He pats my shoulder reassuringly.
“Try not to take it so hard, Tyler. Why, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been dumped.”
“That’s very comforting,” I say.
Bob glances about the room, then continues in a lower voice. “Have you told anybody else yet?”
“No. I’m going to see Mr. Kenton at 1:00.”
Bob nods. Wheels are turning in his head, I can see.
“You know, Tyler, it is summer vacation,” he says. “Why rush things?”
“Mmm.” I look to my mail as a way of terminating the conversation.
The newsletter front page is festooned with a piece by Charlie Streicher entitled: “Too Bombed to Bargain, an Odyssey of Towering Ennui.” I scan it briefly.
It is a ‘humorous’ tale, written in iambic pentameter, concerning Charlie’s efforts to shop at a village market while in a state of extreme inebriation. I set it aside. I can come back to it later if I am really desperate for something to read.
I open the telephone message. It is a cryptic admonition from Ed dated eleven days ago: “Don’t make a move yet. Await letter and notification from Bank of America.”
What is that supposed to mean? I pull the crumpled aerogramme from my back pocket and rip it open:
Tyler,
By now you should have received notification from the Bank of America, Seoul branch, concerning funds I have cabled to you from the U.S. Consider this money as a travel fund.
Take your time coming home and see the world a bit.
Good luck.
Ed
I tear open the bank letter and read of a substantial sum which has been deposited in my name. I gape in total astonishment, the paper hangs from sweaty finger tips.
“What’s the matter?” Bob asks. “You look like somebody whacked you with a GG shot.”
I hand over the aerogramme and bank letter. Bob reads them with growing excitement.
“Wow! Looks like you hit the jackpot, Tyler.”
“I can’t believe it,” I say. “Ed is like the world’s greatest tight wad. Why would he send me so much money?”
“Who cares?” Bob says. “When a plumb drops from heaven, open your mouth.”
I shake my head, incredulous. Bob glances around the room again.
“Let’s discuss this someplace else, eh?” he says. “Find a tabang where there won’t be any curious ears.”
“Well ...”
“Oh, come on, Tyler. The tea’s on me.”
8: Chaos Street
The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. – Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
We leave the building and move out onto the broad sidewalk with its heavy pedestrian traffic. A beautiful summer day smiles on us, evident even through the choking downtown air. Bob walks briskly, with barely contained excitement. I quicken my pace to keep up, limping a bit on my tender ankle.
“I think fate is at work here,” Bob says.
“Really?”
“Yes,” Bob says. “I’d been sitting on that couch all morning wondering what I was going to do, and then you show up!”
“Imagine that,” I say.
“You know,” Bob says, “since I’ve been abroad I haven’t seen anything besides a few parts of Korea.”
“Yeah, so what’s your point?”
“The point, Tyler, is that the Peace Corps is providing me with a resettlement allowance and ‘cash in kind’ airfare to the States. It’s not a hell of a lot, but enough to have some fun with.”
We pass a group of adjumonis, then a couple of young men walking hand in hand.
“I can either blow the money when I get home,” Bob says, “or blow it before I get there.”
“What’s your preference?”
“I’d prefer not to waste the money at home doing the same old stuff,” Bob says. “I want to experience new things before I’m old and burned out, but I’m too lazy to go off on my own. I want somebody to come along on some adventures.”
“Like me, for instance?”
“Right! Listen Tyler, if you’re going to be traveling around anyway, why not go together? We can sort of watch out for each other.”
“I don’t know, Bob. I haven’t thought about it much. I mean, I just got the damn letter.”
A plague of high school haksengs crowds the sidewalk, contesting every square inch of space with their book bags. The girls in black & white school uniforms and straight-cropped hair styles that ruin their attractiveness, the boys in standard black tunics and caps.
“What are these haksengs doing here?” I say. “Aren’t all the schools out?”
“Probably one of those cram academies is nearby,” Bob says. “They’re studying for college entrance exams.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
We cross the street and continue going the same direction for a while before making a right turn onto the main drag. Big mistake. A street demonstration is gathering momentum, and we have blundered right into its path.
