I enter the gate of the Nam Goong and limp across the courtyard to my room in the far right corner. But then the sound of native-speaker English coming from a room on the opposite side of the courtyard catches my interest. I walk over to the partly opened paper door and knock.
“Yeah!” somebody answers.
I slide the door open. Four PCV guys are sitting on the floor around a low table, playing cards. They look up expectantly. I know two of them somewhat. They aren’t my usual crowd, being health care workers rather than middle school teachers like myself.
One is Charlie Streicher, and he has an extraordinary face which has gotten worse since I’ve last seen him. The other is Nick ‘The Greek’ Karmanos. He is always talking about his ethnic heritage. It’s as good a shtick as any, I suppose.
“Hey, come on in,” Nick says.
“Hi!” I say.
Ditching my shoes, I enter the room and slide the door half way shut again.
“You’re J ...?” Nick says tentatively. “No wait, Tyler Lakatos, right?”
“Yeah.”
The two remaining guys introduce themselves as Eric and Bill. A large, dried squid occupies the center of the table, along with a quartet of glasses. Booze bottles litter a corner.
“Have some squid,” Charlie says.
“Thanks.”
I rip off a tentacle and take a seat.
“I’ve wanted to ask you,” Nick says, “is Lakatos a Greek name?”
“No, it’s Hungarian.”
“Christ, a Hungarian!” Charlie explodes. “Bad enough there’s a Greek here. Open the door, let some air in.”
Bill slides the door wider open.
“Nice going, Charlie,” Nick says. “It sure is great hanging out with a class guy like you.”
“That’s the way it is with us literary types,” Charlie says.
Literary type ... Charlie?
A deluge of ethnic humor follows, mostly old ‘Polack’ jokes revised to insult other nationalities.
These guys are certainly crude. Then again, if I’d been assigned to some rural medical center administering TB drugs, I’d probably be pretty hard-bitten myself. Among us volunteers, they speak the best, most profane Korean. They are the most ferocious drinkers. And they have the least access to healthy relationships with Korean women.
Country families watch their girls closely. For these unfortunate PCVs, the only female contact they can generally hope for is at the red light district of some neighboring town, or else in Seoul at the E Tae Won ville outside the American Eighth Army base. They’d doubtless been there last night.
I add to the banter.
“You know what the common knowledge is, don’t you?” I say.
“What?” Nick asks.
“If you’ve got a Hungarian for a friend, you sure as hell don’t need any enemies,” I say.
Everyone laughs.
“Hey, I like you!” Charlie says. “Have a drink.”
He pours me a glass of clear, fiery begal – ‘Chinese rocket fuel’ as it is commonly known. I unwisely slug the whole glass down. A vile, embalming fluid taste pollutes my mouth. Man, this is worse than the Victory Gin in 1984!
In swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club.
Korea has many 1984 type characteristics, come to think of it – the Pak dictatorship for example with its double speak brutality, the way inconvenient people tend to disappear. I’ll think more about it later – once the rubber clubbing wears off.
Nick grins. “Be careful, Tyler, that stuff can give you the runs.”
This opens a whole new topic of conversation: “The worst time I had the shits.”
I tune out the discussion as best I can, concentrating instead on chewing the rubbery squid. These guys might not be up to my usual social standards, but I don’t feel particularly out of place. Sitting here in this cramped room, among this company, with a dried tentacle in my mouth seems like the most natural thing in the world.
Yeah, maybe it really is time to go home.
“... and I wasn’t solid for a month!” Charlie cries, mercifully concluding the discussion.
Talk moves on to whores and booze. I lean back against the wall quietly observing – Charlie mostly. Although only twenty something years old, Charlie has an aged, blown-out face. His complexion is grayish-putty, and his skin sags, especially around the eyes. The effect is mask-like, as if his features have been gouged into a rubber eraser. His face lacks expressiveness and hangs on his skull baggy and immobilized. His left eyeball twitches.
