Festival for Three Thousand Women (22 page)

Without stirring abroad
One can know the whole world.
Without looking out a window
One can see the way of heaven.

Though Bobby had recognized, coming back from Seoul, that the Goma was a constant in his life, he hadn't seen much of the Goma since his return. The Goma, however, had borrowed a dictionary and an easy novel, so Bobby knew he was studying too. And then, early that spring, a bad thing happened. The Goma was fired from the inn, for too much study, perhaps, and in the middle of the night as well. The owner beat him and shoved him out the door, but the Goma waited until first morning light before coming over the fence and reaching through the bars to knock on Bobby's window, asking him to pass out some hot morning tea. It was raining and the Goma looked worried. “This is serious,” he said. “I've been at that inn for ten years.”

The Goma followed Bobby to school that day, and since they arrived early, Bobby brought him into the teachers' room so that he could stand by the stove. “Soon the teachers will come,” the Goma said forlornly, but when the first teachers did arrive, barely ten minutes after them, they were the vice-headmaster and Mr. Nam, and when the Goma saw Nam he was ready. He held out the English book, hoping to gain another moment next to the fire by giving it back.

“Thanks a million,” he said.

“Ah,” said Nam. “Page seventy-two.”

Mr. Nam took the book and inspected it, surprised to find it still in one piece. “One good turn deserves another,” he said, tucking the book away.

“Page one hundred,” said the Goma.

With the vice-headmaster looking on, Mr. Nam pulled a chair over to the fire and sat next to the Goma. “How can you say my book is bad?” he asked Bobby. “Look how much he has learned.” He turned back to the Goma.

“I'm sick, Doctor, what shall I do?”

“Stuff a cold and starve a fever,” the Goma told him.

“Won't you have some more potatoes?”

“Enough's as good as a feast.”

Mr. Nam was tickled pink. “This is fantastic,” he said, and then he pulled the book back out and gave it to the Goma, this time no question that it was a gift.

When the other teachers arrived, the Goma got nervous and left the room. Mr. Nam, though, went with him, and Bobby could see through the window that he was tucking the Goma down in the bicycle shed, where there was enough straw to keep a body warm. And when he came back inside he was ecstatic. “For the love of Mike!” he said.

Mr. Kwak had slipped in by then and the vice-headmaster had begun his speech, but Mr. Nam was beaming, happy as a clam, hard evidence concerning the quality of his book right out there in the bicycle shed. And as soon as the meeting ended, he announced that he was taking the Goma home with him right after school. It was the Christian thing to do.

For most of the day the sun rode high in the sky, warming the edges of the earth, but though Nam went out to the bicycle shed several times, it wasn't until everyone left at five that he called the Goma out again.

“Buddy, oh Buddy,” called Mr. Nam.

The Goma had been up all the previous night, but he recognized his cue and called back from under the straw, “The day's half gone.”

“Up and at ‘em,” said Nam. “Rise and shine,” and when the Goma appeared the teachers cheered.

“Buddy's coming home with me,” Mr. Nam announced again. “Little Buddy, safe and warm.”

It was still cold, so Mr. Nam threw a corner of his overcoat across the Goma's shoulders as they walked. Bobby was going out to Mr. Kwak's house for the night to take a lesson in Chinese characters from the genius himself, but things had worked out well—the other genius was going home with Mr. Nam. Though Bobby had never been to Mr. Nam's house, he knew Nam was single and that he lived alone, and he imagined that the Goma would finally have a room to himself, perhaps next to Nam's, perhaps across the hall or off to the side.

As Mr. Nam and the Goma walked toward town, Bobby climbed slowly up onto the back of Mr. Kwak's bike. Though Mr. Nam was gloating, it really was an inspiration, the good deed he had done, and a circle of teachers still surrounded them as they walked away. The Goma didn't turn to look back, but he was standing tall. And his arms were at his sides, proof that he wasn't rubbing his sleeve across the diminishing scab under his nose.

Six at the beginning means: In advancing and in retreating, the perseverance of a warrior furthers
.

