Das Road

  The ‘wine’ slithers down to my stomach from where it sends back ominous rumblings.

  “Good grief,” I say. “I thought the makoli in Seoul was bad!”

  “Yes,” Patrick agrees, “I think they pump the water for it off the harbor bottom. But you won’t notice after a few drinks.”

  I pass the empty cup to Patrick with a two-handed gesture of respect and fill it for him. We drain the kettle, order another along with some chicken ribs and octopus tentacles in hot sauce. We tell our stories. I like these guys a lot.

  Patrick and Clarence are Irish Catholic priests stationed on a small island in the Yellow Sea. Patrick is the pastor of the church there. He is quite young, but Clarence is even younger, scarcely my age I guess. They are in Pusan for a couple days on church business.

  “Our island is a lovely place – quiet, no motor cars,” Patrick says. “It’s so mountainous that you have to walk or take a boat to get around.”

  “You’ll find the best makoli there,” Clarence says. “An old woman makes it the proper way. Illegal, but who’s going to turn her in? She’s just full of goodness!”

  “We’ll be there about a year until a senior priest can be found to take over the parish,” Patrick says. “After that, I’m afraid we’ll have to leave.”

  A mournful silence follows. Clarence pours another cup for Patrick and gives him a squeeze on the shoulder. Clarence has a warm, child-like smile overflowing with kindness.

  “I see you’re wearing our fisherman sweaters,” he says.

  I glance down at my sweater, daub at a spot of spilled makoli.

  “Fisherman sweater?” I say.

  “Yes,” Clarence says. “Traditionally, fishermen in Ireland wore those. Notice the pattern down the front? Each one is different.”

  Bob and I compare sweater fronts. Sure enough, the knitted patterns differs.

  “Why’s that?” Bob asks. “Just for a little variety, eh?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Clarence says. “If a fishing boat goes over and the men drown, the corpses could be in a very poor state before they are recovered. Sometimes the only way to identify the bodies is by the sweater patterns.”

  Bob and I exchange apprehensive glances.

  “We’re taking the boat to Japan tomorrow,” I say.

  “Happy sailing!” Patrick raises a cup. “And please disregard any commentary about your apparel.”

  A wine house girl in a red and white hanbok bustles past, slides open a nearby paper door and enters the side room. She is really cute, like the one I’d met in Choon Chun.

  “Did you see her?” Patrick exclaims.

  “Yes,” Clarence says. “Marvelous!”

  They laugh and clap each other on the back like a pair of kids. At first I am a bit surprised at this display. Catholic priests are celibate, right? They are supposed to be elevated beings, far above the carnal lusts of us lesser guys. What a needless sacrifice! My sympathy goes out to them. No wonder they drink so much.

  “I like our island because it reminds me of Ireland,” Patrick says. “The hills, the greenery – cliffs leading to the sea!”

  A dispute is brewing up in the side room the girl had entered. I hear shouts and the clatter of dishes being roughly handled. A burst of déjà vu shoots through me. I seem to be in one of those arty movies where the same scene gets replayed from different viewpoints.

  Patrick bursts into a Gaelic song, and Clarence joins in, their booming voices mask the altercation developing behind the paper door. I listen raptly, though I don’t understand a word. I can almost hear Irish pipes and drums behind the excellent voices.

  They conclude their song with a flourish of emotion. Bob and I applaud. The fight in the adjacent room can no longer be ignored now. Men and women are shouting violently with a girl’s screeching voice being uppermost.

  “Ke Seki! S.O.B.!” she shrieks.

  A middle-aged man in shirtsleeves, his necktie streaming after him, crashes through the flimsy door and sprawls halfway into the main room.

  “Oh my,” Clarence says, “I hope we don’t have a candidate for the last rites.”

  The girl shoves her head through the smashed door and continues her torrent of invective. Another man, a bewildered expression on his face, tries to escape the room. The manager and a crowd of patrons close in on him.

  “Let’s get out before the cops arrive,” I say.

  Tossing some bills on the table, we beat a hasty retreat.

