by Junghyo Ahn
Then Yonghi went on to explain black-market operations. Ollye found herself puzzled and lost in a fantastic world that she had never imagined. She felt a sense of expectation, and even a faint hint of hope, as she listened to Yonghi, who seemed to know the secret formulas to tide one over the worst in life. Yonghi seemed to know more about Ollye’s life and future than Ollye herself. This uncanny faculty inspired both fear and curiosity. Perhaps Sister Serpent was the only person who really knew what was in store for the future.
“You just wait and see,” Yonghi promised. “I’ll show you soon what it is like to have a real great time. If you come to see me at Texas Town in a few weeks, you’ll find a very prosperous bar with a big shiny sign ‘Dragon Lady Club.’ That’s me—Dragon Lady. I’ll become the biggest madam in Texas Town in no time and you will see with your own eyes what a glorious life a good U.N. lady can enjoy.”
Crouching under the aspen on the riverbank and gazing over at the ferry, Ollye vividly remembered the expression on her face when Yonghi said that.
She stared at Cucumber Island, where Yonghi and Sundok might be entertaining their bengko friends at this very moment. The bright electric lights from the camp, the new concrete bridge, and Texas Town’s shanties were reflected in the rippling water creating yellow wriggling patterns.
Ollye shuddered from the chill. She was conscious of time passing her by. She had the frightening thought that she might be dead even now, sitting there under the tree in the dark, watching the bright artificial lights of another world across the river. Breathing, but dead with her eyes wide open. She had been confined in her home, dead, while the world, ignoring her existence was busy living.
She slowly inhaled the cold wet night air, and she thought about the past month. During that month, a frightful animal had seemed to be lurking around her, invisible, waiting for a chance to pounce, but now she realized there had never been such a beast threatening her, after all. What a waste, she thought, what a waste.
With disbelief she wondered why she had cared so much about the villagers anyway. She had feared that the villagers would sneer at her if she met them by chance. But why had she cared so much about their attitude? She and the villagers lived in different worlds.
She decided she would not mind from now on if the farmers treated her like a disgraced sinner. But Mansik’s sickly pale face haunted her. Why did she have the feeling that her own son was also turning into an enemy? Was she imagining things out of guilt?
And Nanhi. A three-year-old girl was too young to understand what was happening to her mother. Yet the little girl’s innocence further burdened Ollye, for she felt as if she was cheating her daughter.
Ollye had an urge to run away, abandoning Mansik and Nanhi, to run far far away to some place where nobody would recognize her. She knew she could not do that, but she still wanted to.
When she rose to her feet, staring at Cucumber Island, there was anger in her face. She did not know the exact reason she had to be angry, yet her anger gradually turned to sizzling hate. And she knew that the will to fight and survive thrived on hate.
At the repeated suggestion of the village chief, Old Hwang finally went over the islet one late afternoon to inspect Texas Town. The chief was convinced that the whoretown would bring some harm to West County sooner or later.
When Yom pushed his boat ashore so that the old man could step down onto the dry sand without getting his feet wet, hundreds of swallows were training their chicks for the long journey south for winter, twittering noisily and crowding the sky over the northern shore. The old man asked the boatman why they were not using the regular landing farther south and Yom explained that the villagers, especially the women, preferred to use the northern detour to risking an accidental encounter with the bengkos or the prostitutes on their way to and from the town.
“It’s only natural for the village women to be afraid of the bengkos” said Pae, holding the boat steady for the old man. “The soldiers might mistake a passing village woman for a whore and you never know what they will do.”
“You wait here until we return,” Hwang told the boatman, checking his horsehair hat and long-sleeved robe before advancing. “And you lead the way, Mr. Pae. I want to take a look at the army camp first.”
