Festival for Three Thousand Women (19 page)

“Ha ha,” he said. Then he lifted his glass up until Bobby was forced to pull his full one back off the floor.
“Mani Tushipsho,”
said the vice-headmaster. “To your continued good health.”

Bobby had had a bowl of makkoli at the Pusan-chip and he'd put the scotch to his lips once or twice here, but with the vice-headmaster staring at him, challenge all over his face, he could think of nothing to do but stand up and ask where the toilet was, taking his whiskey with him when he left the room. Ill or not, pouring booze away while pretending not to was, after all, as Korean as apple pie.

It was freezing outside. Bobby had not brought his coat and the outhouse shoes were so small that he could barely walk in them. But there was a clear moon above him and as he walked he looked ahead, hoping to find another moon cut into the outhouse door. Instead he saw the Goma standing there. “Hail fellow well met,” he said.

“Hey,” said Bobby, “where have you been?”

The Goma pointed to a sand pit at the side of the house, just under the window where the vice-headmaster sat.

“It's a good place to listen,” he said.

When Bobby offered him a sip of scotch he downed half of it in a gulp, holding on tight while it warmed his insides.

“Holy cow!” he said.

Bobby left the Goma with his whiskey glass while he stepped into the outhouse, and when he came back out the Goma was gone. Alas, though he'd solved the problem of the whiskey, he had lost the glass as well. And there was Mr. Nam, standing on the doorstep, waiting his turn.

“If I had the nerve I would leave now,” said Mr. Nam. “From this point forward all Korean parties go downhill.” He looked at his watch and shook his head. “It's still early, no one will be allowed to go home until eleven.”

Mr. Nam hovered there with Bobby for a moment, but when he heard someone else coming out he hurried on. Bobby watched him go and then looked toward the side of the house where the Goma was standing. He threw Bobby the empty glass and then darted away just as another man appeared, full whiskey glass in hand.

For the next hour, once everyone was back inside, the staff of Taechon Boys' Middle School took it easy on drink and dedicated itself to song. Bobby sang “The Bald-Headed Bachelor,” and the vice-headmaster sang “O Solo Mio” reasonably well. After much coaxing the headmaster took a couple of toothpicks, used them to prop his eyes wide open, and then did a Chinese dragon dance all around the room. It was fun, and though Bobby was tired, he was pleased to be taken for granted, accepted as one of the teachers, his specialness slipping ever so steadily away.

At eleven o'clock they all sang the vice-headmaster's favorite song, “Auld Lang Syne,” with Mr. Nam asking Bobby whether its proper English title was “The Good Old Times” or “The Old Good Times.” And when the party ended and they all walked out together, the vice-headmaster was by Bobby's side. “I've got two wives,” he said. “I'm the only one at school with two wives.”

For a moment Headmaster Kim stood waving to them from the edge of his garden. His one wife was by his side, and a few children and old people had come from the house to bid them farewell. By the time they got to the main street, teachers were staggering everywhere, lurching to and fro, but though Bobby expected to have trouble getting away from them, he did not. All he had to do was bob and weave like they did for a while, then duck into the shadows and wait for the last of the teachers to stumble off toward home. And when the street was clear he buttoned his jacket and walked back down toward the Pusan-chip to find out what was really going on.

Of course, he was not alone. As he walked, the Goma slid from the shadows and matched him stride for stride, like Wyatt Earp and his deputy heading for the OK Corral.

When they got to the Pusan-chip the light was off, but they slid back the door anyway. They stepped into a scene of chaos. The customers were gone, but the stools in the front room were turned on their sides, one of them broken, and makkoli bowls were everywhere. The owner was hunched over the fire, her knees wide, staring into the great valley of her skirt. She hardly looked up when they came in.

Looking around, Bobby noticed that someone had shoved a makkoli bowl through the paper of the backroom door, so now there was a hole the size of a big man's head, low down and off to one side. When Bobby looked through the hole he could see the sleeping figure of a farmer, but nothing of Miss Moon. The whole place was drenched in makkoli. Even the Goma, who had spent his evening in a sand pit, stepped lightly and seemed offended by the lavish destruction.

