal helmet down low over his eyes and snapped shut the leather chin strap. He gave the pack of policemen at the door a short pep talk and led them out the door. Responding crisply to his orders, they formed up in ranks and unhooked their riot batons. After Captain Kim shouted the command, the policemen charged into the crowd.
People screamed, cursed, and fell back in panic. Over the sea of heads, I glimpsed nightstick-wielding policemen, whaling away. Swiftly, the crowd started to melt into the night.
The policemen surged forward, chasing the retreating foe.
Herman and Ernie and I walked outside. On the wet pavement lay wounded rioters, some in pools of blood.
Ernie surveyed the damage. "These KNPs sure know how to bust up a party," he said.
A battalion of monsoon clouds drifted low, blotting out the gray pallor of the moon. Rain started to pelt down and we hurried through the narrow lanes, swerving always in the direction of Herman's hooch.
My blue jeans and black nylon jacket were soon soaked and clung to my body like bloody sheets on a corpse.
In the distance, far up amongst the jumbled tile roofs that spread like a maze behind the bar district, we heard a shriek. From a shredded voice.
The forlorn wail of a woman in anguish.
4
Rusty barbed wire coiled atop the stone-and-brick walls that lined the narrow pathway. Rain pattered on upturned tiles. The sound increased in volume when we passed a roof made of tin.
I breathed deeply of the damp air, occasionally inhaling a hint of garlic from cooking pots bubbling in open kitchens. When we passed a byonso, I held my breath, hoping to avoid the aroma of lye-encrusted septic tanks festering in soggy ground.
Wooden gates of various colors and thicknesses were stuck in the center of each wall, most of them locked and barred against interlopers.
I held my hand over my head to keep water from dripping into my eyes, but it wasn't working too well.
Ernie strolled along unconcerned, as if the rain drizzling down his round-lensed glasses and his pointed nose concerned him not in the least. Physical surroundings were something Ernie paid attention to only when they interested him. Usually, they didn't.
By now, the shrieks we'd heard earlier had become moans.
Herman ducked through an open gate. When he did, the shrieking started again. I recognized the distinctive bark: Slicky Girl Nam. Mrs. Herman the German.
An address was embossed on a brass plate embedded in the stone wall: 45 bonji, 36 dong.
A short walkway of flat stone led into a courtyard festooned with scraggly shrubs and an ancient iron-handled pump with a plastic bucket beneath it. On a raised wooden platform, hooches with sliding paper doors faced out at us.
The joint didn't look much different from the whorehouses in the area. In fact, from previous visits I'd determined that a couple of the residents next door were freelance business girls working the local clubs. By Itaewon standards, this was a routine place to raise children.
Holes were punched in the paper in the doors of Herman's hooch. Some of the latticework was splintered. Inside, shards of pottery and smashed glassware and ripped pillows lay strewn across the vinyl-covered floor.
Ernie whistled. "A lot of damage, considering it's not typhoon season."
Elderly Korean women squatted along the edge of the wooden platform, like a patient jury of ghosts. We stepped under the large corrugated fiberglass overhang to get out of the rain.
When she saw Herman, Slicky Girl Nam bounded across the courtyard, long nails bared like a tigress.
"Shangnom-ah! Tangsin weikurei?" Born of a base lout! What have you done?
She wore a flower-print blue dress that clung to her quivering belly and rode high above plump knees. Her hair was dyed raven black and ratted into a headdress that would've startled a New Guinea headhunted
She swiped at Herman's eyes. He stopped, and without moving his neck, leaned his rotund body backward. The claws sliced by his face within inches. The miss threw Slicky Girl Nam off stride; she reeled forward and rammed her shoulder into Herman's stomach. A "whoof" erupted from his blubbery lips and he stumbled backwards. Ernie and I caught him, but just in time for him to open his eyes and see the wild-eyed Slicky Girl Nam charging at him again.
"Kei-sikkya!" she shrieked. Issue of a dog!
