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Nak-Hwa-Am
They floated down the Paeng-ma River on a pontoon that smelled of gas and roasted garlic. Synthesized folk music blasted from the boat’s speakers, and a leathery man in plaid socks stamped his foot, shouting “Ya! Ya! Ya!” To the boat’s right, an unimpressive rock face rose a hundred feet in the air. It was smooth, not jagged and menacing as Roy had expected. He glanced from a twelve hundred won ticket in his hand down into murky brown water and then back up to the cliff. Red Chinese characters were stamped on the rock.
“What does that say?” he yelled to Jah-Yun.
“It say Nak-Hwa-Am,” the secretary replied. “Cliff where women jumped off to escape! Here we are!”
The foot-stamping man sprang off the boat, onto a rickety dock. Roy guessed he was in his seventies, but it was so hard to tell. Koreans seemed to age well. On his trips off the military base, he had seen market-place grandmothers squatting all day, shucking garlic into bowls. They must be well into their eighties. And here was Jah-Yun, pushing forty in tight capri pants, skin smooth as a china plate. Of course, her husband had died years ago. Perhaps she was still searching for a partner, Roy thought. Taking care of her appearance, not becoming unkempt like a married woman.
Jah-Yun wore her years like an evening gown, but his own wife’s version of forty was more of a tattered bathrobe. He pictured Margaret stepping out of the shower with a wet poodle perm smashed to her head, deflated party balloon breasts, a tiny splotch on her abdomen that he had kissed so many times. For the first few months of his tour, Roy cried every night, victim of a homesickness that caused filmstrips of the past to play on the back of his eyelids. In the silence before sleep, he ached to lay his head on Margaret’s belly.
Comfort came in the form of distraction — soccer games with soldiers from Young-san, base-sponsored trips to Seoul, a bird he was whittling out of a tree branch. And finally, the new secretary in the 51st Transportation Unit. The one with inquisitive eyes who taught him Korean words. The one who wore red, silk blouses, rhinestone rings on almost every finger and who told him her name meant “nature.” The one who rented a car that morning and escorted him on his first solo outing on the Korean peninsula. Jah-Yun. The ultimate distraction.
Roy blinked and realized he was the only passenger still seated on the pontoon. The old man was taking Jah-Yun’s hand as she high-heeled her way down the boat’s ladder. Roy felt heat rising inside his skin, hotter than July sun beating down on the exposed side. He didn’t appreciate the assumption that Americans lacked any sense of chivalry.
“I can help her myself, you old raisin,” he mumbled, standing abruptly.
The old man turned and smiled at Roy with two stacks of tea-stained teeth. He wheezed something in Korean and extended a wrinkled paw to Roy, as well. Roy ignored the gesture, clambering down by himself and taking Jah-Yun by the elbow.
“Ai go!” she exclaimed, as he pulled her down the dock. “Where are you going? That ajoshi ask you for money. We have to pay again, to get to the top.”
Roy stammered an apology and began rummaging through his backpack. He pulled out a wad of money, wet from the leaky water bottle in his bag, and squinted at a mish-mash of bills. Jah-Yun waited a minute to see if Roy would get it right. Then, she plucked two damp strips from Roy’s hand, clicked her way back down the dock and paid the man herself.
* * *
The hilltop pagoda was crammed with tourists — ice-cream covered children, stocky fathers, young women in high-heels, old couples in plaid socks and brightly colored visors. The crowd pushed hot air around with paper fans and listened to a young man give a speech. Roy and Jah-Yun stood off to one side. In front of them, a rocky slope curved down to a fence, then dropped straight to water. Roy couldn’t understand what the pimply-faced tour guide was saying, but he forced himself to laugh politely with the crowd when he sensed a joke. His hand cupped Jah-Yun’s smooth, brown elbow.
“He is speaking about Paek-je dynasty,” Jah-Yun whispered. “This was capital city of King Uija. He was very great king for Paek-je dynasty.”
The tour guide waved his hand toward the forest, then made slashing motions — swords chopping through branches. His tone grew louder. Jah-Yun’s whisper blew around in fan-swirled air, and Roy pulled her closer, leaning his ear down to her mouth. He tried to listen to Jah-Yun’s translation, but ... her neck smelled like honey. Warm and earthy-delicious. He breathed in deeply, then pulled back. A few inches.
“In year 660, Korean Shilla dynasty and Chinese Dang dynasty unite to make a new kingdom,” Jah-Yun whispered, staring at the dark army of trees. “They are very strong together. Many men and much power. More power than King Uija. They come to here and burn palace — destroy everything! Ka!”
She slashed an imaginary sword, ripping her arm out of Roy’s grasp. The tour guide clasped his hands together and began to speak in a funeral parlor droll. His eyes were glazed over with the false sadness of a man who had condensed an epic event down into a ten-minute script. Roy’s fingertips pulsed where they had just been touching Jah-Yun’s elbow. He pursed his lips and looked to see if the secretary was doing the same.
“Oh, now very sad part,” she said, and Roy was surprised to see Jah-Yun was approximately one thousand, four-hundred years away from where he was standing. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Sae-sang eh! What a world! King Uija has so many beautiful women. Castle ladies.”
“Courtesans,” Roy said, grateful to help with translation.
“Okay. Three thousand courtesan ladies,” Jah-Yun nodded, as if she were agreeing with herself. “They are very beautiful — like flowers. Young and innocent. Only wanting pure and good life for old king. Shilla men and Dang men want to sleep with court ladies. But ladies do not want. So they run. Soldiers chase them to here, and because they are very good and loyal persons ... they jump.”
The tour guide, Jah-Yun and the entire crowd turned to stare at the river.
“Three thousand women fall on rocks and die in water.”