They opened the door and stepped into the back room and tiptoed across the stains. The farmer was soaked and out cold, but he was alive. And when Bobby turned around, he found Miss Moon huddled in the corner, her gown in shreds, one bare knee up under her chin.

“Sure is a sight for sore eyes,” said the Goma.

Bobby had spent a good deal of time at the Pusan-chip, and the wreckage was more than just the results of another evening at play. Miss Moon didn't seem injured, but though Bobby shook her shoulders he couldn't get her to respond.

“She's dead,” said the Goma.

They stepped back down into the main room again and tried their luck with the owner.

“What happened here? Was anyone hurt?”

The owner shook her head. “It will take me all night to clean up,” she said. “How about giving a hand?”

Though ruined, the Pusan-chip was small, and when the owner began to stir, Bobby and the Goma set about putting things right. They cleaned up the broken furniture, sat the stools back up, and stacked all the bowls. The owner had a tub of soapy water, and the Goma went behind the bar once the bowls were collected and began washing them. Bobby found a mop and attacked the pools of makkoli on the back room floor while the owner made tea. It didn't take long and the work made them all feel better.

Once the tea was ready, the owner went out and came back quickly with a blanket for the farmer and a dry change of clothes for Miss Moon, who was beginning to wobble a bit. When the clothes were presented to her she changed into them all by herself in the corner.

When the tea was poured and they had stools to sit on, and when Miss Moon was propped in the doorway with her hands wrapped around a warm cup of the stuff, the owner told them what had happened.

“That gent back there,” she said, jerking a thumb toward the other room, “claims he owns this girl. He's a bumpkin, but he has a big farm and he claims some men talked him into putting all his money into that tearoom that went broke. He lost everything and says they gave him this girl as compensation for his loss. He's had her out there on his farm since then, but a week ago she took off, coming back here. I let him drink on the house and finally the other farmers tried to dislodge him, but he stood up to us all. When he wakes up he'll start haranguing again. I took her on to help her, but one night of this is enough.”

Bobby looked at the Goma. The owner's accent was so countrified that Bobby wasn't sure he had it right. But the Goma nodded. “It's got the ring of truth to it,” he said.

“Why doesn't she go to the police?” Bobby asked, but the Goma and the owner both looked at him like his question should not be dignified with a response. At that moment Miss Moon stepped down into the main room and put her hand on Bobby's shoulder.

“It's all true,” she said. “What I need now is money so that I can run away.”

Bobby looked at the owner, but she shrugged. She had done all she was going to, just by giving Miss Moon the job.

“How much do you need?” he asked. “Where will you go?”

“Anywhere,” she said. “But now, before he wakes up.”

The clothes that the owner had brought for Miss Moon were men's, and as Bobby looked at them the thought crossed his mind that maybe he was being played for a fool. Maybe the farmer had nothing to do with Miss Moon and the object of the whole story was money. But surely not. If anyone did, the owner of this bar knew that he was nearly always broke. Bobby did have the money he was going to use to pay his tab, and he told the Goma to take Miss Moon back to his inn and to hide her there until the morning train left for Seoul. By then it was nearly midnight and since the train left early, Bobby wanted to go back home for a few hours' sleep. The owner, however, seemed to think that they would sit a while longer, warming their hands on the cups. She was in need of a bar girl again but she didn't seem to mind.

“There is always an abundance of pretty young girls,” she said. “The trick is finding one who will work.”

Bobby sat there until the owner saw that he was tired. He then took the blanket she offered him and went in to lay down next to the farmer for a while.

It wasn't the curfew that kept him from going home, but his lack of energy for the walk.

Six in the second place means: She should not follow her whims
.

 

I
t took Bobby and Miss Moon eight hours to get to Seoul, though the trip on the fast train would have taken four. Their departure was uneventful. The Goma was there, but the Pusan-chip's madam had taken the farmer by the arm and helped him with a house-by-house search of the farthest reaches of the town.

