He had to focus. The hwarang were elite warriors with a chivalrous code from Korea’s distant past, too distant for him now. She was agitated and kept pulling at the fabric on one elbow.
“Your father was torn. He knew you needed certain laws for democracies to operate and here those laws did not exist. Perhaps he read our men too much Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and others.”
She had always paid better attention in school. Hobson could imagine his father teaching civics to students hungry for answers.
“He gave them advice; I am not sure what it was. All I know was the Japanese kept getting worse. The military police in Korea have the ability to enforce what they call “summary convictions.” Many of the western missionaries and newspapermen have been deported or executed or disappeared.”
“Eventually some of our people felt they had no choice, they attacked police stations. You heard of that American, Stevens, who was assassinated by Chon Myong-un and Chang In-hwan in San Francisco. He had helped to set up the Japanese Resident-General’s government in Korea.”
Her English with its musical inflection made her all the more dear. They had grown up together speaking Korean and yet now she spoke English to him. The courtyard wall and the use of a foreign language were protection against spies and collaborators.
Hobson had been in San Francisco when it happened, not long after the earthquake.
“They assassinated the Resident General when he visited Harbin in China. Some set up revolutionary governments in exile. The disbanded Korean Army has formed the Righteous Army and fights in the mountains or from Manchuria or Siberia. We get pamphlets from them regularly. There is a group that started here…”
“There’s fighting, really? You’re not involved, are you? Is there any hope? How do they survive?” Hobson had to break the spell and think.
She lowered her voice. “The New Hwarang, the New Flower Youth, the warriors.”
He simply wanted to look at her, but her words had his senses reeling. Hwarang were warriors, the Korean equivalent of samurai.
“Your parents helped, in their way. We were their adopted people. I do not know how to say this. I think the Japanese used ‘summary conviction.’ They executed them. They were missionaries, westerners, and extremely dangerous because they had ties to the outside world. They might be able to mobilize opinion. Remember how dangerous Americans were. The Japanese won a war against the Russians and took territory from the Russians and Teddy Roosevelt made them give it back.”
His parents had come to show Cholla province a better way and there were those…who had not approved of that way. Deep down, he had expected as much.
“My husband was a member of the New Hwarang. They came for him one night. I am in mourning.”
How could he have missed it? She was dressed in hemp and wore straw shoes.
He felt his heart swell to reach out, some way, somehow, but his brain could not see a way. And it was her he longed for, now even more.
What was his future? He was a low-caste sailor leading a profession that destroyed the families of its most loyal. She was an educated woman from a yangban family and dedicated to her country. He could not return, the Japanese would not permit him, would no permit him to act freely and openly. Japan was taking control and symbols of alternatives would disappear or become dormant.
“The Japanese came one night and they disappeared. The schooner was gone, too, and we never heard from them again. Eventually someone wrote back to the stateside mission. There was no replacement.”
That was what he had suspected. He had seen the letter. There were rumors of a new Japanese iron hand and he knew his parents were stiff-necked Yankees. He knew there was no use coming back and yet he had changed his name in the off chance he might have to come back. That name was on a Kempeitai list somewhere. He had no clout in America, and no one would listen to a young American in Korea. And what would he have to say? Anything different from what a Korean his own age might say? And he would stand out just enough to make life difficult for all around him. He was a foreign influence just like the Japanese. Was any foreign influence better than any other foreign influence?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Her tears trickled quietly and she sniffled bravely. He told her about himself, what he had done for the past few years. Her eyes lit up. She too had grown up in two cultures. Travel, adventure, she could identify with, at least intellectually.
She was married, children, established, settled. She ran a church-related school. On the other hand, he realized that although he could transit two very different worlds, he was not really established in either.
“Have you seen this?”
For some forlorn reason he showed her the Sabatelli’s photograph. For no reason he could think of, but he had to. He felt so lost and without hope, perhaps it was simply to bring things to “now” as opposed to “then.”
She shook herself and the tears stopped.
“This one I know.” She tapped Sato’s head. “Moon. He came around from another district in Cholla. At least that is what we heard. A real firebrand with the New Hwarang. At the time I figured he would go overseas and help with building an army. In the end, I believe it is the only way we will make the Japanese leave, by force of arms. I was wrong about him. The word since, has been that he was an agent provocateur.”
It was a strange foreign phrase he had heard in San Francisco. Men seeded into union situations to turn things violent and to make overreaction easy. Her husband had been an insurrectionist—that was what they were called in the Philippines. It was a phrase associated with political tension and treachery. How different their lives were now. Had life passed him by?
Sato was Moon or Moon was Sato. What did it mean? Why had the Kims called him Sato?
She ushered him out the gate and disappeared behind the wall. It had been a fleeting meeting and awkward. It would not be seemly for her to be seen with foreign men and there was no way she could explain his link to the village without jeopardizing Hobson, herself, and perhaps the village itself.
He felt a strong desire to sleep in the village on ondul heated floors again under an ibul quilt. He missed the smell of charcoal and that solid, low-lying warmth. His world had changed now, he slept in the floating netherworld of a “dream sack,” a naval hammock. The village seemed very close to home. No, he could not sleep here in the village without arousing Matsuda’s curiosity.