A wall of people approaches us from a block away, hogging the pavement from curb to curb, gigantic banners fluttering. The great crowd moves quietly, projecting a primordial echoing sound.
“Cool!” I say.
I fumble out my camera. Fortunately, the telephoto lens is still attached. It draws the demonstration closer, but the people in it are unreal things, like images on a movie screen. As long as my eye stays at the viewfinder, I am a godlike being unaffected by whatever might be happening in the real world.
Bob grabs my elbow. “Come on, man, let’s get out of here!”
I pull away and position myself at the curb for a better view. A large group of college student types are leading the demonstration with a mass of older citizens right behind. Rage precedes this mass of people like a shock wave. Many wear bandages on their heads bearing the slogan Pan Il ‘anti-Japan.’ The banners also bear anti-Japanese slogans.
I fire away with my camera, oblivious to the approaching danger. Somebody begins yelling into a bullhorn – violent, rapid-fire shouts punctuated with stock phrases:
“Japanese animals! Blah blah blah!” Roars the bullhorn. “Jap monsters! Blah blah blah! Down with Japan!”
The crowd bellows approval and surges forward like some giant, aroused beast. A line of riot police moves in to block their progress. People jostle in front of me on the sidewalk; somebody pokes an elbow in my gut. I brace myself against a street lamp and keep taking pictures.
The police, looking like ancient gladiators in their mesh face masks, move in on the demonstrators with shields and clubs. I photograph them as best I can, struggling to keep my position as the crowd swirls around me. Then a truck begins spraying pepper fog into the demonstrators, and I stop taking pictures. Even the unreal world of the Jewel Eye can’t hide the danger billowing on the wind.
“For God’s sake, let’s go!” Bob shouts.
I need no further prodding, as the approaching cloud of tear gas speaks load and clear. The crowd around us on the wide sidewalk mills with confusion. Suddenly, a squad of police officers appears directly in front of us. They shove everybody off the sidewalk and down a narrow side street.
We are hemmed in. The crowd moves faster and faster down the alleyway, picking up fear momentum. A stampede seems ready to break out any moment.
“Tyler!” Bob shouts.
I see his head several feet away bobbing above the struggling mass of people. I am too crushed in to call back. A man goes down right beside me. I try to pull him up, but the mob sweeps me away. People coming towards us down the alley turn and run for their lives.
Suffocating pressure assails me from all directions while an irresistible, back breaking force drives me from behind. When I manage to pull in a breath, an acrid whiff of tear gas goes up my nose. Water stings from my eyes. Terror shoots through the crowd along with the tear gas, driving it on with even more insane power.
I hold the Pentax over my head and simply move with the mob unable to resist its power. I surge along like some half-baked Messiah leading the multitude, my holy grail-like talisman hoisted in benediction.
Just as I feel about done for, when the last spark of life has been squeezed out of my crushed body, the narrow lane suddenly widens. The crowd vomits out into the wider space and loses momentum. I can breathe again.
“Bob!”
I find him braced against a wall numbly watching the crowd pour by. I grab his arm.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
He looks at me through blank eyes.
“Come on, Bob!”
He snaps out of his daze and we start moving at a fast walk. We flee down the street, turn the first corner and take the emptiest route available, then turn another corner. In this manner we outdistance the crowd and find ourselves in a quite area.
“Look, a tabang!” Bob cries. “Nirvana!”
We burst into the tabang, like a couple of desperadoes escaping the posse, and make for a vacant table. We flop into chairs. Bob is so flushed and out of breath that I’m afraid he’ll keel over any second. My ankle throbs sharply.
“That was nuts!” Bob pants. “Thank God we got out in one piece.”
“Actually, we’re in two pieces.” I dab my watering eyes with a napkin. “Besides, I thought you wanted to experience new things.”
“Some experiences I can do without.”