  Three: The Long Way Back

  15: Extreme Passage

  A dead whale or a stove boat! – Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

  We spend the final day hanging around tabangs and restaurants, walking the streets. The Pusan environs include beaches and cultural sites, but I have no desire to visit them. In my heart I am gone already. Toward dusk we board the car ferry for Shimonoseki, Japan. The ship is dark and huge.

  Relations with Japan are still at a low point, and Japanese visitors are being discouraged. So, the ship is largely empty with only a modest number of Koreans and a few Westerners on its spacious second class deck. The whole area, except for the aisles, is covered by straw tatami mats. Some storage cabinets complete the Spartan décor.

  Bob and I gravitate toward the de facto Westerners’ section in the stern. Two PCV girls are already there. They say they’re going to Nagasaki to visit a Japanese family. We try to make additional small talk, but the girls are cool, preferring their magazines to our company. A thin, reddish-blond German guy named Rolf is also present.

  Rolf possesses a remarkable piece of luggage – a record player, with battery backup, no less. It must weigh a fair amount. What a thing to be dragging around! Hasn’t he ever heard of cassette tapes?

  “I like that,” Bob says.

  Rolf spins an LP, some Chuck Berry wannabe group singing vintage American rock with German accents. The girls glance over, then return to their reading.

  “I can’t play it once the ship gets going,” Rolf says in good, if overly precise English. “Too much motion.”

  He seems to be around our age, but has a rather serious, lined face that makes him look older. Maybe the stress of lugging around that machine has prematurely aged him.

  Just before the ship pulls away, a young New Zealand guy with long, sandy hair appears. He eyes us with thinly disguised disdain, as if he is doing us some great favor by sharing our section. He shoots the girls a quick glance over, decides they are not up to his standard.

  I take an instant dislike to him. He looks like some beach bum who enjoys kicking sand on people.

  The boat starts moving, and we settle down for a long ride. The ship’s mighty engines begin their steady cruising vibration under the deck.

  It doesn’t take the late comer very long to get on my bad side. One of the girls is reading the business section of her magazine where a graph indicates the monthly stock market fluctuation. The New Zealander looks rudely over her shoulder.

  “That’s what I find interesting about you Americans,” he says. “Always your main interest is economics. Screw the rest of the world, eh?”

  The girl cringes. He laughs, a sarcastic bark, as if this is the funniest thing in the world. He glances at Rolf for support, gets none.

  “Wise ass,” I say.

  Anger flashes across on his face. He moves towards me.

  “What’s, that!”

  Bob interposes his bulk into the situation.

  “My friend says you’re a wise ass. Is there a problem?”

  The New Zealander regards the united front against him.

  “No harm meant,” he says and retreats to a spot against the far wall.

  “So much for international harmony,” Bob says.

  I settle back against the steel hull. I want to be alone with my contradictory emotions, and this little blow up gave a good excuse to withdraw. A dramatic sunset stabbing through a porthole blazes into my eyes, and I shift position.

  I am depressed about leavi
ng Korea, but also glad to be sloughing off my entanglements there. And I am relieved to escape the mystifying Jon Glass syndrome. The Twilight Zone aspects have creeped me out far worse than I’ve been willing to admit.

  My status the past 14 months has been neither fish nor fowl; I’ve been woven into an Asian culture but have not really been a part of it. Sure it’s been fun, but also a psychological drain.

  This had been especially true when I was with Yun Hee, speaking the Korean language for such extended periods that my jaw ached as if I’d been chewing bubble gum too long.

  “Don’t you think this is for the best, Tyler?” she asked on that final day in the tabang. “How could an ordinary girl like me fit into a foreign world?”

  She took my hand across the tabang table. Hers was warm and soft. Mine had turned frigid as a corpse’s.

  “I’ve never known anyone like you,” she said. “You frighten me sometimes.”

  “Frighten you?” I croaked.

  “Yes,” she said. “You have so much churning inside, as if your spirit contains a whole second person struggling to come out. You are a very different type of man, Tyler. Your woman must also be very different.”

  Lulled by the ship’s vibration, I begin to doze.