Roy listened to reverent whispers around him as he contemplated the short drop and calm river. He imagined the scene — Shilla and Dang soldiers roaring through the forest like a thousand Ghengis Kahns, court ladies leaping gracefully over fallen trees, halting at the cliff-top to grasp their heaving breasts. He nudged the women forward with his mind. Jump. But try as he might, Roy could not visualize a mass suicide occurring at this calm spot in the river. In his dream, the women’s dresses filled with air, and they floated to the water gently, like silk balloons. Three thousand bodies could not possibly have broken against the smooth face of Nak-Hwa-Am.
“Jah-Yun, if they only fell a short distance like this, they probably didn’t die,” he finally said. “I mean, I don’t see any rocks. And they probably just ran to the edge, stopped and then fell over when the girls behind ran into them. Hey, maybe they’re still down there ... Hello!”
He hoped Jah-Yun would find his observation entertaining. Sometimes in the office, she laughed at what he was saying and swatted him with a rolled up paper. Now, she turned her gaze directly at him for what he suddenly realized was the first time that afternoon. Mascara mixed with tears to form chocolate syrup in the corners of her eyes. There were wet circles under her armpits. He had never seen her outside of an air-conditioned room, never seen her vulnerable to the elements. And despite the runny make-up and curly hairs plastered to her brow, he was quite sure he had never seen anything so exquisite as Jah-Yun’s tear-stained face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just meant they probably didn’t jump, and if they did, they probably didn’t die.”
“You were not here,” she said simply, then turned to stare at the rocky slope dropping off into space.
* * *
“Tell him,” the secretaries had said. “He hates Sanchez, and he’ll listen to you. You say English well.”
But Jah-Yun could not even look at Roy on the return pontoon ride. She was not exactly angry, only tap-tap hada — trapped inside of herself — frustrated that Roy’s understanding of Nak-Hwa-Am was so small. The tour guide spoke quickly, and she was not able to give the American sergeant a translation large enough to satisfy him. She wanted to say the face of earth changes over time. She wanted to tell him the new king said “three thousand courtesans” because he wanted King Uija to look like a pervert. Perhaps the number was not exact. Still, to understand about Sergeant Sanchez and the local girl, Roy should accept the only thing that mattered — many women died in this spot, eternally innocent, drowning with the title to their own property intact.
But her mind worked slowly in the heat. English words escaped her. In fact, she was only able to recall the simple words, words she had known since grade school. Now her mind was drawn to three letters: B-I-G.
Big.
Funny sound, like pig. She thought about Roy’s backpack and wondered why American people carried big things with them everywhere. Especially on such a hot day. These were the dog days in Korea — similar to American dog days. She remembered studying the origin of that term in University. Romans called the hottest weeks of summer caniculares dies because they believed the Dog Star, rising with the sun, added to its heat. If any time carried two heats, she supposed it was these few unbearable weeks in late summer. But Korean people knew a different meaning to dog days. Dog was a medicinal meat for heat victims, and Posint’ang — dog soup — was to be eaten now to cool the body and to give power. It was especially popular with men.
Roy cringed when they discussed this particular custom back in the office.
“How can you eat a dog?” he shouted in his big voice. “In America, we keep them as pets!”
She tried to explain that Koreans also kept small dogs as pets. They raised large dogs for meat the same way Americans raised cows. And really, what was more cruel about eating one animal over another?
“I don’t know,” Roy cried, “but I know I love dogs like people! Especially big ones!”
Jah-Yun fell silent, as she often did when her vocabulary failed her. She imagined what America must look like with its big, red-faced men, big houses with big backyards and big dogs running everywhere. “Big,” she said to herself. “Big pig. Big dog. Big pig hog.”
Big.
* * *
Roy reached into his backpack and felt for the water bottle. It was warm, but he raised it to his mouth and drank it in one continuous stream. Jah-Yun drove west, away from Nak-Hwa-Am. The secretary hadn’t said a word since they climbed down the cliff and floated back to the rental car.
“We will eat something at the beach, and maybe ... more talking,” she had said, before starting the ignition. Then, nothing. She stared straight ahead. For a moment, Roy wondered if she was still stuck on the cliff. But it was over and done with. He had apologized. She’s concentrating on the road, he finally assured himself. Korean secretaries were like that. Paper clip jar full, papers stacked, hair pinned in place. No distractions from the task at hand. Those women really knew how to run a tight ship.
There had been a war game two months earlier, to prepare for invasion from North Korea. South Korean civilians did not participate in the exercises, so Jah-Yun sat at her desk stacking neatly typed memos while imaginary bombs exploded around her. Roy received a card from the Evaluators, and to his relief, he had been assigned the role of “dead.” In his heavy flak vest, he welcomed the chance to lay quietly next to Jah-Yun’s desk.
During a previous war exercise, the Evaluators had created a fire scenario. Roy had been one of the lucky “survivors” responsible for directing evacuation procedures and moving the bodies of soldiers who had been assigned a “wounded” or “dead” role. His mask, with its infuriating straps and adjustment buckles, wore a groove into his head. A hood attached to the mask sealed out chemicals and sealed in sweat. He dripped. His breathing rate increased. Soldiers bumbled around him like camouflaged space aliens.
“I don’t see any damn fire!” he yelled to Technical Sergeant Sanchez, as they dragged pseudo-corpses down the hallway and out into the parking lot.
“Shut up, it’s an exercise,” Sanchez wheezed, through the hood.
“Yeah, but I can’t see any smoke, so it’s hard for me to pretend these two-hundred-pound people need me to bust my ass dragging them down the hall. They’re just playing dead, you know. I can’t breathe.”
Roy hefted the shoulders of a soldier named McGregor, and Sanchez got him by the boots. McGregor smiled then and said something about guardian angels guiding him out into the light. The door seemed miles away. Roy gasped for air through the charcoal filter. The hallway darkened and became a tunnel. When he woke up, his mask and chemical hood were lying on the concrete next to his head.