Following the limping village chief, Hwang trudged up the sandy slope. The old man paused to glance over the river at West County like a soldier looking back at his hometown for the last time on his way to war. Patches of white cloud, that would melt in one’s mouth as sweetly as balls of cotton candy, were suspended in the turquoise sky over hills covered with the flaming crimson and dazzling yellow of autumn. It was the season of calabashes fattening on the thatched roofs, soft sponge gourds dangling heavily on the twig fence, bees collecting the last honey from the purple chrysanthemums, refreshing cool breezes and pleasantly sunny afternoons. The branches of the persimmon trees sagged with scarlet fruits, and the farmers had a lot of work to do to prepare for the cold season. They worked from morning star to evening star, harvesting and threshing and winnowing and packing and storing the crops in their barns and kitchens and jars. They had to repair the cracks in earthen walls, fill the ratholes in rice barns, clean the ceiling closets in which fruits and nuts were stored, replace the decomposing thatch on their roofs with straw from the recent harvest, restore the rice paddy dikes destroyed by the trucks during the battle at General’s Hill, haul in weeds to make winter fodder for cows or compost to use in spring, twine ropes and weave straw bags, hang corn cobs under the eaves to dry to use as seed next year, and pickle cabbages and radishes for the lean months. The farmers were busy, but this was the happiest season for them. They would have already organized a farmers’ band to play music and dance around the villages to celebrate the bumper crop, if there had not been a war going on.
The villagers had almost forgotten the war. They were too busy these days to wonder what was going on outside their county. Yonsil’s mother, who grew lotus root at Mudfish Pool, had given birth to her third daughter, but nobody bothered to go to see her because the birth of a girl was never worth a congratulatory visit at a busy time like this. But Old Hwang was never so busy as to forget the existence of the war. He doubted that the bengko army would requisition crops from the farmers as the Japanese had done in another war years ago, but he would have to warn the farmers to hide away some of the crop this year, for nobody knew what might happen in wartime.
The villagers did not know what was going on at the Chestnut House either, nor did they care enough to find out. But Old Hwang could not ignore Ollye’s existence. Ever since he had heard of her secret visit to the snake hunter’s shack, he suspected that OUye was conspiring with the two whores. Although he was somewhat relieved when the two women left Kumsan, he knew the matter would not be settled for good until he paid them back for the riverside hut. He was not a bit happy, suspecting that Ollye might join forces with the outsiders—perhaps even to fight him. He wanted to summon Ollye and ask her what business she had discussed with the prostitutes, but the whole month which had passed made him hesitate to resume communication with her. And he feared that he might not like what Ollye had to tell him.
Then the boatman reported the shocking news that Ollye had made two secret night trips to Cucumber Island in the past week, and the old man was sure that she had not gone to the islet for any reason he would approve of. He had to know what had impelled her to go among the Americans, whom she had every reason to fear, when she had not ventured out of her house for more than a month. When outrageous rumors about Ollye and the Yankees started to circulate, the old man found it impossible to regard those tales as baseless slander, although reason suggested that those far-fetched stories had probably been invented by imaginative villagers for idle amusement. Ollye was easy prey, she could be wantonly disparaged, for she had been already victimized and condemned to shame. The old man understood that perfectly well, but… he could not help suspecting that there must be a fire if there was so much smoke.
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nbsp; Led by the village chief, Old Hwang strolled along the barbed-wire fence, closely observing Camp Omaha—the large tents with their flaps rolled up, huge wooden crates lining the main road which crossed the camp, Quonset huts painted sand color, the Korean flag and the American flag and the United Nations flag drooping side by side, lifelessly, on the tall pipe poles, scattered bunkers for heavy machine gun emplacements, ugly dark green plank tables and benches in the mess hall, a jeep with a tall radio antenna, and lots of soldiers everywhere.
“I didn’t think there were so many Migook soldiers at this small camp,” Old Hwang muttered, his hands clasped behind him as he watched the bengkos moving around inside the fence.
“Hundreds of them live here,” Pae explained. “In fact, so many soldiers stay here that they have to dispose of their leftover food and garbage by the truckload every day.”
