Festival for Three Thousand Women (10 page)

Bobby took the stack of aerograms and, picking up a ruler that lay beside them, approached his disgraceful mound. He sat down and pushed as much excrement onto each aerogram as he thought it would hold. For a moment he considered sealing the aerograms, but abandoned the idea. Of the dozen aerograms, he used ten of them to carry his awful message of disrespect away. He had to make two trips to the outhouse, five aerograms piled high in his hands each trip, and then he threw the ruler down into the pit after them for good measure.

On his way back to the house Bobby removed his T-shirt and soaked it in a bucket of freezing water. The morning was as cold as the night before had been, and when he returned to his room to scrub the spot away, he was shivering uncontrollably. He managed to wipe the T-shirt several times across the floor, and then he threw it out the window and crawled back into bed just a second before the grandmother pushed his door open and came in to see what was going on.

“Aigo,”
she said. “You've been farting. I could smell it all the way to my room.”

Bobby tried to answer but could only shiver. He'd placed a woven basket on the spot where the shit had been and had scooted his bedding closer to it to discourage anyone from standing just there.

The grandmother peered at him closely. “Are you merely hung over,” she asked, “or are you really ill?”

Again, though he tried to answer, to say that it was just the wine, when he opened his mouth his teeth banged together like knives on a chopping block.

“Phew!” she said. “I better call the doctor. Something else is wrong here.” She got another two quilts and laid them over him gently, and then she went out the door. It was still barely six in the morning, and it was Sunday so Bobby knew she'd be back alone. Who could she find now, at this hour of the day?

But in truth he did feel worse than he had ever felt before, and he was beginning to believe that it was more than just the wine and his shame. His bowels started to grumble, and he felt the need to get up and go back to the outhouse, but he was shivering so violently that he could not easily move. And soon a sharp pain came across the lowest part of his abdomen, like screws winding remorselessly in.

“Ohhh,” Bobby moaned, and the boy who was bad in English stuck his head through the door. Why could he never remember this boy's name?

“Outhouse go?” he asked.

“Please,” said Bobby. “If you could give me a hand.”

The boy came cheerfully into the room, somehow getting Bobby to his feet quite easily, wrapping his overcoat around him before lugging him out the door. He was a strong boy for one so small, but Bobby's feet were moving too, though he felt an ache all along his legs when he put his weight on them. How in the world had he found the strength to carry the aerograms out the way he had?

When they got to the outhouse the boy left Bobby alone, walking a short distance away. Inside the dismal shack Bobby looked down through the thin floorboards at the various triangles of blue there on that hard brown sea. He was shaking so much that he had trouble bending his knees, and once he was squatted there, hands against the walls, he was sure his weight would break the boards and that he would tumble down there himself, to die among his ten messages.

As he emptied his bowels and covered the evidence, however, the vise in Bobby's belly loosened and he was able to stand and open the door, walking back to his room alone.

Bobby wanted nothing but the warmth of his blankets and the quiet of an entire day to sleep, but when he entered his room again the grandmother was there. She was alone, but she had a shawl full of medicines and herbs, and when Bobby passed her, dropping his overcoat and climbing back into bed, she knelt down at his side.

“Open your mouth,” she said. Bobby's shivering had continued full force, though, and he could only open it and close it intermittently, like a dying fish.

The grandmother unfolded her bundle and removed from it a silver cutting knife and the still bloody antler of a reindeer. Seeing the stub of the deer's horn made Bobby sicker and he said, “No, I'm not taking that. It is against the Peace Corps rules. I can only take American medicine.”

He spoke emphatically, but the grandmother continued scraping the bloody end of the antler and mixing what she got there with the powders she'd taken from another canister. When she had the medicine ready she looked at Bobby and he summoned all his energy to shout: “No! Go on now! Get out of here!”

He used a guttural form of language and his rudeness had connected this time. The grandmother looked appalled and immediately packed everything up and hurried from the room. Bobby really was sick, for with the old lady gone he fell away from all his troubles in an instant and dreamed of being a child at play, at his own grandmother's house.

But when he woke it was not, yet, because of his need to return to the outhouse. He had started dreaming of a dust storm, of walking unprotected among the whirling sands, when suddenly he began to cough and sputter and spit. He sat up in bed and when he opened his eyes again he saw that the grandmother was back, a roguish smile spread across her face. In one hand she held the empty vial that had contained the reindeer-antler potion that she'd made, and in the other a funnel formed from Bobby's last two aerograms, a funnel that she'd just removed from his wide-open mouth.

Bobby ended the year like that, much of his holiday taken up with the dysentery or flu or whatever it was. The grandmother came often and he no longer fought her visits and he took whatever it was she gave him.

She told stories of how it had been in the old days, and Heh Sook and the boy who was bad in English came in to tuck their feet beneath the blankets and listen.

When it came time to go back to school Bobby was well again, but for a long while his defenses had been so low that the grandmother's tuberculosis germs took the opportunity and moved from the walls of his esophagus into the softer tissue of his lungs where they multiplied.

The American has been here for months now and I was worrying about the fact that I had still not spoken to him, worrying whether he had noticed and whether he thought my silence an unkindness of some kind, when he walked up and spoke directly to me. I was astonished. He spoke in Korean, and though his words were strange, I understood them. He was asking me if I would like to join an evening English class that he had organized for the benefit of the teachers of the school.