Ernie jumped between them, grabbed Slicky Girl Nam by the wrists, and tried to hold her. For a moment it was touch and go as to who was going to win the wrestling match. But finally she jerked her hands away, stepped back, and pointed at Herman.
"Shangnom-ah! You let them take Mi-ja. What's a matter you? You dingy dingy. You no have brain?"
Herman kept his bull-to-the-slaughterhouse blue eyes on her, his aggrieved expression staying perfectly in place. Slicky Girl Nam pushed past Ernie, reached, and rapped two knuckles atop Herman's round head.
"No have nothing inside?" she demanded. "Why you no stop them? Why you let them mess whole house, break everything, and then take Mi-ja? You no man? You no have nothing down here?"
She thrust a claw toward Herman's crotch, but he jerked back in time and managed to avoid her wicked nails. Again Slicky Girl Nam rapped Herman on the side of the head.
"Where she go? You tell me, where she go?"
Herman stared at us, ignoring the steady knocking on his head.
"They took her," he said.
"Who took her?" I asked.
He waved his heavy arm towards the hooches. "The guys who searched the rooms."
"What were they looking for?"
"Antiques."
"Antiques?"
"Yes. A special antique. One they thought I have, but I don't."
Slicky Girl Nam let out a low growl, raised her hand, and stepped closer to Herman.
"You stupid! You stay black market. Don't need old, what you call it… antique. You make enough money. Why you mess with old Korean things? Pyongsin-a!"
Herman didn't respond to being called a cripple, any more than he had to any of Slicky Girl Nam's attacks, verbal or physical.
I could only figure it was love.
When Herman the German and Slicky Girl Nam were married, it was the biggest social event of the Itaewon season. They rented the patio on the top of the 7 Club, right in the heart of the strip, and hired a band and a go-go girl and dressed Mi-ja up as a little Korean flower girl. The beer and the chop were free, so they had a pretty good turnout. Ernie and I chipped in and bought the newlyweds a gift, two rolls of quarters for the slot machines at the NCO club on post.
The man who performed the ceremony was the owner of the 7 Club, which was okay because the official wedding between a Korean woman and an American man takes place when you receive a bunch of stamps on a pile of paperwork at Seoul City Hall. Neither Herman nor Slicky Girl Nam was very religious anyway. But superstition, that was different.
They hired a mudang, a Korean witch, to chase ghosts away with a torch during the wedding ceremony. Later, the witch performed a few chants until she fell into a trance. After a couple of drinks, the trance must've been working pretty well because the mudang grabbed Herman and performed a lewd dance with him in the center of the patio until Slicky Girl Nam got pissed off and punched her in the nose.
All in all, it was a successful party. During the last couple of hours, both Ernie and I went into alcoholic blackout, which is the criteria we use to judge any social event.
Now Ernie strode around the courtyard, surveying the damage that had been done to the hooches. Whoever had decided to search had been thorough about it. Drawers and clothes and kitchen utensils were scattered everywhere.
Slicky Girl Nam glared at Herman, occasionally knocking on his bowling ball skull with her gnarled fists, but she wasn't hysterical anymore.
"Why you no change charcoal?"
"I'm sorry, honey," Herman answered. "I'll take care of that right now."
Herman scurried
over to a large metal plate canted into the stone foundation of the hooch. He opened it and, using a nearby pair of metal tongs, reached in and pulled out a glowing cylinder of flaming charcoal. He scooped out the orange-tinted ash beneath it and tossed the refuse into a pile of spent fuel. After reinserting the flaming briquette, and placing a fresh charcoal briquette on top of it, Herman slapped his dusty hands together and closed the lid of the stove.
Koreans call it the ondol heating system. Flues carry charcoal gas beneath the hooch, which heats the stones above and the wood-slat floors above that. All in all it's very cozy and Koreans love a hot platform to sleep on, even during the warm monsoon season.
Generally, changing the charcoal is considered to be menial work, and most people with any money hire someone to do it for them. Sticky Girl Nam could've afforded a maid. But, apparently, changing the charcoal was another method she used to humiliate her husband.