Bobby couldn't believe the size of Seoul. Though he remembered little of it from the days he'd spent there, he knew it hadn't seemed nearly as large then as it did now. Since neither of them had the courage to face a bus ride, they spent his remaining money and took a cab.

There was an inn across the street from the Peace Corps office, and luckily the first person they asked pointed it out. This was a cheap home for out-of-town volunteers, a place where they could exchange gossip and speak American English into the small hours of the night.

Though they'd spent some of the train ride trying to catch up on their sleep, the farther they got from Taechon, the more apparent it became to Bobby that the Miss Moon riding along with him was the tearoom Miss Moon of old. Even as she slept, he could see a softer version of her returning, casting the harsher one out mile by mile.

“I'm sorry,” Bobby said. “But we can't afford two rooms.”

Miss Moon took his arm. “Never mind,” she told him. “I still remember my promise.”

He remembered her promise too—that someday they would be together. She had told him that as she'd pushed him from the tearoom door, sending him home to defecate in his room. Bobby had recognized even then that it was a common promise made to drunken passersby, and he felt sorry that she felt she had to bring it up now.

When they got to the inn the owner greeted them strangely. There was only one room left, she said, a small one renting for four hundred won a night.

“The Peace Corps office will open in the morning,” said Bobby. “Surely you understand that I am good for it.”

“Of course,” said the owner after a pause.

Just then Bobby realized that Miss Moon was still wearing her odd assortment of clothing, and he understood that the owner's reticence was due as much to Miss Moon's strangeness as to his lack of funds. Peace Corps volunteers usually came alone. To bring a Korean girl in was passably common during the later hours, but such an early, sober-headed entrance was unusual. Nevertheless, they were shortly shown to their room and allowed to collapse there, barely pulling the bedding from the shelves before falling down on it to nap.

Some Peace Corps volunteers came to Seoul often, some did not. And those who did not were looked upon with a mixture of awe and suspicion by those who did. Bobby, for example, had not seen a single member of his group other than Cherry and Larry Corsio since their arrival fifteen months before. So when, early that evening, he awoke and stepped out to ask where he and Miss Moon might find a cheap place to eat, his presence was greeted with shocked surprise by the three young men who happened to be standing in the hall.

“Who's that?” said someone named Mac. “My God, man, you've shrunk!”

“Hey,” said Bobby, pleased. “How's everybody?”

The three had all been in his training group, all solo volunteers like himself living in the provinces, and up to Seoul for a week or two of winter fun.

“We thought you died,” said a volunteer named Allen, and the third, whose name was Robert, rushed over to shake his hand. They all started to smile and chuckle, as Bobby remembered doing at the missile base with Cherry. Though he hadn't known these guys well, he was terribly glad to see them, especially since they were shocked at his diminished size.

“Come out with us,” said Mac. “We're about to head into Itewon, see how the other half lives.”

Itewon housed Seoul's version of the Vil, a huge strip of bars and clubs near the main U.S. military base.

“I can imagine how they live,” Bobby said. “I've got someone with me, and I'm broke.”

“I'm loaded,” said Mac, but then he paused. “What do you mean? Who do you have with you?”

Bobby explained about Miss Moon, telling them about the closure of the tearoom, the narrow escape from the farmer at the Pusan-chip the night before.

“Good God,” said Robert. “I thought you'd been spending all your time studying.”

They stood talking, putting off deciding what to do that evening, until they heard Miss Moon moving around inside the room. “I'll tell you what,” said Mac. “Take us in and introduce us. Who knows? Maybe she'll fit in.”

Of the three, Allen was the most formal, but they all spoke to Miss Moon politely, and all in good Korean. Robert, the most diligent student, carried a shoulder bag of dictionaries with him, but Mac was the most colloquial, speaking to Miss Moon like an equal, just as Bobby had done back in the tearoom days, when everything was simple and clear. In return Miss Moon was far less guarded with the three strangers than Bobby had expected. Indeed, she seemed delighted. She was well rested from the trip and her cheerfulness had completely returned.