All of this was done while slumped back in his canvas seat, fingertips hanging lightly on the bottom of the steering wheel, his face set in a completely bored expression. Occasionally he veered wildly to the right or left, stepped on the gas, tapped lightly on the brakes. Ernie’s nervous system might’ve been seared by the war in Vietnam and the pure white horse he bought from the kids through the wire, but he was still one hell of a driver.
He leaned toward me. “What was that address again?”
I glanced at my clipboard. “One twenty-eight bonji, 533 ho, Kirum-dong.”
He straightened his back. “Yeah. Kirum-dong. It’s right over here.”
We had left the skyscrapers of central Seoul and were now in the outskirts of the vast city, heading north on the road that lead to Uijongbu and beyond that the DMZ. The Demilitarized Zone. The barbed and mined gash that slices through the sweet center of the Korean peninsula like a butcher’s knife through wurst.
After the Korean War ended, no peace treaty was signed. There was only a cease-fire. The Communists in the north have an army of seven hundred thousand. The republic in the south has only four hundred and fifty thousand men under arms supplemented by the US Second Infantry Division. With both sides tense and armed to the teeth and staring at each other across the line every day, there are regular violations of the cease-fire. The casualties, if they are American, are reported to the world press. If the slaughter involves a North Korean or a South Korean, it’s kept quiet. They see it as a family affair. Nobody else’s business.
Melted snow sprayed from the tires of the kimchi cabs in front of us as we sped through the gray overcast morning. I didn’t feel comfortable about dumping all this cash on the Choi family. It was a bona fide claim under the Status of Forces Agreement, but it seemed disrespectful somehow. As if the US government was saying, yeah, your daughter was slaughtered, but here’s the loot and don’t bother us any more.
And Ernie and I were the messenger boys.
We sat in silence. Ernie turned off the main road and swerved down a narrow lane; I checked the addresses. They were engraved in Chinese script on metal placards embedded in the stone or brick walls and difficult to read. I spotted one: 436 bonji.
“Hang a left,” I said.
Ernie turned the jeep uphill, and we passed shops on either side. Brightly colored stacks of preserved noodles and canned milk, stringy-limbed cuttlefish drying in the cold wind, corpses of skinned hogs hanging red and limp in a butcher’s window. The numbers changed fast and I was losing track, but I knew we were in the right area.
“Pull over here.”
Ernie parked the jeep snugly against a massive stone wall and chained and padlocked the steering wheel. We climbed out, bending our lower backs and stretching our legs.
A stone stairway ran up the hill, lined on either side by brick walls and the gates to houses until it wound off out of sight. I looked at the address again.
“Up there?” Ernie said.
“Yeah. I think so.”
Nothing is precise about Korean addresses. The city is divided first into sections (dong), then into areas (bonji), and finally into individually numbered dwellings (ho). And the numbers can be a mad swirl, winding back onto each other like a dragon’s tail. Still, the best way to find one was on foot. We trudged up the jagged staircase, stepping gingerly over the tenacious remnants of last week’s snow. A cold drizzle started, slashing into our faces, and stopped just as suddenly.
When we rounded the corner, the alley widened, and in front of the open gateway stood a crowd of people. Schoolgirls for the most part. Silent. All wearing long black skirts and tight black waistcoats. Their shimmering ebony hair was capped with the neatly trimmed bangs, making them look like a flock of clipped ravens. They seemed to be praying. I realized that there was an even larger crowd inside the gate, and I saw the placard: 533 ho, Choi Heng-sok juteik, the residence of Mr. Choi, the father of the slain girl.
We pushed our way through the crowd, sullenly puffed faces turning as we passed. It was good to be surrounded by so much femininity, although they all seemed to hate me and they were all too young and our lives were lived worlds apart. Still, I liked them. The warmth of their massed bodies enveloped me and the freshness of their unscented skin filled my senses. I didn’t blame them for how they felt about me.
Beyond the crowded courtyard, the paper-paneled doors of the main house had been slid back. Inside sat a group of elderly people, the men in baggy suits, the women in hanbok, flowing traditional Korean dresses. Towards the back of the room on some sort of wooden platform was a long, blanket-draped figure. The body.
On the narrow wooden porch that ran the length of the house, a shrine had been set up. The sharp tang of incense bit into my sinuses. Surrounded by flowers of all colors was a large black and white photo of a plain, round-faced Korean girl. The only expression on her blank features seemed to be surprise, as if she never expected to receive so much attention. We always treat people better in death than we treat them in life.
One by one, the schoolgirls filed forward and paid their respects. Some placed flowers on the growing bunches, others knelt and bowed their heads for a moment. A few crossed themselves. Most, however, raised their pressed palms to their forehead and lowered themselves in the Buddhist fashion.
Wrinkled eyes in the darkened room turned toward us. I stepped in front of the porch, placed my feet together, and bowed slightly from the waist.
“Anyonghaseiyo,” I said. “Nei irum Geogi ieyo. Mipalkun.”
Good afternoon. My name is George. Eighth US Army.
A slender woman in a western skirt and blouse rose and nodded and waved for us to enter.
“Oso-oseiyo,” she said. Come in.
She looked a little like the dead girl in the photograph, but I figured she was probably just an aunt. The two people next to the body, the ones with the tearstained faces and the disheveled hair, were unmistakably the parents. They looked as if their ears were still ringing from the explosion of an A-bomb.
Ernie and I slipped off our shoes, stepped up on the narrow porch in our stocking feet, and entered the room. The solemn-faced occupants shuffled around on the vinyl floor to make room and slid a couple of embroidered purple cushions over for us to sit on.
The body was covered not with a blanket but a light silk shroud. The girl still wore her black school uniform, although some spots were moist, as if someone had attempted to scrub off the bloodstains. The woman I assumed to be the mother crouched next to the body, and when I entered she leaned forward and pulled the shroud away from the face.
I recoiled slightly but caught myself. One side of her head was red and raw. Indented. Caked with blood. She looked as if some twenty-foot prehistoric lizard had bounded out of an alley and chomped his fangs into her skull. I thought about a speeding jeep and laughing, careless GIs. In some respects there wasn’t much difference.
The mother leaned forward, touching the cold flesh with her lips, and whispered to the corpse.
“Sonnim wayo. Musopjima.” Guest have arrived. Don’t be afraid.
Ernie looked at me, his pale eyebrows rising slightly. I widened my eyes and turned away from his gaze. We sat down on the cushions.
I busied myself with my clipboard. Nothing like paperwork to help you keep your bearings in a situation that’s threatening to reel off into insanity.