 

B
obby had not heard from the Peace Corps, but the medicine seemed to be making him feel better, so two weeks after he got back to town he left again, this time with his Korean grandmother, Mr. Kwak and Bo Peep, and Mr. and Miss Lee. It was the occasion of a festival in the town of Puyo, honoring the memory of three thousand virgins, girls who had jumped to their deaths off the Puyo cliffs in order to avoid being raped by the invading T'ang dynasty troops. Puyo had been the capital then of a kingdom called Paekche, and Koreans from the region were still fiercely proud.

In the interior of the province, Puyo was about four times Taechon's size. It was a pretty town, and since spring weather had arrived with them, the day was fine. Trees were aflower with apple blossoms, pink and white against the base of a looming hill.

The grandmother, who was in charge of the expedition, would have had them immediately work their way up to the top of the hill, to the spot where the festival was to take place, but Mr. Kwak and Bobby both wanted a chance to wander, to get a feel for the town before going up high. When they stopped the grandmother held her hands over her mouth to cough. As they stood there hundreds of people passed them, and the grandmother closed her fist and shook it. “If we wait, all the good picnic areas will be gone,” she said.

But Mr. Kwak knew that there were bookstores in this town. “Perhaps,” said Mr. Kwak, “you could go now and we could catch up later.” He looked at the grandmother. “After all, you know the hill and have a better eye for the best spot.”

The grandmother was pleased with the idea and snapped her hand firmly onto Bo Peep's shoulder, ready to set off. “If you're not up there before dark you won't find us,” she warned. “And the opening festivities are the nicest.”

Mr. Kwak gave Judo Lee his bundle and said they would not be long, that they only wanted a sense of the place so that when they looked down from above they'd have some feeling for where they had been. And as soon as the others left, he and Bobby turned down the alleys of the town.

Puyo seemed slightly askew, not knowable in a glance as Taechon was. Whereas Taechon had two streets, Puyo had six, and the pavement laid on top of the dirt made walking a pleasure. Yet though the people in a hurry were all on the hill, Mr. Kwak walked fast, looking for a particular bookstore and saying they could move slowly once inside. There were always good finds in the bookstores of towns like Puyo, he said, but such a situation wouldn't last forever. Established families were selling their books now because the society was turning modern, away from philosophical thought.

They had to ask several times, but these interior paths weren't nearly so crowded as the main street, and soon they were in an old store looking through stacks and stacks of well-kept books. The owner hurried from the back when they came in and then hurried off again to bring them tea.

“You look there, I'll look here,” said Mr. Kwak. “We'll find books for me and books for your education as well.”

Since most of the titles were written in Chinese, Bobby was pleased that Mr. Kwak thought him competent enough to look through a stack on his own. Mr. Kwak disappeared behind a shelf on the far side of the room and Bobby picked something off the first stack, the one closest to the door. There were five Chinese characters along the book's binding, but though he knew them all individually, he couldn't make them fit together to make sense. inside the book, though, was a page filled with English, and he found the following:

No Man is an
Iland
, in tire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the
Continent
, a part of the
maine;
if
Clod
bee washed away by the
Sea, Europe
is the lesse, as well as if a
Promontorie
were, as well as if the
Mannor
of thy
friends
or of
thine owne
were, any mans
death
diminishes
me
, because I am involved in
Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom the
bell
tolls; It tolls for
thee
.

Though the rest of the book was in Korean it was Hemingway, not Donne, and Bobby tucked it under his arm. This really was a find. A book he knew well would help him read it well, giving him only the language to worry about and not the makeup of the book's world.

As Bobby's eyes adjusted to the job of decoding the titles, he was surprised to find that fully half the books were foreign translations, stories of the ages written for the average Korean to read. There was
The Magic Mountain
, slimmer in Korean than it should have been, and there was poetry, Byron and Keats and Pound. And at the bottom of the stack were ten thin volumes of Shakespeare, play after play after play. Who, he wondered, could have done such work? What men, during these years of Korea's movement away from itself, would have thought such a difficult task worthwhile?