Three of the old women put on their slippers and surrounded Slicky Girl Nam, rugging on her arms, cajoling her to sit down. Slicky Girl Nam let her face slump, now playing the role of the bereaved mother. The old women sat her down on the raised varnished floor and cooed over her. One brought her a glass of warm barley tea.
When Herman finished with the charcoal, I stood in front of him.
"Spill it, Herman. What the hell were you into this time?"
"Nothing."
Ernie, hands on his hips, strode behind Herman and booted him in the butt. Herman didn't jump as I'd expected him to but turned slowly, tears building until his eyes looked like boiled eggs.
"What'd you do that for?" he asked.
"For not talking to my partner. For not spilling it all." Ernie jabbed his pointed nose into Herman's round one. "Your little girl has been kidnapped. You came to us for help. If you don't start talking there's no way anybody's going to find her. So talk!"
For a moment I thought Herman might slug Ernie, but instead he rotated his torso back toward me.
"A skull. Carved in jade," he said. "From some old king. That's what she told me it was. Worth a lot of money, too."
"Who's 'she'?" I asked.
"The chick," Herman said. "The tall chick. The one with the big yubangs."
Yubang. Breast. Another important word.
Ernie raised one eyebrow. "What's this chick's name?"
"Lady Ahn."
"Lady Ahn?"
"Yeah. That's what she calls herself."
"And these guys were looking for that antique?"
Herman nodded.
"How do you know?"
"They told me." He held up his arm. Fresh round burns had been seared into the flesh above his elbow. I hadn't noticed them before. "They told me they wanted it."
"What'd you tell them?"
"I told them the truth. I don't have it."
"Who does?"
"Lady Ahn. I'm meeting her tomorrow to set up the transfer. So I can get it back to the States for her."
"Hold baggage?"
Herman nodded.
I saw the connection now. An antique dealer with a particularly precious piece she wants to smuggle out of the country. The Korean Ministry of the Interior won't let dealers take some pieces out, especially the ones classified as national treasures. Maybe this jade skull Lady Ahn had was one of them. And even if she received Korean permission to ship it to the States, once it arrived at a U.S. port of entry, a fat customs duty would be slapped on it. Military hold baggage wasn't checked as closely. In fact, it's hardly checked at all. A cursory sniff for drugs and that's about it. The perfect way to ship a prize antique out of the country.
"And once this skull arrived in the States, Lady Ahn was going to buy it back?" I asked Herman.
He nodded. "With a nice markup."
"So you were getting ready to arrange the transfer," I surmised, "but before you received the piece some guys visited you and did this."
Herman nodded again.
"And when you couldn't produce this jade skull, they took Mi-ja."
Herman let his head droop.
"You ought to get a job, Herman," Ernie said. "Earn an honest living. Then this shit wouldn't happen to you."
Herman raised his head and glanced back and forth between us. "We have to get her back."
"No sweat," Ernie said. "We grab this jade bullshit from this chick with the big yubangs, hand it over to these tough boys, and they'll give you Mi-ja back."
"But I don't know where the jade is at."
Ernie shrugged. "So we'll find it."
A bell tinkled outside. I heard a kickstand snap open and click against the pavement. A Korean boy in black shorts and a damp T-shirt pushed through the small door in Herman's gate.
"Chunghua yori chapsuseiyo," he said in a singsong voice. Please eat Chinese food.
The boy trotted past us, carrying a large tin box slashed with red ideograms. My regular attendance at Korean language night classes allowed me to read it: The Virtuous Dragon Dumpling House. The boy set the box down on the wooden platform in front of the hooches, slid back the metal sides, and pulled out a large plate of steaming dumplings. As he laid out plastic bottles of soy sauce and vinegar and a few paper-wrapped pairs of wooden chopsticks, Slicky Girl Nam roused herself from her grief.
"Uri an sikkyoso," she said. We didn't order this.
"Sonmul," the boy said. A gift. "Ohton chingu sikkyosoyo." A friend ordered it for you.
Slicky Girl Nam nodded. One of the old women squatted near the plate, grabbed a small table, unfolded the legs, and started to arrange the chopsticks.