“Man, McGregor came back from the dead to drag your passed-out booty down the hall!” Sanchez sneered. “Forget North Korean invasion; you got taken down by that cheeseburger I saw you eating at lunch. Get in shape, fat ass. I don’t care if this is an exercise — in the real deal, lives are at stake!”
After that first exercise, Roy’s nighttime filmstrips became more involved. He dreamed of Margaret when they first met, in a pink terrycloth jumper, serving ice cream at the Frosty Freeze. He dreamed of his father’s chair, a tweed recliner with stuffing floffed off one side to reveal a wooden arm. He dreamed Margaret onto his lap in his father’s chair, nineteen-year-old legs melting over the wooden side like vanilla soft-serve. Margaret. He tugged the pillow from beneath his head, smashed it against his face and imagined it was his wife’s warm back. Crazy, he had never realized he noticed the smell of her hair, let alone memorized it and carried it half way around the world. He bit the pillow, and somehow his senses ran together. He could taste the smell of her hair.
Roy hadn’t slept at all before the most recent exercise. He sprawled next to Jah-Yun’s desk, thinking he’d be just as happy if heaven involved a cool, tile floor, the clackety-clack of typewriter keys, the freedom to lie still and wait for his body to be lifted up. Jah-Yun’s long, black hair was twirled and fastened with a jeweled clip. He watched her graceful hands fly over keys and noticed she was not wearing a wedding ring.
“Psssst! Ms. Lee! Down here!”
The chemical hood muffled speech, and he imagined he sounded like a man trapped in a fish bowl. She glanced at the floor.
“Yes? You need something?”
“No, I’m dead this time. I don’t need anything. I just have a question.”
“Hmm, you need nothing because dead, but you can ask questions! Ha! Okay.”
“Do you have a husband?”
She shrugged her shoulders and continued to type.
“My husband is dead. Like you. Many years ago, yes, I have a husband. Nowadays, no. I don’t have. Just memories and dreams.”
Roy rolled over and propped his head up on one fist. He had never given much thought to the secretary’s off-base life. In fact, he had never given much thought to life off base at all. He had traveled to Seoul’s South Gate Market twice, and each time he had been disturbed by the cacophony of Korean speech. He couldn’t make out individual words. The alleyways appeared to be an explosion of clothing, jewelry, chopsticks, plastic pig heads. Neon signs. Roasted silk worms. He couldn’t make out individual stores. Walking around in that chaos made his skin crawl, and until his conversation with Jah-Yun, he had resented the fact that he had received a one-year assignment in such a backward country. The idea that he might have something in common with the Korean secretary was intriguing.
“Wow, I’m sorry. You must miss your husband. Do you think about him a lot?”
“Okay, sure.”
“Like at night, before you go to sleep? You think about him then?”
Jah-Yun chuckled and brought her fingers to a rest against the keyboard.
“You have so many question! You want to know about husband? Okay. Sometimes feeling is very sad, sometimes ...” she trailed off, tapping one red fingernail against a coffee cup. “Sometimes feeling is free. Now go to sleep! This is war and you are dead person.”
“Okay, Captain Lee!”
Roy stretched out, sighed, closed his eyes. He dreamed he was flying over Korea in the tweed chair. He dreamed he was high above Seoul, peering down at the marketplaces, skyscrapers and funny blue and orange pagoda-style roofs. And in his lap, pointing a gleaming fingertip at the sites, whispering individual words in his ear, was his tour guide. Jah-Yun.
* * *
“Wake up.”
A fingernail traced the length of Roy’s hand.
“Wake up, please.”
He stretched and rubbed his eyes.
“Oh! I drifted off.”
Jah-Yun nodded.
“Yes. You sleep while I drive. This is our Yellow Sea. We will eat here.””
She had re-applied a rose-colored lipstick and dabbed at her forehead where her painted-on eyebrows had begun to run. To Roy, she looked like a popular doll soldiers were buying in the marketplace to ship home to their girlfriends or wives.
He sat up straight. The car was parked facing a line of trees. Between the trees, he could make out a sandy strip of land and water glinting in the late afternoon sun. He opened the car door, expecting a fresh, salty breeze. Instead, as he stood up to survey the area, he was greeted by a thick humidity that settled over his skin like an invisible wool suit.
“Whoo! Is this a nude beach, by any chance?” he said, pulling the fabric of his sweat-stained T-shirt away from his chest.
Jah-Yun opened her mouth for a minute as if she was going to respond, but then she bent over near the rear of the car and dug deep in the trunk. She stood up, with a shiny blue bag slung over one shoulder, and a cooler in her hands. Resting the cooler against one hip, she slammed the trunk.
“Okay,” she said, nodding at a concrete path that led toward the water. “Ka-se-yo!”
Roy slammed his own door and stared at the secretary.
“Huh?”
“This is Korea tour, so now I will speak Korean language with you. Ka-se-yo. Go, please.”
She nodded her head at the path — and Roy turned around, taking a few tentative steps toward the beach. Ka-se-yo. He supposed they had studied that word back in the office. Margaret had given him a Korean phrase book when he left the United States, but the book had remained in a pocket of his suitcase, unused, for months. When he met Jah-Yun, Roy was embarrassed to realize that he hadn’t even bothered to learn basic Korean words. He sat up late in his barracks dorm room, repeating, “An-yung-ha-shimnika. Hello. Kwamsa-hamnida. Thank you.”
The meanings rarely stuck with Roy, but he brought the phrase book to work just to watch Jah-Yun’s dark eyes scan the pages for teachable phrases. Ka-se-yo. Roy marched toward the beach repeating the phrase over and over.
“Ka-se-yo ... go please ... Ka-se-yo ... go please...”
He grinned at Jah-Yun. As they passed through the line of trees, Roy vowed that the word would stay with him.
