by Junghyo Ahn
Mansik felt his mother’s grip tighten on his arm. She was trembling. It was difficult for her to breath.
“We’d better shout for help,” she said.
“Shout what, Mother?”
“Scream. Scream for help.”
Mansik tried, but no sound came out of his throat. He swallowed. “I can’t, Mother.”
“Scream.”
“I can’t. You try it, Mother.”
She could not scream either. They heard someone approach the room on tiptoe. The man outside paused for a moment, as if trying to decide what he should do next. He started to move again. His shadow fell on the paper of the door. It was a tall soldier with a helmet on. The shadow grew bigger as the man came nearer.
“It’s a bengko, Mother. I can tell by the sound of his boots.”
Another helmeted shadow appeared on the paper door and the first shadow stopped. They discussed something. The second shadow went away.
“They’re bengko soldiers, Mother, and they brought guns with them. Why are they here?”
“Scream, Mansik. Please.”
“Maybe they’ll kill us,” the boy said, terrified.
Ollye moved closer to the door and finally called out in a quavering voice, that was barely audible outside, “Who is it?”
The soldier stopped again. He did not answer.
“Who is it?”
Still no answer. The soldier waited.
“What do you want from our house?” she said, a little louder this time.
The door burst open. A flood of light blinded them and a flashlight beam searched the room for its prey. The giant soldier jumped into the room, his arms wide open. No sooner had Mansik risen to his feet, instinctively, in defense, than the soldier grabbed him by the neck and hurled him out of the room. Mansik lost consciousness even before he landed on the ground. Then the man pushed Ollye down. She tried to scream and run, but he gripped her shoulders, uttering strange words that she could not understand at all, and mounted her like a wild animal.
Trying to fight off the rapist, Ollye kicked the basket by the door. The rice she had taken from the town granary spilled on the floor. As she struggled desperately, trying to scream, the soldier tore off her underpants, and stuffed them into her mouth. Pinning down the gagged woman with his knees, the soldier stripped her and opened her legs by force. Ollye fainted when a long, slimy tongue licked her face and a wet rubbery thing slid up her naked thigh.
Outside under the chestnut tree, a black Yankee was standing guard, waiting for his turn.
When he came to, Mansik tried to turn himself over. He could not. His left shoulder ached. Lying listless and motionless, he looked up at the stars and the yellow moon. It was long past the Eighth Full Moon but the dim moon was still bright enough to etch the contour of the chestnut tree against the graying sky. A chilly breeze rustled the leaves in the early dawn silence.
Mansik drove his hand across his nose, and felt something sticky on his palm. His nose was stuffed with lumps of blood; he could not get enough air through his nostrils. His jawbones gritted as he tried to breathe through his mouth.
Nanhi whimpered inside the house. His head ached, and he felt pain in every joint as he tried to push himself up again. Nanhi whimpered again.
He called softly, “Mother.”
There was no answer.
“Mother?”
Something moved in the dark room and then his mother sighed, a deep long sigh. But Mansik soon realized that it was not his mother who had just sighed. It sounded like the sigh of a man after heavy labor. Mansik turned his stiff neck. Through the open door he saw someone, a tall dark figure, buttoning his clothes. Nanhi whimpered in snatches. The dark figure glanced down at the sniveling child, fished something out of his pocket, unwrapped a candy bar and gave it to her. The soldier, who had kept his boots on, picked up his helmet and rifle which were lying by the door and clumped over to the gate. He paused to glance at the dead dog and stooped down to check the squirming boy. The soldier smelled of burnt fur and damp. Kneeling on the ground, the boy blankly looked up at the black soldier, who smirked, his teeth and eyes flashing white in the moonlight. Although he had on the same green uniform as other liberators, this black bengko had a flat nose with cavernous nostrils. Mansik had never seen such porky thick lips. The black man strode to the chestnut tree and joined the other Yankee waiting there. The two men whispered something to each other and walked away along the road stretching to Castle village.