With a frown, the old man looked around at the soldiers setting out chunks of turf atop the sandy soil around the Quonset huts, at the soldiers raising a telegraph pole near the main gate, at the soldiers playing basketball, a cloud of dust rising all around them like an early morning river fog, at the soldier with stubbly chin drawing something in white paint on the wider flap of a tent, at the two helmeted soldiers standing guard by the entry gate, at a barefoot soldier crossing a patch of grass with an armful of folded blankets, and at a soldier scraping his mess kit into a garbage can. The old man was frustrated because there were too many soldiers for him to do anything about, because the army camp was too big for him to do anything about, and because the world had grown suddenly too big and too complicated for him to do anything about.
Many of the soldiers were naked to their waists, shiny dog tags dangling over chests that were as hairy as beasts’. Watching the half-naked bengkos, Old Hwang recalled the savage Japanese who used to strut around the town with nothing on but loincloths. Savages, savages, the old man thought with a sigh. A gentleman was never supposed to expose any more than his face and hands in public under any circumstances, but the world was obviously full of savage nations.
Old Hwang hoped the war would be over soon one way or the other, so that Sokku would not have to be dragged away to fight side by side with these naked barbarians. But Sokku would surely be drafted if the war lasted many more months. The townsfolk said even boys of sixteen or seventeen had been conscripted, and a lot of those untrained students had been killed at Pohang in August. The Hwang family would end if Sokku were to die. The family was in decline and the old man had hoped Sokku would be able to rebuild it. The villagers would be shocked speechless if they were to find out his situation. Rich Hwang—why he could not even pay back the prostitutes for their riverside shack, and he had been deeply indebted to the miller for several years. If he lost his only son, what would be left of the Hwangs?
Shaking his head, Hwang said to Pae, “Take me to the place they call Texas Town.”
“Oh, it’s right down there.”
The shanties had been built in haste. The whole town could be moved to a new location in an hour. The place looked as dull as a country market by daylight. At the entrance stood a big plank sign saying “Welcome to Texas Town” both in English and Korean with a gigantic picture of a reclining naked woman displaying her huge breasts, nipples and all, like pink watermelons for sale. Some shanties had similar but smaller signs mounted on their roofs. These signs showed bengko-looking women with blue eyes and golden hair, their loins barely covered with slips of cloth the size of handkerchiefs. The roofs and walls of the shacks were mostly built from the wood of used ammunition boxes and still bore black stencilled English letters and numbers. The walls were papered inside with old Korean newspapers and Yankee comic books, creating a motley collage of columns of printed letters, colorful pictures and bubbling word balloons. Thin black electric wires hung like clothesline between one shack and the next, the whole cobweb of lines converging and running back to Camp Omaha. Electric bulbs hanging inside and outside the shacks were painted yellow or red. There were many nails on every interior wall used as hooks for hanging up scanty female clothing in cheap, bright colors. On the washlines behind some shacks, enticing underwear and bras made of transparent or suggestive black material hung like the banners of sin. The latrines, each used by four or five shanties, emitted the stench of gasoline or kerosene, which the U. N. ladies had poured into the pits in order to kill maggots. The zigzag alleys were littered with waste paper, crushed beer cans, and dark patches of sand stained by urine. Around the shanties stood metal ammunition boxes used as substitute safes or miniature ice boxes or even as dressers for storing clean clothing and underwear. Dented helmets were used as washbasins, and cans of all sizes were used as dishes and containers for miscellaneous items.
Venturing into this bizarre landscape, Old Hwang watched the strange Yankee wives, many of whom had their hair either dyed yellow or permanented into small close curls to imitate bengko women. Others let their hair cascade loose over their shoulders. Some had on black glasses or heavy bracelets or extremely short pants so as to stand out from the other girls who dressed, behaved and painted themselves like nobody the old man had ever seen before. Idling in the shanties or playing strange card games as they sat out front on benches, the girls glanced indifferently at the two uninvited inspectors from West County and resumed what they had been doing. They knew Old Hwang and his companion were not prospective customers.