“Stay please, stay please,” he muttered, under his breath.
* * *
P-i-g.
Jah-Yun poked Roy’s belly with a chopstick. He didn’t move. She had packed the cooler with bland food, suitable for Americans. The Sergeant had scarfed down three rolls of seaweed paper filled with rice, eggs, ham, radishes and carrots. He hadn’t used chopsticks. Then, he had used one chopstick to spear chunks of potato salad into his mouth. He finished the whole baguette Jah-Yun had bought at the bakery, tearing off hunks, dipping them into mayonnaise from the potato salad and stuffing them into his cheeks. Before she could properly peel an apple she had been planning on serving for dessert, Roy had casually snatched it up in his big, bear paw.
“Can I have this one?” he had asked. Jah-Yun nodded dumbly. The sergeant bit into the apple with the skin still on. Juice sprayed against her leg. After dinner, Roy curled into the shape of a shrimp on the picnic blanket. He commented on the soothing sound of water lapping shore. Then he slept. Again.
Jah-Yun touched her chopstick to Roy’s lips. Drool fell from his mouth, and she yanked her hand back. But the American Sergeant did not stir.
The sun sank beyond the horizon, and Jah-Yun sighed. How many American soldiers had trampled their over-sized bootprints onto this beach, she wondered? During the 1950s war, maybe thousands. That war was something like the Shilla and Paek-jae dynasties clashing all over again — brother fighting brother, and China tipping the balance of power by holding hands with Koreans from the north. But in the ‘50s, southern Korea was bolstered by a white-hot force from the other side of earth. America.
Jah-Yun watched Roy’s chest rise and fall under his sweaty T-shirt. How could American soldiers be Korean allies when they don’t know how to speak, eat or act, she wondered? Roy had seemed so eager to learn, back at the base. Out here, it was different. She wanted to speak Korean naturally, and he ... well, he couldn’t keep up. And because she hadn’t been able to speak frankly with the sergeant all day, Jah-Yun pulled a newspaper clipping from her handbag and set it next to Roy’s head. Eun-Hee Lee, the article read, age 20, was found floating in the Han River around midnight. A resident of Song-tan, Lee worked with her family in a luggage store near Osan Air Base. The death, while still under investigation, is considered to be a suicide.
There was a photograph next to the article — a lovely shot of families enjoying picnic weather on the banks of the river. There was even a side piece about the history of women and unwanted babies found floating down Korean rivers. In fact, the only thing that was missing was the information on Sanchez’ role in Eun-Hee’s death. Jah-Yun clicked her tongue. But that’s not something for newspapers or history books, she thought. Not romantic enough. The man only has to nudge the woman forward; he never has to take the fall.
She stood, carefully, so as not to wake Roy, and dug in her purse for a small flashlight she kept there. When she was younger, she and her brother had come to the same beach every summer to catch mang-tung-yi, a small, speedy fish that swam near shore. If you shined a light in his eyes, he forgot how to move. Then, you could snatch him up and toss him in the air. Now, craving a moment away from Roy, Jah-Yun dug deep, searching for a light to pierce the surface of the water.
* * *
Roy made his way across the sand, toward the sound of laughter. He had woken up alone, with one cheek smashed against a piece of newspaper. Jah-Yun’s voice floated up to him from the beach, and he had risen to follow it. Now, he could see her standing up to her shins in glassy water.
The moon was full, and a beam of its light seemed to shine out of Jah-Yun’s left hand. When Roy rubbed his eyes, the light was still there. He followed it closer and closer until he could see Jah-Yun in detail. The tips of her wet capri pants clung to her calves. Her right arm beckoned him forward.
Jah-Yun’s hair hung like thick, black seaweed, and Roy ached all over wanting to snag a bit of it in his fingers. In the moonlight, she looked like a creature from another time. Her right arm moved higher, and Roy mistook the gesture for an invitation. As soon as he embraced Jah-Yun around the waist, he realized his mistake. She snapped her arm skyward and flung mang-tung-yi toward the moon.
* * *
They stood for a heartbeat — soldier, lady — before Jah-Yun howled, knocking Roy to a seated position in the muck at their feet. He was shocked by water’s cold contrast to Jah-Yun’s warm body.
“Why?”
His voice cracked, like rice paper tearing.
“You!” Jah-Yun cried, pointing at him. Her arm shook, as she tried to find the correct English words.
You are only here because Sanchez make Eun-hee. A baby. She say. But he laughing. And she go the Han River.
“You are ...” she stammered.
Person for saying bad words to Sanchez. Because taking Eun-Hee’s body. And woman in darkness. Dishonor. Forget. Our face. Jump.
“You are a big pig!”
Jah-Yun turned for shore, spewing forth eloquent and — to Roy —completely incomprehensible Korean. Although he was responsible for the scene, Roy sat stupidly, letting mud squish through his shorts.
“Hey!” he yelled, waving in her direction. “I got carried away. You’re a beautiful woman, understand?”
Her figure continued to fade into darkness.
“You’re a beautiful woman,” he repeated, firmly. And then, in a near-whisper, he added, “I miss my wife.”
But she was gone, and he let all his breath out in one deep sigh. Jah-Yun had reached solid ground before Roy noticed something slapping against his leg. Glancing down, he saw a small fish writhing helplessly in a fold of his shorts. He grabbed at the fish, and mang-tung-yi squirmed and flailed in his grasp — wildly at first, and then slower. Finally, the movement stopped. He opened his fist and stared at the guppy-like creature, with its wide, innocent eyes and iridescent scales. Only the gills continued to flex, in search of air. The body was still. A car door slammed in the distance.
“Ka-se-yo,” he said quickly, rising to follow Jah-Yun. And Roy tipped his hand to the side, letting the creature fall into still, murky water, where it disappeared from sight.