I know other guys with similar faces, though Charlie’s is the worst. They’ve poisoned themselves with so much cheap alcohol that they’ve suffered nerve damage in their faces, and God knows what other physical deterioration.
A Korean acquaintance, who worked at a soju distillery, grew uncomfortable when I queried him about the drink’s ingredients.
“Soju is made out of potatoes and, uh, chemicals,” he replied.
A horrid thought strikes me. Is this the road I am treading? Since the Yun Hee disaster I’ve been hitting the bottle pretty hard. I run desperate fingers over my face and flex the little muscles under the skin. Nick gives me a surprised glance, then rejoins the conversation.
Charlie’s hand resting on his knee holds a lit cigarette, the glowing tip of which almost touches the matches beside him. Wooden matches come tightly packed in large, octagonal boxes with their tips facing up. There must be hundreds of them in a nearly full box like this one. If that cigarette coal touches the match tips, the whole box will go up like a Roman candle.
I choose not to say anything, motivated by perverse curiosity. Or maybe I’m a little resentful over the ethnic slurs.
Charlie brings the cigarette to his lips.
A question pops into my head, or rather, it must have been rattling around there for a while unrecognized.
“Do any of you guys know Jon Glass?” I say.
The laughter dies down.
“Who?” Nick asks.
“Jon Glass, I think he might be a middle school volunteer,” I say.
“Oh, yeah,” Bill says, “he’s that Tae Kwon Do fanatic, isn’t he? Real big guy.”
“No, he’s not real big, average,” Eric says.
“Actually he’s kind of small and skinny,” Charlie says.
“Who isn’t skinny these days?” Nick says, pinching the minuscule roll of flab on his gut.
That is true enough, I’ve dropped thirty pounds myself in Oori Nara. I think they are pulling my leg about Jon, but they seem completely serious. They’ve already initiated me into their group with the ethnic jokes, so they have no further reason to jerk me around.
“He’s a university volunteer, isn’t he?” Charlie says. “One of those guys with nothing to do because of all the student strikes.”
“Maybe he’s a health care worker, but I doubt it,” Nick says after a thoughtful sip of begal.
“Didn’t Glass walk from one end of Korea to the other last summer?” Eric says. “He started by the DMZ and ended down in Masan.”
“I don’t know,” Nick says. “I do know that he really pissed off the Peace Corps when he started playing a Russian general on TV. Kenton nearly hit the ceiling.”
The others laugh.
So, it was Jon I’d seen on the TV soap opera! No wonder they can’t describe him. I can’t either. He’d seemed to waver on the screen disguised by the military uniform, a blur of hostile energy.
The conversation ends abruptly when Charlie’s cigarette touches off the matches. A roar of ignition echoes through the room, and a flame shoots up to the ceiling.
“Ahhh!” we shout in unison.
We tumble outside into the courtyard, practically smashing the door in our haste. A cloud of acrid smoke follows us out.
“Wouldn’t that be enough to burn anybody?” Nick says.
Charlie brushes the singed hairs on his forearm. The flame-thrower blas
t from the match box extinguishes itself as quickly as it flared up. We stand around foolishly, hoping that the manager hasn’t seen the pyrotechnics.
An attractive young Korean woman is crossing the courtyard from the office, a suitcase in her hand. She walks past us, smiling, and sets her bag by a room a few doors down.
“What do you think she’s doing here?” Nick asks.
“Let’s find out!” the others say.
Of course, I want to make her acquaintance, too, but decide to beg off. She doesn’t look like a whore, but respectable women simply didn’t appear alone at yogwans. Something is amiss.
The others don’t share my apprehensions, but swarm around her like starving barracuda. I retreat to my room.
With nothing else to do, I play around with my Pentax, wiping its silvery burnished surfaces, pampering it like a trusty old friend. I unscrew its wide angle lens and replace it with the telephoto.
A few years ago, as a poor college student hoping to take a photography class, I’d been shopping for used equipment when Mom suddenly appeared at school with this wonderful camera. This was not long after good old Ed had come on the scene, so maybe it was a guilt trip present intended to buy me off.