A tabang girl comes to take our order, giving us a rather surprised look but asking no questions about our disheveled appearance. The fragrance of tear gas must still cling to us because she wrinkles her nose and steps back. She is very attractive, but Bob is too distraught to notice.
“Bring me some insam cha,” he says.
I feel oddly exhilarated now that the danger is over – like someone who has dodged a shotgun blast and is feeling pretty cocky about it. Our drinks arrive, coffee for me and Bob’s insam cha, a grassy-tasting tea made from ginseng root.
My cigarettes have been mangled by the press of the mob, but I manage to fish out a relatively undamaged one. I light up and take a swig of coffee. Everything tastes new and surprising, as if I am enjoying coffee and tobacco for the first time in my life.
Bob touches his facial bruise gingerly. “Just what I needed, somebody smacked me again out there.”
“It does look worse,” I agree.
Bob drains the rest of his tea, then slumps back into his chair.
“Did you know the Peace Corps has a new doctor?” he says. “A woman no less. She took care of me this last time.”
“How is she?”
“Fine, I suppose,” Bob says, “but I don’t like the idea of a female doctor. Can you imagine having to see her for a VD dose?”
Unfortunately, I can imagine the possibility quite well.
“She’s a medical professional,” I say.
“I don’t care,” Bob says. “She’s somebody’s mother. She’s this frosty virgin, up on a pedestal, staring down at my wanger!”
“That’s a rather unworkable metaphor,” I say. “If she’s a virgin up on a pedestal, it’s unlikely that she’d be anybody’s mother.”
Bob waves an irritated hand. “Whatever. You figure it out, Tyler. You’re the literary guy.”
We order more drinks. Another tea for Bob, while I opt for “morning coffee” with a raw quail egg.
“I didn’t know people actually drank that stuff,” Bob says with a rather queasy expression as I mix in the egg.
“Hey, don’t knock the breakfast of champions,” I say.
Bob turns philosophical.
“You were lucky to be stationed in Seoul, Tyler,” he says. “At least you could have a real girl friend, even if things didn’t work out. Man, in the little towns like mine, you’ve got to hang up your nuts for two years.”
“Very delicately put, Bob,” I say. “Anyway, it wasn’t just her.”
“What else matters?”
“The whole set up,” I say. “I wasn’t accomplishing anything. My role seemed trivial and irrelevant. This country is moving ahead so fast – we seem like an anachronism here.”
Bob nods. “Maybe that’s true.”
“Talk to the staff members who have been here a while,” I say. “Why, a few years ago you couldn’t buy Coke or decent milk. If you wanted something cold, you had to get that frozen bean curd stuff.”
Bob shudders at the mention of the chocolate-brown, deceptively scrumptious looking concoction that actually tasted like library paste.
“Sounds like you wanted the National Geographic experience and didn’t find it,” Bob says.
“I don’t know, maybe,” I say. “But look around – more and more private cars, sophisticated universities, industrial development, freeways. Korea is like a race horse that’s trying to gallop ahead but is being hobbled.
“By what?”
“By this lousy dictatorship,” I say, “and by the U.S. policies that encourage it.”
I take a slug of quail-egg coffee.
“And if there’s a war,” I say, “how many of our guys are going to get killed because the Korean forces are commanded by incompetent politician generals? Think about that – Vietnam in spades!”
I am becoming irrationally angry. The Vietnam war has barged into my consciousness, and that always puts me in a rotten temper.
“Calm down, please!” Bob says. “Have another raw egg.”
I need to make a final statement, though.
“Yun Hee was the last straw. Without her, I have no further reason to stay.”
“I feel your pain,” Bob says, “but don’t you love Korea anyway?”
His question surprises me. “Well ... yes.”
“And hate it, too, at the same time?” Bob says.
I can’t help but chuckle. My foul mood drifts away.
“Like I said, Bob, you’re very astute.”
“So why jump the gun with a resignation?” Bob says. “You can see Kenton any time. Stick around a while to sort things out. There’s a teachers’ workshop in a couple weeks, right?”