By Kari Jones
They floated down the Paeng-ma River on a pontoon that smelled of gas and roasted garlic. Synthesized folk music blasted from the boat’s speakers, and a leathery man in plaid socks stamped his foot, shouting “Ya! Ya! Ya!” To the boat’s right, an unimpressive rock face rose a hundred feet in the air. It was smooth, not jagged and menacing as Roy had expected. He glanced from a twelve hundred won ticket in his hand down into murky brown water and then back up to the cliff. Red Chinese characters were stamped on the rock.
“What does that say?” he yelled to Jah-Yun.
“It say Nak-Hwa-Am,” the secretary replied. “Cliff where women jumped off to escape! Here we are!”
The foot-stamping man sprang off the boat, onto a rickety dock. Roy guessed he was in his seventies, but it was so hard to tell. Koreans seemed to age well. On his trips off the military base, he had seen market-place grandmothers squatting all day, shucking garlic into bowls. They must be well into their eighties. And here was Jah-Yun, pushing forty in tight capri pants, skin smooth as a china plate. Of course, her husband had died years ago. Perhaps she was still searching for a partner, Roy thought. Taking care of her appearance, not becoming unkempt like a married woman.
Jah-Yun wore her years like an evening gown, but his own wife’s version of forty was more of a tattered bathrobe. He pictured Margaret stepping out of the shower with a wet poodle perm smashed to her head, deflated party balloon breasts, a tiny splotch on her abdomen that he had kissed so many times. For the first few months of his tour, Roy cried every night, victim of a homesickness that caused filmstrips of the past to play on the back of his eyelids. In the silence before sleep, he ached to lay his head on Margaret’s belly.
Comfort came in the form of distraction — soccer games with soldiers from Young-san, base-sponsored trips to Seoul, a bird he was whittling out of a tree branch. And finally, the new secretary in the 51st Transportation Unit. The one with inquisitive eyes who taught him Korean words. The one who wore red, silk blouses, rhinestone rings on almost every finger and who told him her name meant “nature.” The one who rented a car that morning and escorted him on his first solo outing on the Korean peninsula. Jah-Yun. The ultimate distraction.
Roy blinked and realized he was the only passenger still seated on the pontoon. The old man was taking Jah-Yun’s hand as she high-heeled her way down the boat’s ladder. Roy felt heat rising inside his skin, hotter than July sun beating down on the exposed side. He didn’t appreciate the assumption that Americans lacked any sense of chivalry.
“I can help her myself, you old raisin,” he mumbled, standing abruptly.
The old man turned and smiled at Roy with two stacks of tea-stained teeth. He wheezed something in Korean and extended a wrinkled paw to Roy, as well. Roy ignored the gesture, clambering down by himself and taking Jah-Yun by the elbow.
“Ai go!” she exclaimed, as he pulled her down the dock. “Where are you going? That ajoshi ask you for money. We have to pay again, to get to the top.”
Roy stammered an apology and began rummaging through his backpack. He pulled out a wad of money, wet from the leaky water bottle in his bag, and squinted at a mish-mash of bills. Jah-Yun waited a minute to see if Roy would get it right. Then, she plucked two damp strips from Roy’s hand, clicked her way back down the dock and paid the man herself.
* * *
The hilltop pagoda was crammed with tourists — ice-cream covered children, stocky fathers, young women in high-heels, old couples in plaid socks and brightly colored visors. The crowd pushed hot air around with paper fans and listened to a young man give a speech. Roy and Jah-Yun stood off to one side. In front of them, a rocky slope curved down to a fence, then dropped straight to water. Roy couldn’t understand what the pimply-faced tour guide was saying, but he forced himself to laugh politely with the crowd when he sensed a joke. His hand cupped Jah-Yun’s smooth, brown elbow.
“He is speaking about Paek-je dynasty,” Jah-Yun whispered. “This was capital city of King Uija. He was very great king for Paek-je dynasty.”
The tour guide waved his hand toward the forest, then made slashing motions — swords chopping through branches. His tone grew louder. Jah-Yun’s whisper blew around in fan-swirled air, and Roy pulled her closer, leaning his ear down to her mouth. He tried to listen to Jah-Yun’s translation, but ... her neck smelled like honey. Warm and earthy-delicious. He breathed in deeply, then pulled back. A few inches.
“In year 660, Korean Shilla dynasty and Chinese Dang dynasty unite to make a new kingdom,” Jah-Yun whispered, staring at the dark army of trees. “They are very strong together. Many men and much power. More power than King Uija. They come to here and burn palace — destroy everything! Ka!”
She slashed an imaginary sword, ripping her arm out of Roy’s grasp. The tour guide clasped his hands together and began to speak in a funeral parlor droll. His eyes were glazed over with the false sadness of a man who had condensed an epic event down into a ten-minute script. Roy’s fingertips pulsed where they had just been touching Jah-Yun’s elbow. He pursed his lips and looked to see if the secretary was doing the same.
“Oh, now very sad part,” she said, and Roy was surprised to see Jah-Yun was approximately one thousand, four-hundred years away from where he was standing. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Sae-sang eh! What a world! King Uija has so many beautiful women. Castle ladies.”
“Courtesans,” Roy said, grateful to help with translation.
“Okay. Three thousand courtesan ladies,” Jah-Yun nodded, as if she were agreeing with herself. “They are very beautiful — like flowers. Young and innocent. Only wanting pure and good life for old king. Shilla men and Dang men want to sleep with court ladies. But ladies do not want. So they run. Soldiers chase them to here, and because they are very good and loyal persons ... they jump.”
The tour guide, Jah-Yun and the entire crowd turned to stare at the river.
“Three thousand women fall on rocks and die in water.”