Nick comes by waving a piece of paper. “She gave me her phone number, Tyler!”
“That’s great,” I say. “Did you find out why she’s here by herself?”
“I don’t know,” Nick says. “Who cares?”
He leaves, folding the paper reverently and tucking it into his shirt pocket. He seems like some little kid anticipating Christmas.
Night sets in. Soon it will be curfew time. Outside, the great city begins to shut down, its roar of street traffic petering out.
I rummage a book out of my shoulder bag, Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce. A stamp on the inside cover reads: ‘U.S. Air Force Library.’ I have no idea how I got this volume.
My dim, yellow room light is inadequate for reading, so I move to the little lounge area around the corner and park myself in a battered chair. I light one of my recently purchased cigarettes.
The Nam Goong settles into quiet darkness, my little overhead bulb providing the only illumination. Outside, a final street vendor passes the gate clanging his big scissors-like noisemaker. He is selling kim pap, the little disks of seaweed-wrapped rice and pickled vegetables.
“Kim Paaaaaap!” clang, clang, clang! “Kim Paaaaaap!”
The voice is sonorous, like a lost ship’s fog horn, making me glad for the shelter of the Nam Goong. In the cigarette smoke curling above my head, I imagine the visage of the mixed-race boy I’d met at the tabang. He was a cute little guy, and if he survives he’ll be a handsome young man with striking Eurasian features.
His heart will be bitter, though, and twisted from the ugly treatment he’s received. If I’d had children with Yun Hee, they would have looked very much like him.
Agh! There she is again, barging into my thoughts. Get lost, babe, and take Jon Glass with you! I open the book.
Soon I am absorbed in a gruesome tale, The Boarded Window. In it, a man sits in his pitch dark wilderness cabin, grieving over his wife’s corpse lying on the table before him. From the far depths of the forest, he hears an unearthly wail. It comes closer. My eyes bulge as I read:
Suddenly the table shook beneath his arms, and at the same moment he heard a light, soft step – another – sounds as of bare feet upon the floor!
He was terrified beyond the power to cry out or move. He tried vainly to speak the dead woman’s name ...
I sense something moving across the room. I jerk my eyes up to see an enormous rat slithering out of a hole midway up the opposite wall. It plops onto a cabinet top with a sickening thud.
“Uh!”
Then the yogwan gate bursts open, and a tremendous din erupts in the courtyard. A formidable young man is out there shouting violently. The inn-keeper charges outside and begins shouting, also. The two men confront each other, as if they will come to blows any instant.
I can not understand a single furious word. The girl emerges from her room clutching her little suitcase. The man dashes across the courtyard and seizes her arm. In another moment they are both gone through the gate.
Who was that guy? A jilted husband, a brother defending the family honor by removing his sister from this den of iniquity? The other guests stand outside their rooms, dumbfounded.
“Does anybody want her phone number?” Nick asks.
There are no takers.
7: Report to HQ
“There is no democracy without strength!” – Pak Chung Hee, ROK president
I am a bit logy when I get to Peace Corps headquarters the next morning. Still, I carry myself with determination. I plan to go straight to the Director’s office and present Mr. Kenton with my resignation. No muss, no fuss, just give me my airplane ticket home, please.
The ten story glass and concrete box which includes PC headquarters has to be the most characterless building in Seoul, which is saying a lot. Entering the lobby is a dreary event. Maybe it’s because I only seem to come here for unpleasant experiences – usually for retraining seminars which include inoculation updates.
We PCVs have been pin cushioned by every imaginable shot: typhoid, cholera, Japanese encephalitis, rabies. Worst of all are the dreaded GG, gamma globulin, inoculations against hepatitis. Doctor Kim, or his assistant, stabs this horse needle under the skin of your upper buttock and injects a burning load of GG serum. Sometimes you get two whacks. Then you suffer the rest of the day while your body absorbs these painful little subcutaneous pillows of gunk.