“Yeah, up in Kangnung,” I say.
“Did you volunteer for it already?”
“I did say that I’d be going, come to think of it.”
“That settles it then,” Bob says. “Why not hang out a couple weeks, then do the workshop? We can leave for Japan in early August and take it from there.”
“Well ...”
“At least think about it,” Bob urges. “It wouldn’t be like we’re married. If we get on each other’s nerves we can split up for a while, or for good if it comes to that. No hard feelings. I just need somebody to get me started out of my rut.”
Bob is talking sense.
“Okay,” I say, “I’ll put off until August. Then, if you’re still interested, we’ll head out.”
We clink cups to finalize the agreement.
Two: Summer of Indecision
9: Marking Time
Stability, the prime and the ultimate need – Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
The next couple of weeks pass in mostly pleasant idleness.
Like clockwork, the VD symptoms appear, and I go to the new Peace Corps doctor. She is something of a ‘frosty virgin’ after all – a stern, middle-aged Korean woman who brooks no nonsense. She fixes me a sharp glance over her half-moon glasses and comments:
“In future, be more careful while pursuing your ... outlets.”
She examines my ankle next and, with another sharp look, pronounces it still usable. Perhaps she thinks I injured it while pursuing my outlets. Then she whaps me with antibiotics and presses a box of Korean-made condoms, not noted for their utter reliability, into my hands.
“No thanks, I’ve still got plenty of those,” I feel like saying, but decide to just get out with minimum fuss.
The infection clears up quickly, thank heaven.
I next go to a Korean dentist for a checkup and am horrified to learn
that I’ve developed three cavities. What the hell, I think, he’s trying to rip me off! The diagnosis fills me with apprehension. I don’t trust the guy, even though he is recommended by the Peace Corps and has a certificate from a West German dental college hanging on the wall. His name, Dr. Uh, does not inspire confidence.
“Show me the cavities,” I demand.
Dr. Uh thrusts a little mirror into my mouth and, angling a second mirror before my eyes, shows me the rotten spots in my back teeth.
“Well ... okay, let’s get started,” I say.
He proceeds drilling with extraordinary skill, and I feel absolutely no pain. I leave his office with new respect and a sense of relief even greater than when I’d escaped the Frosty Virgin.
Probably the diet is to blame again. The Korean food must lack something we Westerners require. Good thing I am leaving, as I’d soon be bald and toothless otherwise. Then again, it seems to be only the guys who are experiencing these symptoms. Many of the PC girls have actually put on weight and are displaying big butt syndrome.
At least I’ve overcome my drinking problem. Charlie’s face put the fear of God in me. It lurks in my consciousness like a ghastly Death’s Head gaping toward my future if I don’t shape up.
Only at night sometimes, when Yun Hee’s memory hovers too oppressively in the cigarette smoke, do I take a drink. I’ve cut back on cigarettes, too, buying only a few each day from the newspaper vendor.
To tell the truth, I am getting fed up with my self-pity routine. Deep down, do I really want the permanent responsibility of a wife, or am I just acting out my grief as a sort of literary event? Maybe I am just the star in my own pathetic soap opera.
Sure, my relationship with Yun Hee had been exotic and fascinating, everything about Korea was. But how exotic would she seem years down the road, after waking up to her every morning?
Beneath my pain, undeniably, I feel relief.
Through this all, I wrestle with the resignation issue. I’d approach the PC office, but something would always sidetrack me. When I saw the doctor, I intended to visit Mr. Kenton’s office afterwards and tell him that I’d be quitting after the workshop. But I was so grateful to escape the Frosty Virgin that I fled the building instead.
I idle in tea rooms and restaurants, visit museums, go to the tourist hotels to browse the shops and drink cappuccino. I take a day trip with the Royal Asiatic Society, an association of mostly Western aficionados of Asian culture, and visit a shrine to a Korean suicide bomber who attempted to assassinate a Japanese general.