Roy listened to reverent whispers around him as he contemplated the short drop and calm river. He imagined the scene — Shilla and Dang soldiers roaring through the forest like a thousand Ghengis Kahns, court ladies leaping gracefully over fallen trees, halting at the cliff-top to grasp their heaving breasts. He nudged the women forward with his mind. Jump. But try as he might, Roy could not visualize a mass suicide occurring at this calm spot in the river. In his dream, the women’s dresses filled with air, and they floated to the water gently, like silk balloons. Three thousand bodies could not possibly have broken against the smooth face of Nak-Hwa-Am.
“Jah-Yun, if they only fell a short distance like this, they probably didn’t die,” he finally said. “I mean, I don’t see any rocks. And they probably just ran to the edge, stopped and then fell over when the girls behind ran into them. Hey, maybe they’re still down there ... Hello!”
He hoped Jah-Yun would find his observation entertaining. Sometimes in the office, she laughed at what he was saying and swatted him with a rolled up paper. Now, she turned her gaze directly at him for what he suddenly realized was the first time that afternoon. Mascara mixed with tears to form chocolate syrup in the corners of her eyes. There were wet circles under her armpits. He had never seen her outside of an air-conditioned room, never seen her vulnerable to the elements. And despite the runny make-up and curly hairs plastered to her brow, he was quite sure he had never seen anything so exquisite as Jah-Yun’s tear-stained face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just meant they probably didn’t jump, and if they did, they probably didn’t die.”
“You were not here,” she said simply, then turned to stare at the rocky slope dropping off into space.
* * *
“Tell him,” the secretaries had said. “He hates Sanchez, and he’ll listen to you. You say English well.”
But Jah-Yun could not even look at Roy on the return pontoon ride. She was not exactly angry, only tap-tap hada — trapped inside of herself — frustrated that Roy’s understanding of Nak-Hwa-Am was so small. The tour guide spoke quickly, and she was not able to give the American sergeant a translation large enough to satisfy him. She wanted to say the face of earth changes over time. She wanted to tell him the new king said “three thousand courtesans” because he wanted King Uija to look like a pervert. Perhaps the number was not exact. Still, to understand about Sergeant Sanchez and the local girl, Roy should accept the only thing that mattered — many women died in this spot, eternally innocent, drowning with the title to their own property intact.
But her mind worked slowly in the heat. English words escaped her. In fact, she was only able to recall the simple words, words she had known since grade school. Now her mind was drawn to three letters: B-I-G.
Big.
Funny sound, like pig. She thought about Roy’s backpack and wondered why American people carried big things with them everywhere. Especially on such a hot day. These were the dog days in Korea — similar to American dog days. She remembered studying the origin of that term in University. Romans called the hottest weeks of summer caniculares dies because they believed the Dog Star, rising with the sun, added to its heat. If any time carried two heats, she supposed it was these few unbearable weeks in late summer. But Korean people knew a different meaning to dog days. Dog was a medicinal meat for heat victims, and Posint’ang — dog soup — was to be eaten now to cool the body and to give power. It was especially popular with men.
Roy cringed when they discussed this particular custom back in the office.
“How can you eat a dog?” he shouted in his big voice. “In America, we keep them as pets!”
She tried to explain that Koreans also kept small dogs as pets. They raised large dogs for meat the same way Americans raised cows. And really, what was more cruel about eating one animal over another?
“I don’t know,” Roy cried, “but I know I love dogs like people! Especially big ones!”
Jah-Yun fell silent, as she often did when her vocabulary failed her. She imagined what America must look like with its big, red-faced men, big houses with big backyards and big dogs running everywhere. “Big,” she said to herself. “Big pig. Big dog. Big pig hog.”
Big.
* * *
Roy reached into his backpack and felt for the water bottle. It was warm, but he raised it to his mouth and drank it in one continuous stream. Jah-Yun drove west, away from Nak-Hwa-Am. The secretary hadn’t said a word since they climbed down the cliff and floated back to the rental car.
“We will eat something at the beach, and maybe ... more talking,” she had said, before starting the ignition. Then, nothing. She stared straight ahead. For a moment, Roy wondered if she was still stuck on the cliff. But it was over and done with. He had apologized. She’s concentrating on the road, he finally assured himself. Korean secretaries were like that. Paper clip jar full, papers stacked, hair pinned in place. No distractions from the task at hand. Those women really knew how to run a tight ship.
There had been a war game two months earlier, to prepare for invasion from North Korea. South Korean civilians did not participate in the exercises, so Jah-Yun sat at her desk stacking neatly typed memos while imaginary bombs exploded around her. Roy received a card from the Evaluators, and to his relief, he had been assigned the role of “dead.” In his heavy flak vest, he welcomed the chance to lay quietly next to Jah-Yun’s desk.
During a previous war exercise, the Evaluators had created a fire scenario. Roy had been one of the lucky “survivors” responsible for directing evacuation procedures and moving the bodies of soldiers who had been assigned a “wounded” or “dead” role. His mask, with its infuriating straps and adjustment buckles, wore a groove into his head. A hood attached to the mask sealed out chemicals and sealed in sweat. He dripped. His breathing rate increased. Soldiers bumbled around him like camouflaged space aliens.
“I don’t see any damn fire!” he yelled to Technical Sergeant Sanchez, as they dragged pseudo-corpses down the hallway and out into the parking lot.
“Shut up, it’s an exercise,” Sanchez wheezed, through the hood.
“Yeah, but I can’t see any smoke, so it’s hard for me to pretend these two-hundred-pound people need me to bust my ass dragging them down the hall. They’re just playing dead, you know. I can’t breathe.”
Roy hefted the shoulders of a soldier named McGregor, and Sanchez got him by the boots. McGregor smiled then and said something about guardian angels guiding him out into the light. The door seemed miles away. Roy gasped for air through the charcoal filter. The hallway darkened and became a tunnel. When he woke up, his mask and chemical hood were lying on the concrete next to his head.