“They say there are at least fifty of these women here,” Pae explained, alternating a worried glance at the old man with a curious leer at the girls.
They turned a corner and found three Yankee soldiers and two laughing girls around a plywood table drinking beer outside a shanty whose sign pictured a tall cactus.
“It really worries me, sir, to think of the village children who come here and watch these things,” the village chief said.
“The children?” the old man said. “Do the children come here?”
“Yes. They come almost every day to snoop around the camp and this place,” Pae said. “Some of them come to beg the bengko soldiers for C-ration cans and chocolates. Other boys come to watch the whores play with the foreign soldiers.”
“We should tell them to stay away,” the old man said “This is not a place for children.”
“I doubt if the children will listen,” Pae said.
“I’ll tell the boatman not to let any child use the boat to get here.”
“I already tried that, sir, but it didn’t work. The boys swam across the river and got here anyway.”
Hwang felt disappointed and depressed for he was unable to do anything to fix the deplorable situation. As time passed he had to admit that he was losing more and more of whatever power he had possessed. He could not help noticing that he was gradually being shunted aside.
A woman with round flat face and puffy eyes, who was sitting on a rolled straw bag before her shack and washing peaches in an LMG ammunition can, was apparently amused by two country gentlemen in proper ramie attire snooping around the brothel. With an easy grin she came over to the awkward visitors.
“Want to have a good time?” she asked. Her hips were as fat as a sow’s. Then she bit into a juicy peach. “The girls here seldom play with natives, but I don’t mind making you happy as long as you pay me enough. Which one of you wants to have me first? I guess I have to serve the older one first because Confucius tells us to respect our elders. Right, old man?”
Two women who had been playing flower cards on a plank bench laughed, glancing at the old man with his prim aristocratic horsehair hat and his single crippled follower.
“Don’t tease him too much, Sis,” said the one in a thin orange-colored blouse. “Maybe he really wants to have a good time. He must have all the equipment he needs to play with, even if his instrument is a little rusty. Why don’t you help him rub the rust off his tool?”
Then, out of nowhere—the old man really could not tell from where it was coming—a scream rang out: “That’s him! That’s the old cock!”
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It was Yonghi.
“That is the old cock that took my house away and wouldn’t even pay for it!”
Surprised by the sudden verbal attack, Old Hwang turned to see Sister Serpent wagging her fist at him. Her face and hair were covered with soapsuds—she had been washing her hair—but the old man instantly recognized her.
“I told you girls about this fucking dotard, didn’t I?” Yonghi was furious. “I told you about the bastard who wouldn’t even let me get on the boat, and look, that old cock is here!”
Sundok, who had been laundering her brassiere, dashed forward to join Yonghi. “What is that son of a bitch here for?” she said, drying her wet hands with her apron. “Does he want a girl, or what?”
Neither Hwang nor the village chief had had a chance to defend themselves as the other prostitutes joined in the barrage of accusations.
“So that’s the old guy who stole your house, ha?” a snub-nosed girl scoffed. “Why don’t you kick him in the balls, Sister Serpent? He doesn’t look like much of a man, anyway.”
“A big man indeed—stealing a house from a whore,” said a tall slim girl with her dark glasses stuck in the waistband of her skirt. “This is for you,” she added, making an obscene gesture with her hand.
“But why is he here, anyway?” said another. “He’s got your house already. What does he want next?”
“You want me, old man?” said the tall slim girl. She lifted her skirt to show her red panties to Old Hwang. “Short time or long time?”
Several girls laughed.
Old Hwang, finally recovering from his amazement at the bombardment, cleared his throat several times in succession and then addressed Yonghi. “I have no intention of stealing anything from you. I asked you to wait because I don’t have that much money now.”
“And I trust your words as much as I do a cat sitting in front of a fish,” Yonghi snorted.
There was no point in arguing with these filthy creatures, the old man thought as he turned to leave. But he could not help noticing Pae’s disappointed expression. And the old man thought it was all getting to be too much for him to handle.