When the soldiers were gone, Mansik raised himself with a painful grunt and staggered into the house. He heard Nanhi sucking the candy bar in the dark. Otherwise it was deadly silent.
“Mother,” he called.
Ollye did not answer.
He saw the faint shape of his mother, half naked, lying on the floor.
“Mother, are you all right?”
She still did not answer.
Mansik fumbled about the lamp stand to find the match box. He struck a match and lit the kerosene lamp. He saw his mother. She was lying there, limp like a corpse, her mouth agape and her eyes dazed in disbelief. Her hair was disheveled like a woman who has just had a violent fight with a neighbor. She did not even attempt to hide the dark bushy hair exposed between her open thighs.
“Mother, what happened?”
She gazed up, dumbfounded, her breasts showing under her torn shirt. Nanhi was lying beside the spilled pile of rice, sucking at her candy bar.
“Put out the light, Mansik,” Ollye said weakly.
FOUR
“Jun! Jun! Wake up!”
It was long past midnight and Kijun, only half awake, wondered why his uncle had come to see him at this late hour. Kijun did not answer because he was too sleepy to say anything and because he would have had to wake up if he answered.
“Brother! Brother!” Uncle called Kijun’s father, his voice still a muffled whisper but a little louder.
Annoyed by the untimely visitor, Father coughed twice to express his intention to rise and go out to see his brother. Kijun decided to go back to sleep.
Kijun heard his father say, “What on earth is up? Don’t you know what time it is?”
“Don’t talk so loud and come on out here. I’ve got something to tell you.”
Grumbling, he stepped down to the yard. The door slammed shut, and the two men went into the shadow under the eaves outside the children’s room. Kijun was suddenly alert.
“Is your wife all right?” Uncle said.
“Of course she is. What kind of a question is that?” Father said, irritated.
“So she is safe. Your wife, I mean.”
“Sure. What’s the matter with you, anyway?”
“Maybe the bengkos didn’t notice your house back here. They must have passed by along the road.”
“What are you talking about? What bengkos?”
“Two Yankees came to the village tonight, and I have a suspicion about their intentions.”
As his uncle went on buzzing just outside the room, Kijun became absorbed in the story. He quietly crawled toward the door to overhear the whispered conversation better. He had to trample on his four younger siblings to reach the door, for the room was crowded not only with the five children but with the sacks of potatoes that were kept indoors at night lest wild animals should come down from the mountains and steal them.
“Two bengkos came to my house earlier tonight,” Uncle said. “I woke up because Brownie barked so I looked out the window to see what was wrong with the dog. I saw a white bengko standing by the twig gate, searching for something with a flashing stick lamp, and another bengko, a black one, trying to drive away the dog with his rifle. They wanted to come into my house, and I thought I knew what they were after. So I woke up the whole family and we crashed through the bush-clover fence behind the house to escape to the woods. But we didn’t have to run too far. The dog kept barking so furiously that the bengkos soon gave up. They left and came down along this road. Probably they did not try to break into th
is house because they didn’t see it. Your house is well concealed by trees and bushes.”
“Why do you think the bengkos came to this village?” Father asked.
“I am not sure but I have a fairly clear idea what they are after.”
“Oh.”
They paused for a while. Kijun wondered why they kept silent.
Uncle went on, “At any rate, I think they headed for the ferry, because I didn’t see them cross the stream to go to Inner Kumsan.”
“Old Click Beetle lives over there and the bengkos must have passed by his house,” Father said. “I wonder if anything happened to him.”
“But there’re no women in his house.”
“I know. Maybe the bengkos are after something else.”
“Shall we go to see him now?”
Kijun, engrossed in their conversation, was already fumbling in the dark for his clothes.