For some reason, Hobson felt—more than ever—that he alone could unravel the skein of Jade Rooster. He felt compelled to do so. The dark presence that had brought death to his parents and Eun’s husband was somehow linked its disappearance. He stomached his anger…for the time being, he had to.
He had nowhere to direct it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The baskets with the double blue reed had served as a beacon. He knew what he would find the next day.
They anchored near one of the probable sites and Hobson went rowing, the usual practice by now. A light snow began to fall without accumulation on the twisted, wind-swept pines and junipers.
The last man to stand on Jade Rooster’s decks was near.
As he approached he heard hae nyo whistling as they breached. The water was still warm enough for those hardened by habit and as he rounded a twin rocks, he saw two women with white headwraps swimming. An island was in the distance and a large expanse of mudflat. In one swimmer’s gourd-buoyed basket were several abalone, an octopus, and a single-fold block. It comprised her catch for the day, mostly edible and in this last instance, useable. She had to have salvaged the block that day from a western ship, a barque he was sure.
He tried to recall the mudang’s words, the words of the angry drowning man.
He sculled along containing his excitement and then he saw it—barely awash—a mast stump breaking the surface from time to time. The mast stump was wrapped in manila line in an unseamanl
ike manner and a sack of what looked like clothing was all that remained of Sato or Moon or whatever his name had been. It must have been difficult to cut the mast off that high above the deck.
Below Hobson was an oblong black shadow with its standing rigging flapping in the current like a witch’s shawl. Its main deck was ten feet below the surface at its lowest point. The hae nyo slipped away, ignoring him.
He had to be sure. He stripped down to his woolen underwear and dove in. The murky water was warmer than the air, but it still caused him to suck in his breath. He tied the sampan to the wreck’s rigging, then he worked his way along the gunwales with his hands. It was a western vessel, wood, not steel. The woodwork was right and from time to time he felt a belaying pin or block. He recovered a block with the words “Lunenberg, N.S.” on it.
The hull was tilted to port and down at the bow. He found the second mast stump in deeper water. He dove again and worked his way to the bowsprit. He had to be careful or he might get caught under the network and standing rigging. Each time he surfaced more quickly. The cold and depth were taking their toll. He found the dolphin strikers and worked his way back. He could see nothing; he did all his identification by feel. He surfaced and dove again ignoring the cold that seemed to be attacking his ears and eyes. Then he found it, a bit of shipwright’s vanity carved below the bowsprit, less than half a fathom in length. He felt it completely and surfaced. Submerging again, he felt it completely again and scratched it to be sure. When he surfaced, he looked under his fingernails. Pale green paint. Paint the color of jade. The figurehead had been carved in the upright shape of a strutting and defiant bird—one with a great arched, flowing tail.
He climbed back into the sampan as the snow began to fall more heavily. The tide had just begun to flood.
As he returned to the steam cutter and peeled off his wet woolen underwear, the wind was rising and he began to shiver uncontrollably.
Hobson looked back. Somewhere deep in that black hull was the answer to a puzzle that had tallied four heads and that was linked to a country in mourning. The revelation should not have been that startling, but he was breathing heavily and felt a constriction in his chest. Was it the exertion or something else?
The wreck’s heavily tarred and now chaffing standing rigging had flapped like a witch’s shawl. That image and the sudden encounter with Eun had brought back his personal ghosts. Witches and ghosts. How that imagery had flowed through the trans-Pacific trade in ship names like Sea Witch and Halloween. Cutty’s Sark was Gaelic for a witch’s shirt. Was a mudang a medium or a witch or simply a guide to the other side? Was he slipping in and out of the rational? Witches, death, and darkness.
More disturbing still, the silhouette of the hull of a barque was not unlike the silhouette of a schooner. He realized this above all this was the thing he dreaded most. More than anything, he dreaded the thought of finding a schooner, a particular schooner.
And then he was at the steam cutter. He had taken a long time sculling back and his woolen underwear was dry. One of the Korean crewmen offered him some of Sabatelli’s coffee. He found himself gazing at Sabatelli’s coffee grinder and the yin and yang pattern of the cast iron arches on its wheels.
“Did you find anything?” Sabatelli asked as he had done so many times before.
“No, not yet.”
It was growing colder, he thought with a frisson. It was cold, cold…as a witch’s caress.
The steam cutter puffed eastward for several days beyond Mokp’o and then began its return trip to Chemulp’o without retracing its steps. The strong currents and far-ranging tides made its progress appear halting and undecided, and Hobson thought that in a way, the cutter reflected the malaise of its passengers. Sabatelli did not know he had found the barque and felt he had wasted his time and money. Hobson had held back with a sailor’s circumspection, and mistrust of those outside the chain of command. Hobson was in the throes of indecision. Why had he allowed himself to come back to Korea? Should he do something? What could he do?