  As I drift in and out of wakefulness, I catch snippets of conversation. Some of it is real, I know, mostly Bob and Rolf discussing music. Other comments are more like half dreams. One of the girls mentions Kathy Funk. I think she says that Kathy is quitting the Peace Corps and returning home to marry her old college boyfriend.

  I don’t know if this is real talk or just the rumblings of my imagination trying to tie up the loose ends with Kathy. Later, when I am fully awake, I do not seek verification. More urgent matters command attention.

  The gathering night is bringing rough seas. The ship’s flat, steady progress becomes a rocking motion that rotates me against the hull like a rolling pin on a bread board. An edgy silence replaces the conversations. The ship lurches, rapping my head on the steel.

  I open my eyes to see the deck gyrating in the throes of a developing storm. Tight-lipped expressions crease the faces of the others. Rolf looks more somber than ever.

  The sea becomes steadily rougher over the next hour until the ship is bucking like a psychotic horse. As there is nothing to grab on to, we simply roll around the straw mats or try to brace ourselves against the walls.

  “I’ve got to see what’s happening out there,” Bob says.

  He stands up and tries walking the few steps to a porthole. The deck heaves so violently that he can’t make any progress, cannot even fall down, but rather stumbles about like some bizarre drunkard. Finally he tumbles over.

  This might be comical, if I felt like laughing. Crawling now, Bob finally makes it to the porthole. He seizes the edge and pulls himself up.

  “Jesus!” he gasps.

  He drops down and rolls my direction, eyes wide.

  “You don’t suppose that’s true about the sweaters, do you, Tyler? That they can identify your body by the pattern?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, “maybe.”

  “Should we put them on?”

  “Go ahead if you want!” My philosophic serenity is unraveling fast.

  The ship wrenches like a mad carnival ride. Rolf, the girls, and the New Zealander spread themselves out along the tatami mats so as to allow maximum rolling room. Bob sticks close to me, however, grasping his shoulder bag like a Teddy bear, ready to yank out his sweater at a moment’s notice.

  I crawl to the porthole and peer out; the view is terrifying, hypnotic. Mammoth swells, crusted with white foam, surge out of the darkness, materializing in the ship’s lights moments before slamming the hull. Lightning flashes in the distance. The black wall of the ship’s flank rocks crazily under the assault.

  The East Sea boils like a witch’s cauldron – the treacherous passage where typhoons wrecked Mongol invasion fleets in an earlier century. The Kamikaze “Divine Wind” had saved Japan then. The wind on this trip doesn’t seem very divine. It is a demonic blast.

  “What kind of weather reporting have they got?” Bob cries. “Couldn’t anybody figure out this storm was coming?”

  I tear my eyes from the ghastly world outside the porthole. Bob looks about half his usual size, curled up on the mats, his face ashen. Elsewhere, people are getting sick. Unable to get to the bathrooms, they simply throw up in place. Rivulets of vomit move back and forth along the aisles with the ship’s motion.

  Are these objective events, I ask myself, or merely an analogy for something else?

  This feeble mental gymnastic does nothing to ease the knot in my stomach. Thank heaven I’ve eaten nothing since breakfast, or I’d be throwing up, too. Perhaps someday, if there is a someday, I can poeticize this reality, but not now.

  I slither down and wrap myself in a blanket. We all lay inside blankets, adjusting ourselves to the storm’s rhythm. Time drags past. The ship’s gyrations become predictable. Maybe you can get used to anything.

  But then, just as I am starting to visualize an intact arrival in Japan, a massive blow strikes from a new direction, flinging the stern completely out of the water. For a heart-stopping eternity we hover in mid air, the engines’ dogged churning becomes a frenzied scream as the screws clear the surface.

  We slam down with incredible force. Dishes fly out of a storage cabinet and shatter, their jagged pieces tumbling in the vomit. Rolf’s phonograph careens my way.

  “Hang onto that thing!” I yell.

  Sidling like a crab, Rolf crawls after his machine. The dim overhead lights flicker and die. The night passes in violent darkness.