I was so taken aback that my mouth hung open like a stupid old bird's. I said, “I have enough trouble with Korean,” an expression that made the American smile, and one in which I have taken some pride now that I've had time to think it over. “I have enough trouble with Korean.” Considering that I did not expect him to come to my desk and that I had no time to prepare what I would say, I think such a statement exhibits my good training pretty well. It is disarming, it is self-effacing, and it is polite. All in all, it is a very good thing to say, and I have learned from it the lesson that spontaneity is not always bad.

The truth of the matter is that I have been wanting to speak to the American, but I have been muddling around, imagining myself walking up to him and delivering some comment like, “Good day, sir,” which any fool knows will almost always bring the response of “Good day.” I might have said something about the business of the school, of course, but I was afraid anything like that would be too complicated and he would not understand. How wonderful, then, that it is all cleared up now. “I have enough trouble with Korean!” Not bad at all.

I have noticed that my fascination with this American is not so far removed from the fascination one feels during a courtship, and that makes me pause and chuckle. How is it that I have become so enamored with the man? It is as if the Chinese circus has come to town and I am spending all my money to stand inside its strangest tent.

Written on the slow train to Hongsong, as I work my way up the coast to see my younger brother.

 

 

Nine in the fourth place means: Voluntary retreat brings good fortune to the superior man
.

 

A
t the back of the school there was a big room housing the library, and Mr. Soh, once a week, was the school librarian. There weren't many books in the library, but it had the school's best stove, and for that reason Mr. Soh had reserved it for Bobby's special English class, the one he had been promising to teach ever since his arrival in town.

By now Bobby understood, of course, that teaching in Taechon Boys' Middle School was a worthless occupation for a Peace Corps volunteer—even his best students would end their formal education after ninth grade. He had been assigned there, he had come to realize, simply because the Ministry of Education had been given the job of placing the Peace Corps volunteers and had not known what to do. He was a commodity, a badge of improvement for the community, and nothing more.

But if he was going to make the best of it, he asked himself, why not teach a special class for teachers and adults, since there were some who were interested? Headmaster Kim, when he heard about it, wanted to charge the teachers and pay Bobby extra for his work but Bobby said no. His only other stipulation was that they not go drinking after class. He was healthy again, and he wanted to stay that way.

The first students to enroll in the special class were Mr. Soh, Mr. Kwak, and Mr. Nam. Bobby hadn't intended that the class be exclusively for teachers at the school, but since it was on school property and a considerable walk from town, no one else joined. Finally, though, Judo Lee and Miss Lee signed up. Bobby asked the headmaster and vice-headmaster if they too would like to join the class but they both declined. “English is the language of the young,” said Headmaster Kim. “I have enough trouble with Korean,” said his assistant.

On the first night of class, Mr. Soh went back to school early to relight the library fire, and the rest of them followed later on. When Bobby left his room, walking up the pathway leading to the main road, he envisioned himself not so much as a teacher but as a leader of discussions, keeping everything simple but letting the others do most of the talking. He wanted this to be something he did well. His students would learn that the English language, too, was flexible and could be used creatively by someone with control. Never mind that the students were of vastly different abilities; he would trim his lesson to include them all.

Bobby was walking quickly, looking at the moon and thinking over the potential difficulties of the class, when the Goma appeared from the shadows, underdressed as usual and ignoring the cold night. Though Bobby had been living with Policeman Kim for several months, he had continued meeting the Goma occasionally, so seeing him pop up wasn't surprising. There was no place for him among the teachers, however, and Bobby told him so.

“Teach me too,” said the Goma. “Big-time class start right now.”

The more Korean Bobby learned, the more atrocious the Goma's became. “No, Goma,” he said. “This class is for the teachers, not for you.”

“Please,” the Goma said quietly. “It is my only chance.”

Bobby stared at him. His only chance for what? He couldn't speak Korean well, he had never been to school, and the teachers would surely be insulted by his presence in the room. Still, he had spoken very well just then, and Bobby knew all too clearly what being an outcast was like. Did the Goma really think he had some kind of chance? He didn't even have a winter coat, let alone any kind of chance.

“Please,” the Goma said, seeing something like real consideration in Bobby's eyes. “If I learn English I can go to America, be your boy. Or I can hang out with army, get lost, find my way.”

Bobby looked at him. “The teachers won't like it,” he said, and at the same time he realized that he was going to take the boy along.

“Screw the teachers,” said the Goma, reverting to pidgin again and making Bobby wince. What was he getting himself into?

When they entered the library, the others had already arrived. The stove was hot and a pot of barley tea was steaming on top of it. Bobby tried to make light of the Goma's presence, but even Mr. Kwak seemed surprised by it. “He's only here to listen,” Bobby said in English. “Think of it as our good deed.” And the Goma, as if concurring, scurried into the corner, making himself small.

Bobby sat in a chair that the teachers had placed at the head of the table, closest to the stove. Mr. Lee and Miss Lee were beside him, and Mr. Soh was at the far end with Mr. Kwak and Mr. Nam.

“All right,” Bobby said. “Let's try this. Let's speak only English, or let's try to anyway. Let's not use Korean except for clarification.”

Bobby said this twice, first in English, then in Korean, and everyone nodded, faces expectant and bright.

Bobby had a notebook with him, but all he'd managed to prepare was a list of possible discussion topics: the upcoming U.S. election, popular music around the world, Korean-American relations, the recent defection to the South of a North Korean big shot. He was about to suggest that they start with something simple when Mr. Nam stood up and began walking around the table, passing out books. “Here we go,” he said.