At one inviting cove, they had anchored out, and Hobson had made several trips to ferry in Matsuda and the crew. Proceeding up the shingle from his beached sampan, Hobson found himself eye level with the barrels of two well-oiled Nambu pistols. Two bodies lay in the road behind the Japanese military policemen that held the pistols. One body had a puddle below its head that Hobson assumed was blood. He could smell gunsmoke and there was that eerie silence which follows a loud report. Hobson could hear women shrieking and crying, but, true to Confucian custom, they did so behind closed doors. The mixed odor of burning charcoal, garlic, and night soil seemed particularly pungent. The two Japanese military policemen seemed edgy and both Hobson and Sabatelli made sure to assume cooperative postures.
Beyond the two, several other military policemen were herding young men into a wagon and a platoon of foot-weary soldiers formed a loose circle around the entire evolution. Most Korean houses had perimeter walls that sealed their homes off from the street and it was difficult to see where the young men were coming from. It was clear, the Japanese were not being very selective, any able-bodied candidate would do. Hobson realized that he did not look very official in his dungarees and peajacket. A westerner, perhaps a missionary, was an unwelcome complication that could be easily resolved. Interference by foreigners might mean reports and embarrassment. Dead foreigners required an apology, at most.
Matsuda came around the corner, sized up the situation, and began barking orders. The Korean men were hustled off and the handguns returned to their holsters.
Matsuda offered no words of explanation.
Deeper in the village they came upon another westerner.
He was a big blond man who by appearance would have made a better Viking than a clergyman, Hobson thought when he saw him swinging back and forth the gate of a house with a thatched roof. Hobson readily identified the props; he carried a Bible in one hand and he wore Korean rubber slippers. Hobson’s father had always carried a Bible, not that it was so necessary, just to symbolize his purpose. Some faiths wore clerical collars, others wore crucifixes, and the variations were endless. He wore a heavy frock coat, a shirt and tie, and carried a western newsboy’s hat with its brim in his hand. He seemed to work the gate back and forth on its hinge distractedly.
He continued to swing the gate. The missionary did not want to have anything to do with Hobson or Sabatelli. He had seen them with Matsuda and assumed they were somehow working with the Japanese Resident-General. Hobson sensed this and began talking to the blond man in Korean. Hobson realized it was the first time he had ever talked to a Caucasian in Korean.
“What’s going on?” Hobson questioned. “Has someone read the riot act? Why are the Japanese rounding up Korean men? I saw two men dead in the street. What’s this all about, forced conscription? Surely the locals after enjoying the benefits of a superior Nipponese culture here and colonial paternalism, can’t be shirking?”
The words were not that important, it was the use of the language. You cannot learn a language without coming to some understanding of the people who speak it. An American who had gone through what it required to have that level of proficiency in Korean might be worthy of a minor degree of trust. Any missionary knew no one who spoke Korean could be ignorant of Korea’s unhappy circumstances.
The response came in English. “You sir, may choose to be flippant, but those two young men were students of mine and died because of their attitude toward their Nipponese overlords. And I am afraid that the attitude which bought them their deaths may have been my doing.”
Hobson thought the man wobbled slightly. He opened his handkerchief and wiped his forehead in a very awkward way.
“ So, if you are going to be sarcastic, even at the expense of the sons of Nippon, kindly do so with someone who is presently more emotionally disposed to see mirth or irony in this situation.”
“Sorry.”
Hobson realized the Viking was tense and drunk. His breathing was shallow, marked by faint tendrils of steam.
“Eight men, either Righteous Army or New Hwarang sympathizers were beheaded on a hilltop to the east of here. Several months back, another four were beheaded on a mountain crest not too far south of here.
Hobson felt in his pocket for the photograph.
“We knew they might come. Most of the other villages have been raided. They are engaging a double effort, these days. Interrogating for ‘bandits’ and conscripting labor for railroad work. Several Koreans die for every mile of track. They need to constantly replenish their labor supply. And there is a lot of mining that is going to have to be done if the Nippon’s military machine is going to match world power standards.”
“I’m with the U.S Navy…my people were missionaries here once. We’re trying to find a barque. It seems beheadings are pretty common around here. Have you seen this?”
“Oh”
He seemed to have a thought on the U.S. Navy, but could not get it to form words. “Well damn them when ready, Gridley, and let drift the torpedoes. Well, my advice to you is to remember that under the regime Japanaise, improper political behavior, let alone overt guerrilla activity, will buy you ‘summary conviction.’”
“Yes, we have heard about summary conviction.”
The blonde man examined the photograph slowly. “That’s Moon and that’s Hoyt. I have not made the acquaintance of the others, not likely to either. Moon was a turncoat and Hoyt was a bloodsucker. He was Navy, too, you know.”
The missionary eyed Hobson closely.
“Perhaps you should be more selective. He used to work in Pusan in some capacity. Got out of the Navy, I’m told. Only fellow I know who took the effort to learn the language, but then couldn’t bother to sympathize with the people. Learned it from his mistress, his pillow dictionary, I’m told. Tried to get as much money as he could out of the New Hwarang. The basket and the…er, heads, are in a boat. This has to do with that ship, Jade Rooster, doesn’t it? Those are the words on the sides of the boat in the picture. They were supposed to bring us…”
Jade Rooster Page 14