“Man, McGregor came back from the dead to drag your passed-out booty down the hall!” Sanchez sneered. “Forget North Korean invasion; you got taken down by that cheeseburger I saw you eating at lunch. Get in shape, fat ass. I don’t care if this is an exercise — in the real deal, lives are at stake!”
After that first exercise, Roy’s nighttime filmstrips became more involved. He dreamed of Margaret when they first met, in a pink terrycloth jumper, serving ice cream at the Frosty Freeze. He dreamed of his father’s chair, a tweed recliner with stuffing floffed off one side to reveal a wooden arm. He dreamed Margaret onto his lap in his father’s chair, nineteen-year-old legs melting over the wooden side like vanilla soft-serve. Margaret. He tugged the pillow from beneath his head, smashed it against his face and imagined it was his wife’s warm back. Crazy, he had never realized he noticed the smell of her hair, let alone memorized it and carried it half way around the world. He bit the pillow, and somehow his senses ran together. He could taste the smell of her hair.
Roy hadn’t slept at all before the most recent exercise. He sprawled next to Jah-Yun’s desk, thinking he’d be just as happy if heaven involved a cool, tile floor, the clackety-clack of typewriter keys, the freedom to lie still and wait for his body to be lifted up. Jah-Yun’s long, black hair was twirled and fastened with a jeweled clip. He watched her graceful hands fly over keys and noticed she was not wearing a wedding ring.
“Psssst! Ms. Lee! Down here!”
The chemical hood muffled speech, and he imagined he sounded like a man trapped in a fish bowl. She glanced at the floor.
“Yes? You need something?”
“No, I’m dead this time. I don’t need anything. I just have a question.”
“Hmm, you need nothing because dead, but you can ask questions! Ha! Okay.”
“Do you have a husband?”
She shrugged her shoulders and continued to type.
“My husband is dead. Like you. Many years ago, yes, I have a husband. Nowadays, no. I don’t have. Just memories and dreams.”
Roy rolled over and propped his head up on one fist. He had never given much thought to the secretary’s off-base life. In fact, he had never given much thought to life off base at all. He had traveled to Seoul’s South Gate Market twice, and each time he had been disturbed by the cacophony of Korean speech. He couldn’t make out individual words. The alleyways appeared to be an explosion of clothing, jewelry, chopsticks, plastic pig heads. Neon signs. Roasted silk worms. He couldn’t make out individual stores. Walking around in that chaos made his skin crawl, and until his conversation with Jah-Yun, he had resented the fact that he had received a one-year assignment in such a backward country. The idea that he might have something in common with the Korean secretary was intriguing.
“Wow, I’m sorry. You must miss your husband. Do you think about him a lot?”
“Okay, sure.”
“Like at night, before you go to sleep? You think about him then?”
Jah-Yun chuckled and brought her fingers to a rest against the keyboard.
“You have so many question! You want to know about husband? Okay. Sometimes feeling is very sad, sometimes ...” she trailed off, tapping one red fingernail against a coffee cup. “Sometimes feeling is free. Now go to sleep! This is war and you are dead person.”
“Okay, Captain Lee!”
Roy stretched out, sighed, closed his eyes. He dreamed he was flying over Korea in the tweed chair. He dreamed he was high above Seoul, peering down at the marketplaces, skyscrapers and funny blue and orange pagoda-style roofs. And in his lap, pointing a gleaming fingertip at the sites, whispering individual words in his ear, was his tour guide. Jah-Yun.
* * *
“Wake up.”
A fingernail traced the length of Roy’s hand.
“Wake up, please.”
He stretched and rubbed his eyes.
“Oh! I drifted off.”
Jah-Yun nodded.
“Yes. You sleep while I drive. This is our Yellow Sea. We will eat here.””
She had re-applied a rose-colored lipstick and dabbed at her forehead where her painted-on eyebrows had begun to run. To Roy, she looked like a popular doll soldiers were buying in the marketplace to ship home to their girlfriends or wives.
He sat up straight. The car was parked facing a line of trees. Between the trees, he could make out a sandy strip of land and water glinting in the late afternoon sun. He opened the car door, expecting a fresh, salty breeze. Instead, as he stood up to survey the area, he was greeted by a thick humidity that settled over his skin like an invisible wool suit.
“Whoo! Is this a nude beach, by any chance?” he said, pulling the fabric of his sweat-stained T-shirt away from his chest.
Jah-Yun opened her mouth for a minute as if she was going to respond, but then she bent over near the rear of the car and dug deep in the trunk. She stood up, with a shiny blue bag slung over one shoulder, and a cooler in her hands. Resting the cooler against one hip, she slammed the trunk.
“Okay,” she said, nodding at a concrete path that led toward the water. “Ka-se-yo!”
Roy slammed his own door and stared at the secretary.
“Huh?”
“This is Korea tour, so now I will speak Korean language with you. Ka-se-yo. Go, please.”
She nodded her head at the path — and Roy turned around, taking a few tentative steps toward the beach. Ka-se-yo. He supposed they had studied that word back in the office. Margaret had given him a Korean phrase book when he left the United States, but the book had remained in a pocket of his suitcase, unused, for months. When he met Jah-Yun, Roy was embarrassed to realize that he hadn’t even bothered to learn basic Korean words. He sat up late in his barracks dorm room, repeating, “An-yung-ha-shimnika. Hello. Kwamsa-hamnida. Thank you.”
The meanings rarely stuck with Roy, but he brought the phrase book to work just to watch Jah-Yun’s dark eyes scan the pages for teachable phrases. Ka-se-yo. Roy marched toward the beach repeating the phrase over and over.
“Ka-se-yo ... go please ... Ka-se-yo ... go please...”
He grinned at Jah-Yun. As they passed through the line of trees, Roy vowed that the word would stay with him.