I get on an elevator alone and quickly realize that something is wrong. The car ascends erratically and seems about to jerk to a halt any moment. Ominous vibrations accompany my progress. I make ready to punch the alarm button.
I finally creak up to my destination. But when the door opens, the elevator floor sags several feet lower than it should be, leaving a sinister discontinuity. A small group of people standing in the hall above me gapes with astonishment. I feel like a lowly penitent begging for redemption.
Somebody reaches down to me. Sunlight blaring from the nearby window bank throws him into harsh silhouette, so I cannot see his face. I grip a forearm hard as an iron bar; the hand clasping my arm transmits great strength like an electric current. I hoist myself out, or rather am hoisted out like a sack of potatoes.
“Thanks a lot ...” I start to say, but my benefactor has already moved off with the crowd and boarded the adjacent elevator.
Inside the office, I ask to see Mr. Kenton.
“I am sorry,” the Korean receptionist replies. “He is out until one o’clock.”
I feel let down – like when you finally muster the nerve to call a girl and she isn’t in to answer the phone. It’s only 10:30, so I go to the mail area and empty my box.
My mail consists of the latest PCV newsletter, a sealed telephone message, an official looking envelope from the Bank of America, Seoul branch, and an aerogramme from my stepdad, Ed. I jam the aerogramme into my back pocket.
What motivated that jerk to write me? What I want is a letter from Mom saying that she’s finally wised up and divorced the guy. I’ve been waiting over a year for that letter, instead I’ve gotten one from good old Ed himself.
I enter the lounge area in a foul humor. The place is empty, except for Bob West who is sitting on a couch along the windows.
I hold my hand up to block the sunlight glaring through the uncurtained panes. I know the dark outline on the couch is Bob, though, because nobody else has his bulk. My mood brightens considerably.
“Back already?” he calls.
“What do you mean, ‘back?’” I say. “I just got here a minute ago.”
“Oh, sorry, Tyler,” Bob says. “I thought you were somebody else at first. How’s it going?”
I move to the couch and shake hands.
“I thought you were all finished up,” I say.
“Yeah,” Bo
b says. “I’ve served my two years with no time off for good behavior. I’m just hanging around town a while before heading back to the U.S.”
I sit on the couch beside him.
“Hanging around E Tae Won, you mean, right?” I say.
Bob chuckles, and his gut jiggles along. He is the only PCV guy I know who isn’t thin. He’s maintained his bulk while the rest of us have shriveled.
This girth sets well with his good-natured personality, ruddy cheeks, and sandy, boyish hair. He reminds me of certain beer-guzzling fraternity types I knew back at college. Only a faded black eye mars his genial appearance.
“What happened to the eye, Bob?” I ask.
He fingers the bruise delicately. “Not a topic for discussion. Okay?”
“Sure, sorry.”
A few awkward moments pass before Bob changes the subject.
“Oori Nara will never be the same,” he says. “A whole bunch of us are getting ready to pull out – me, Tom Stratman, Chuck Beech, Jon Glass.”
“You know Jon Glass?” I say.
“Yeah, sort of.”
“What’s he look like?”
A puzzled expression crosses Bob’s face.
“Jon? He’s kind of ... well, he was just here. Didn’t you see him?”
“No.”
“He left right before you came in,” Bob says. “You probably passed him on the elevator.”
I light a cigarette and settle back on the couch.
“Yeah, maybe I did see him,” I say, “or at least his arm.”
Bob gives me another puzzled look. I let it pass.
“So, what brings you here today, Tyler?”
Now it’s my turn to be reticent. I fiddle with my mail, then draw in a deep drag of smoke and blow it out slowly.
“I’m calling it quits,” I say.
Bob’s eyebrows shoot up. “Why?”
I shrug.
“I get it,” Bob says. “Not a topic for discussion either, huh?”
I nod, grateful for Bob’s sensitivity. But it doesn’t take him long to zero in again.
“Let me guess,” he says after a brief pause. “It’s because of a Korean girl, right?”
“You’re very perceptive, Bob.”