Mr. Kwak came out to see how Bobby was doing and he had his answer. These translators were the men of Mr. Kwak's fraternity, his true brothers, gracing the peninsula like jewels, members of an age gone by.

When the bookstore owner brought them their tea, they all sat together happily, the books they wanted balanced upon their knees. Besides the Hemingway, Bobby had found a book by Jack Kerouac and a copy of
Great Expectations
. And for his part Mr. Kwak had found philosophies of the West and East, a book of Zen Koans in German, Nietzsche in Chinese, and an extra-thick volume of Twain, placed on top as if to show that what America had produced was important too. The owner raved about the choices they had made. He'd read them all, he said, and could vouch not only for their content but for the quality of the paper and bindings as well. Though these books were old, they would never fall apart. Though the paper had yellowed, it would not crumble.

When they stood to leave, the owner walked outside with them and pointed up toward the top of Puyo hill. “I will close my store before winter comes again,” he said. It was an odd comment, connected as it was to the festival forming above them, yet when Mr. Kwak and Bobby left, the bookstore owner stood sadly watching, hunching his shoulders in the spring breeze.

They, on the other hand, were happy with their books, and when they got to the edge of the hill the spirit of the three thousand virgins was so much in the air that they stepped into the upward-moving crowd easily, walking quickly along. There were hundreds of people on the hill, hundreds more on the path before them. But though the path was generally wide, there were places on it that were so steep that Bobby could reach out and touch the ground before him without so much as bending down. They were climbing hard and high, sometimes pulling themselves up, and Bobby could feel the elevation in his lungs and wondered how the grandmother had fared.

When they got to the top Bobby slumped to the ground, exhausted. Looking back the way they'd come, he could see other people lying on the path, too tired to move. And the grandmother had been right—the top of the hill was larger than it looked from below. There were families and groups everywhere, staking territory under every tree.

“There is a spot in the middle that will be the center of all the festivities,” said Mr. Kwak. “Perhaps they have found a place near there.”

Bobby got up and followed Mr. Kwak through the intertwining network of groups, but he found it difficult to walk. This wasn't what he had expected. It was too crowded, too festive. There were even concession stands up here, and walking among the crowd were hawkers, guys with peanuts and liver tonic in baskets hanging from their necks.

“Look,” said Mr. Kwak. “The dancers and the acrobats will appear here tonight.”

Bobby had been looking down, but when Mr. Kwak took his arm he saw a large clearing with a podium at its center and various pieces of equipment stacked nearby. Policemen were there, keeping people away, but right at the clearing's edge hundreds sat tentatively, waiting to press in once the show got started. Bobby had never before been in such a crowd. There were so many people that at times he feared he'd lose his balance, falling among them and upsetting their feasts.

They had looked everywhere when a voice finally called to them.

“Hey! I can't believe! Over here!”

Startled by hearing English, Bobby turned his head quickly and sure enough, it was Gloria, sitting on a large blanket right next to the grandmother and the Lees.

“Gloria!” Bobby shouted. He was glad to see her and looked around for Gary Smith or Mr. Kim.

“Small world, ain't it?” said Gloria.

The grandmother and Miss Lee were smiling, and Mr. Kwak was glad to take his son's hand and sit down. Judo Lee was apparently so satisfied with everything that he had leaned against a tree and fallen asleep, and Miss Lee had opened a basket and was trying to make everyone eat. Once Bobby had introduced them all, Gloria took hold of his hand. “Gary Smith gone stateside,” she said. “Mr. Kim still driving his bad-looking cab. Puyo my hometown. Come back all ordinary-like for starting over.”

Bobby wanted to take Gloria away somewhere, to watch her eyes shine out from under her Cleopatra haircut and to listen to her talk, but they were seated in the middle of twenty thousand people, on the top of a mountain, waiting for a festival to begin.

When a hawker came by with makkoli the grandmother stopped him, making him wait while she counted out the money they had to spend on drink. “Give us seven,” she said, “and a couple of bottles of cola for the boy.”