“Stay please, stay please,” he muttered, under his breath.
* * *
P-i-g.
Jah-Yun poked Roy’s belly with a chopstick. He didn’t move. She had packed the cooler with bland food, suitable for Americans. The Sergeant had scarfed down three rolls of seaweed paper filled with rice, eggs, ham, radishes and carrots. He hadn’t used chopsticks. Then, he had used one chopstick to spear chunks of potato salad into his mouth. He finished the whole baguette Jah-Yun had bought at the bakery, tearing off hunks, dipping them into mayonnaise from the potato salad and stuffing them into his cheeks. Before she could properly peel an apple she had been planning on serving for dessert, Roy had casually snatched it up in his big, bear paw.
“Can I have this one?” he had asked. Jah-Yun nodded dumbly. The sergeant bit into the apple with the skin still on. Juice sprayed against her leg. After dinner, Roy curled into the shape of a shrimp on the picnic blanket. He commented on the soothing sound of water lapping shore. Then he slept. Again.
Jah-Yun touched her chopstick to Roy’s lips. Drool fell from his mouth, and she yanked her hand back. But the American Sergeant did not stir.
The sun sank beyond the horizon, and Jah-Yun sighed. How many American soldiers had trampled their over-sized bootprints onto this beach, she wondered? During the 1950s war, maybe thousands. That war was something like the Shilla and Paek-jae dynasties clashing all over again — brother fighting brother, and China tipping the balance of power by holding hands with Koreans from the north. But in the ‘50s, southern Korea was bolstered by a white-hot force from the other side of earth. America.
Jah-Yun watched Roy’s chest rise and fall under his sweaty T-shirt. How could American soldiers be Korean allies when they don’t know how to speak, eat or act, she wondered? Roy had seemed so eager to learn, back at the base. Out here, it was different. She wanted to speak Korean naturally, and he ... well, he couldn’t keep up. And because she hadn’t been able to speak frankly with the sergeant all day, Jah-Yun pulled a newspaper clipping from her handbag and set it next to Roy’s head. Eun-Hee Lee, the article read, age 20, was found floating in the Han River around midnight. A resident of Song-tan, Lee worked with her family in a luggage store near Osan Air Base. The death, while still under investigation, is considered to be a suicide.
There was a photograph next to the article — a lovely shot of families enjoying picnic weather on the banks of the river. There was even a side piece about the history of women and unwanted babies found floating down Korean rivers. In fact, the only thing that was missing was the information on Sanchez’ role in Eun-Hee’s death. Jah-Yun clicked her tongue. But that’s not something for newspapers or history books, she thought. Not romantic enough. The man only has to nudge the woman forward; he never has to take the fall.
She stood, carefully, so as not to wake Roy, and dug in her purse for a small flashlight she kept there. When she was younger, she and her brother had come to the same beach every summer to catch mang-tung-yi, a small, speedy fish that swam near shore. If you shined a light in his eyes, he forgot how to move. Then, you could snatch him up and toss him in the air. Now, craving a moment away from Roy, Jah-Yun dug deep, searching for a light to pierce the surface of the water.
* * *
Roy made his way across the sand, toward the sound of laughter. He had woken up alone, with one cheek smashed against a piece of newspaper. Jah-Yun’s voice floated up to him from the beach, and he had risen to follow it. Now, he could see her standing up to her shins in glassy water.
The moon was full, and a beam of its light seemed to shine out of Jah-Yun’s left hand. When Roy rubbed his eyes, the light was still there. He followed it closer and closer until he could see Jah-Yun in detail. The tips of her wet capri pants clung to her calves. Her right arm beckoned him forward.
Jah-Yun’s hair hung like thick, black seaweed, and Roy ached all over wanting to snag a bit of it in his fingers. In the moonlight, she looked like a creature from another time. Her right arm moved higher, and Roy mistook the gesture for an invitation. As soon as he embraced Jah-Yun around the waist, he realized his mistake. She snapped her arm skyward and flung mang-tung-yi toward the moon.
* * *
They stood for a heartbeat — soldier, lady — before Jah-Yun howled, knocking Roy to a seated position in the muck at their feet. He was shocked by water’s cold contrast to Jah-Yun’s warm body.
“Why?”
His voice cracked, like rice paper tearing.
“You!” Jah-Yun cried, pointing at him. Her arm shook, as she tried to find the correct English words.
You are only here because Sanchez make Eun-hee. A baby. She say. But he laughing. And she go the Han River.
“You are ...” she stammered.
Person for saying bad words to Sanchez. Because taking Eun-Hee’s body. And woman in darkness. Dishonor. Forget. Our face. Jump.
“You are a big pig!”
Jah-Yun turned for shore, spewing forth eloquent and — to Roy —completely incomprehensible Korean. Although he was responsible for the scene, Roy sat stupidly, letting mud squish through his shorts.
“Hey!” he yelled, waving in her direction. “I got carried away. You’re a beautiful woman, understand?”
Her figure continued to fade into darkness.
“You’re a beautiful woman,” he repeated, firmly. And then, in a near-whisper, he added, “I miss my wife.”
But she was gone, and he let all his breath out in one deep sigh. Jah-Yun had reached solid ground before Roy noticed something slapping against his leg. Glancing down, he saw a small fish writhing helplessly in a fold of his shorts. He grabbed at the fish, and mang-tung-yi squirmed and flailed in his grasp — wildly at first, and then slower. Finally, the movement stopped. He opened his fist and stared at the guppy-like creature, with its wide, innocent eyes and iridescent scales. Only the gills continued to flex, in search of air. The body was still. A car door slammed in the distance.
“Ka-se-yo,” he said quickly, rising to follow Jah-Yun. And Roy tipped his hand to the side, letting the creature fall into still, murky water, where it disappeared from sight.