“Click Beetle” was the nickname of a cranky old widower in his late sixties, who used to sharecrop vegetables for a living until he made an enemy of almost everybody at Charcoal village and moved to Kumsan. In his first year in Kumsan, he tried to raise barley but all his plants died, presumably because click beetles had gnawed the roots. The old man interpreted this disaster in the first year at his new village as Heaven’s punishment for his temper which made everybody around him into his enemy.
When Kijun’s father and uncle went over to his house, the old man apparently had been awake for some time. Even before they called out to him, Click Beetle lit the kerosene lamp in his room, opened the door, and looked out to see who was coming, holding the lamp high over his head.
“Oh, sure, they were here,” the old man said, stroking his gray beard with knobby fingers.
Hiding behind a pile of logs, Kijun listened to their conversation, trying to memorize every word they said so that he could tell the village boys in the morning.
Click Beetle said he had been awakened by the “sound” of the light flashing on the paper door, for he was a very old person and slept lightly. “I called out, ‘Who is out there?’ but nobody answered,” the old man explained. “I opened the door to see who had flashed the light and I saw a man who was as black as charcoal standing there, and another man, a white one, standing behind him. The black man stared at me for a while and then asked me, ‘Sexy MSO?’ At first I didn’t understand what he said, and then he repeated the question. He was asking me if there was any woman in the house. Those bengkos didn’t know how to say seksi properly. Now I knew what they wanted and I said 'Opso.'’ They didn’t believe that there was no woman, and no other man besides me either for that matter, and searched for a while. I think they came to this village to find some women to rape.”
Kijun wondered what “rape” was.
“That’s what I told you, didn’t I?” Uncle said to Father. “That’s the reason they came.”
“But I can’t believe it,” said Father. “They have come such a long way across the ocean to fight for us, and many have even lost their lives for us. How can our worthy liberators do such a thing to our women?”
“Well, those things happen in wartime,” Click Beetle said. “Always. That’s what the Japanese did to our women when they invaded this country, and that’s what the Mongols and the Chinese did when they were here. They raped every woman in sight—virgins, widows, housewives—every living thing with a skirt on. I don’t think the Occidentals are any different as far as raping women is concerned.”
Father was not fully convinced yet and said, “But they’re in the middle of a big war. …”
“They’re doing it because they’re in the middle of the war,” Click Beetle retorted promptly. “You never know when you’ll die in a war, and you do a lot of unpredictable things when you know you may die today or tomorrow.”
“Where did they go then?” Father asked.
“That way. To the ferry.”
“They must have gone to the Paulownia House next,” Father said in a worried voice. “I hope the Toktuwon Woman is all right.”
“Should we go to the Hwangs’ now?” Uncle asked. “If anything happened. …”
“No. You must not pay a visit to your elders or seniors late at night. And in case something terrible did happen there, the Hwangs would be embarrassed to see anybody or to discuss it.”
“But we have to report to Rich Hwang that a suspicious incident happened tonight in this village.”
“We can do that after daybreak. Bad news can wait for daylight.”
When Kijun’s father, accompanied by his brother, hurried to the Paulownia House at daybreak, Chandol’s parents were already there, discussing something seriously with Old Hwang and Sokku. So, instead of reporting what they had gone through during the night themselves, the brothers listened to what the couple had to report to the Hwangs.
Yesterday, Chandol’s mother had loose bowels because she had drunk sour rice wine; the farmer apparently did not know the wine had spoiled, for he had offered it with good intentions to express his gratitude to Chandol’s mother and two other neighbors who had helped him repair his tobacco-drying shed. Late at night, on her way back to her room from the outhouse, she happened to see two bengkos, helmeted and armed with rifles, come out of Click Beetle’s house and head for the Paulownia House.