The boy splashed past us, ducked through the gate, and hopped on his bike. In a few seconds, I heard the swishing rubber of his tires wheeling away. I turned back to Herman.
"Tell me more about the guys who broke in here," I said.
"They were foreigners."
"Foreigners? Not Korean?"
"Right. But not Americans, either."
Ernie was growing impatient with the slow plodding of Herman's thought processes. "Then what the hell were they?"
Herman shrugged. "I don't know."
"What'd they look like?" I asked.
"Sort of like Koreans, but maybe darker. They all smelled funny, too."
"Like what?"
"Like maybe incense."
"How many of them were there?"
"Maybe a half dozen. I fought 'em but they hit me a few times." Herman rubbed his head.
Ernie was completely disgusted. He knew I had the patience to continue the questioning, so he strode over to the old women and the dumplings.
"Okay," I told Herman, "a half-dozen dark Asian men break in here, demand a jade skull, and when they don't get it they torture you and kidnap your adopted daughter. Is that what happened?"
"That's what happened. When they left I followed them, but I was still dizzy. I lost them in the alleys."
"How long did you search?"
"Almost an hour. Until I found you guys."
"You never saw any of these men before?"
"No."
"And you don't have any idea how to get in touch with them?"
He shook his head sadly.
"I think what we have to do, Herman," I put my hand on his shoulder, "is talk to this woman antique dealer you were working with. She should be able to give us some sort of lead."
A shriek filled my ears.
This one was high-pitched like the others, but male. I turned and saw Ernie sitting on the raised wooden floor, kicking back with his feet, trying to get away from the plate of dumplings as if he'd just seen the flickering tongue of a cobra. I ran over, Herman huffing right behind me.
One of the dumplings had been bitten in two. A sliver of meat lay next to it. The old women held their cupped fists to their mouths, looking like frightened schoolgirls. Slicky Girl Nam's mouth hung open. A croaking sound leaked out.
"What is it?" I asked.
Ernie pointed. "The dumplings. Look at the goddamn dumplings!"
I studied the plate more care
fully. The sliver of meat was raw flesh. Curled.
I opened more dumplings, pulling back the soft, doughy crust. Each dumpling contained a similar sliver of flesh. Soon I had all the slivers in a pile in the center of the table and I realized that they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Using a pair of chopsticks, I twisted and turned until they formed an odd shape.
Brown and wrinkled, about the size of a silver dollar. A human ear. The ear of a little girl.
Slicky Girl Nam started to screech again. This time the old women joined her. So did Herman.
Ernie crept off behind the hooch and threw up.
I slumped down, staring at the tips of the chopsticks and then back at the ear. After a couple of minutes, I joined Ernie.
5
Mi-ja shivered in the cold chamber, her aching buttocks pressed atop the varnished wood plank floor. But none of it mattered now. The discomfort made no difference. All she could feel was the searing explosion of pain flaming from the side of her head. The side of her head where her ear had been sliced off.
How had it happened so quickly? Her life had been painful before, but nothing like this. Nothing like the nightmare that had befallen her without warning.
Across the room sat the man she had first seen in Mistress Nam's courtyard. He was naked now except for the white rag wound tightly about his head. His eyes were closed, and Mi-ja wondered if he wasn't asleep. But he couldn't be, because his legs were crossed and his back was ramrod straight.
She wriggled on the hard floor. As soon as she did, a bamboo rod snapped out of the darkness and bit into the flesh of her thigh. Mi-ja winced in pain but clamped her eyes tightly. She tried not to cry.
How long had she sat like this? It seemed like hours, ever since her ear had been sliced off. And every time she moved, the bamboo rod licked at her tender nerves like the flickering tongue of some ancient serpent.
Across the chamber, a supplicant knelt behind the man in the white rag. Mi-ja opened her eyelids ever so slightly and watched, fearing the bamboo rod but wary about what these men were about to do. The supplicant dipped his hand into a wooden bowl, brought his fingers out dripping with oil, and slowly rubbed the fluid over the bronze skin of the man in the turban.