  16: Japan at Last

  “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” – Gwendolen Fairfax, speaking in The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

  Daylight carries the blessed land to us. Perhaps a condemned prisoner, the noose already around his neck when his pardon comes through, could understand our relief.

  We resume our customary demeanors of world-traveler nonchalance. Of course, none of us had really been afraid last night.

  Through the porthole, I see a bright, sunny morning in Shimonoseki. Such an orderly place, much different from the more scruffy Korean ports. Private cars seem to be everywhere. Passengers crowd toward the exit waiting for the door to open.

  “Aren’t we going?” Bob asks.

  “In a minute,” I say. “I hate standing in lines.”

  Bob seems to be turning something important over in his mind. Finally, he speaks.

  “Okay, Tyler, I’ll tell you how I got it.”

  “Got what?” I say.

  “My black eye.”

  “Bob, I don’t care how you got your black eye!”

  He shakes his head. “I know you’ve been dying of curiosity but were too polite to say anything. But now I’ve been to the mountain top and want to unburden myself.”

  “All right, shoot,” I say.

  “I was at E Tae Won drinking with some buddies,” Bob says, “six of us, and we all had girls. Mine and one other girl were nice, but the rest were real hard core, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Anyway, a fight broke out among the girls.”

  “Man!”

  “They tumbled out into the street,” Bob continues. “Of course, the two nice girls were getting creamed. A crowd of drunk G.I.’s gathered around cheering.”

  “Ah, yes,” I say, “our uniformed ambassadors of good will.”

  “I tried to rescue my girl from the pile up,” Bob says, “but then some G.I. slugged me. I got up off the pavement just in time to see my so-called friends speed away in a cab. The whole crowd was closing in on me.”

  “How’d you get away?” Despite myself, I’ve become keenly interested.

  “An ROK appeared from out of nowhere. ‘Follow me!’ he says. I had nothing better planned, so I did. We ran through back
alleys until I was safely gone. The whole thing was Terror City.”

  “That’s some story, Bob,” I say.

  “Yeah.” A melancholy smile crosses his face. “It’s all over now, isn’t it? The good and the bad stuff.”

  The little crowd at the exit moves out, and we follow. Rolf bids us a cordial farewell. The girls and the New Zealander disappear unlamented.

  “Maybe our paths will cross again,” Rolf says.

  “Yeah,” Bob says, “be sure to bring the record player.”

  My body carries a rocking sensation onto dry land. I breathe deeply. The atmosphere is nothing special, just dockside air, but it carries a sweet buoyancy.

  “It’s great!” Bob says.

  We sniff the air like judges at a florist convention.

  “Yeah,” I agree. “The authoritarian aroma is gone.”

  Bob looks puzzled, then nods.

  We walk out of the dock area. The busy street seems like some parallel universe to Korea – neater, more organized. The people look similar but are better dressed and more prosperous. Freedom is in the air.

  “Korea will feel like this someday,” I say. “Once they get rid of those bastards running the government.”

  Bob turns toward the harbor and blows a kiss. “Good luck to them!”

  And that is our final good-bye to Oori Nara.

  I am in charge of the itinerary by default. Whenever I pull out my guide book to ask Bob’s opinion he always says: “Anyplace you pick is fine.”

  So, I make a decision – time to eat. We enter a small restaurant and take a table in the main area. People glance up briefly then go back to their meals. A girl takes our order. All I can read are the numbers, so I simply point to reasonably priced menu items and hope for the best. I am pleasantly surprised to be served a delicious noodle dish and a pungent soup.

  I’d been the top Korean language student in our PCV group and had seldom experienced difficulty with day-to-day talk. Here I feel major frustration. At least I can handle the chopsticks, and I dig into the noodles with gusto. Bob busies himself writing in a notebook.

  “What’s that?” I say.

  “I’m keeping a trip diary.” Bob hands over the notebook.

  The first line reads: “It was a rough voyage from Pusan.” The next line says: “We arrived in Shimonoseki the following morning.”

  “You didn’t write much about the boat ride,” I say.