“The bengkos came here to this tree,” she said, “and paused here for a moment to discuss something. Then they went over to the Chestnut House.” The soldiers decided not to enter the Hwangs’ home, Chandol’s father guessed, because they had been overawed by the house with a tiled roof. With her own two eyes Chandol’s mother saw the soldiers go over to the Chestnut House and snoop around for a while. Then one of them jumped inside, brandishing his flashlight. She was not sure what the bengkos had done to Fluffy, or to Mansik and Ollye, but she heard no barking, no screaming, no extraordinary sound at all. She went over to the log bridge for a closer look, but did not dare to cross the stream, for a bengko was on guard by the twig gate of the Chestnut House. Although she was at some distance, Chandol’s mother had a fairly clear idea what was happening to Mansik’s mother.
“And suddenly I was so scared that I ran home and hid in the bomb shelter until morning. I’ve come with my husband, Master Hwang, to report to you what I saw last night.”
When Chandol’s parents and Kijun’s father and uncle finished their reports and returned home, Old Hwang stood by the gate, blankly gazing at General’s Hill, his hands on his hips, confused and perplexed.
“What are you going to do, Father?” said Sokku, standing, at a loss, a step behind his father.
“About what?”
“The Chestnut House. Shouldn’t we go over there and find out what happened to Ollye last night?”
Old Hwang did not respond, for he was too distracted by the turmoil of thoughts swimming in his head. Then he blurted, “Unclean.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Forget it,” the old man said. “You go over and see if Ollye is all right.”
The old man strode back to his room, frowning as if he was trying to repress something squalid nagging at him. Sokku stood under the paulownia tree for a while, confused, before he hesitantly went over to the Chestnut House.
“Mansik’s mother!” Sokku called out over the twig-woven gate.
Ollye did not answer. The door of her room remained closed firmly.
Sokku called out again, “Mansik. Come on out here if you’re home. I want to talk to you or your mother.”
There was still no answer. Young Hwang waited. While he was trying to decide whether he should go on calling to them until one of them came out of the closed room or just go away and leave them alone, Young Hwang heard someone inside, moving slowly. The door opened and Mansik, listless and pale, stepped into the yard. Avoiding Sokku’s eyes, the boy plodded out to the gate. He stopped and gazed over Sokku’s shoulder at the rice paddies around the mill.
“Did something happen at your home last night, Mansik?” Young Hwang asked.
The boy did not answer.
“What happened?”
The boy did not answer.
“Is your mother all right?”
The boy still did not answer.
Sokku realized that he would not be able to find out anything from this boy. After a pause, he said, “Go tell your mother to come here. I want to talk to her.”
Mansik plodded back to the room, opened the door, thrust his head inside and murmured something. Mansik remained motionless, leaning forward, waiting for his mother’s response, and then returned to Young Hwang at the gate.
“I told Mother to come out but she wouldn’t say anything.”
Silence followed.
“I see,” Young Hwang said with a sigh. “You may go back to your room.”
Mansik slowly trudged back, entered the room and quietly closed the door. A heavy silence hanging over the Chestnut House was broken only by the soft gnawing sound of the rabbits in their cage in the yard.
Chandol’s father, scrubbing the mud off his black rubber shoes at the dew-wet roadside grass, called to Choe, a farmer who was coming down the rice paddy dike with a shovel and a pickaxe slung over his shoulder on his way home for breakfast. He told him what had happened last night, his voice filled with shock and pity. “Oh, I really can’t believe it,” he said. “Such a terrible thing happened to Mansik’s mother …”
He went on to relate what his wife, hiding in the brush by the stream, had witnessed, and what he had heard from Kijun’s uncle. When Choe went home, he told this amazing news to his wife over the breakfast rice, his voice hushed lest his children in the other room should overhear the scandalous story. “Chandol’s mother actually saw it all happening,” he said emphatically. “Although she was too scared to cross the stream, she could watch everything the bengkos did to Mansik’s mother.”
Choe’s wife could not keep this stunning account to herself. As soon as she had finished washing the breakfast dishes she hurried to the rice mill to have her red peppers ground.
“I just can’t believe it,” Choe’s wife told Kangho’s mother dramatically. “How on earth could such a horrible thing take place in our own village?”
