“You don’t think a lowly sergeant like me is loaded with cash, do you? I’m not even prepared for going home myself. Anyway, these bastards asked for it, they deserve it. You two idiots, when you get back home there’ll be plenty of that kind of junk at the base PXs, so what the hell were you doing slinking around an off-limits PX here?”
Documents in hand, Yong Kyu was getting ready to take statements from the soldiers when he paused to look over at the staff sergeant.
“You go on first.”
“Mmmm. What about these boys. .”
“I’ll handle them all right.”
Pretending to not want to leave, the staff sergeant barked a rebuke at the soldiers as he got up.
“Listen, you two, when you get your money back, at least give him some beer money, understand?”
Ignoring this remark, Yong Kyu flattened him, saying, “Go straight there. Don’t stop to see the Hong Kong Group.”
“I’ve washed my hands of them.”
“The chief has his eye on them. We’ll fall on them hard. I’ll tell you about it later.”
Once he was gone, Yong Kyu looked closely at the two soldiers in turn. He knew very well the face of a fighter: expressionless, and not just because of the skin tightened and tanned dark by a scorching sun. Yet the eyes set in that dull and inarticulate face shine brightly in a mysterious way. While at the front line, the messy hair and the stubbly beard along with those wild eyes give an impression of animal-like vitality, but once wrenched away from combat into a city environment like this office, that face looks different, spent and dazed. The insecure, frightened movements and the impassive surface make them looked down upon.
Yong Kyu questioned them: posts, ranks, names, and details of the incident.
“Why did you go to the marine PX to buy a TV?” he asked the private. “Couldn’t you buy it in your own compound?”
“In our compound all they have is beer and toothbrushes and stuff like that, so we have to go to brigade headquarters to buy anything big. My family has been hounding me to bring home a TV, so I didn’t send my pay home for two months and saved up the money to buy one. I’m going home soon, you see.”
So, with the price of two months’ survival, this soldier had purchased a National television set.
“How did you buy it?”
“From the recreation center you can see the American PX through the barbed wire fence. So I sneaked in there and got hold of an American and begged him. In return he asked me for a set of jungle fatigues. So I brought him a uniform and he bought the TV for me. But then another bastard showed up and took it away. We’re no different from them. . we’re all shipped in here and take the risk of having our heads blown off, right?”
“All right. And you, did you do it the same way?”
“Yes, sir. We went with our squad leader.”
“Where did you get the hundred and twenty dollars?”
“I saved twenty a month for six months, sir. I wanted to buy a camera but was so fascinated by the voice coming out of the recorder. . well, I was going to record all the voices of the old people in our neighborhood when I get home.”
“You weren’t planning to resell it, were you?” Yong Kyu asked the private.
“Why, why would I sell it, sir? It’s hard enough to buy, who the hell would I sell it to?”
“Don’t you have a ration card?”
“What’s that?”
No wonder they were in such a mess, he thought. Some bastard had intercepted their ration cards and probably used them to buy up to the limits for goods to sell in the local black market.
“Everybody in the Allied Forces is entitled to a ration card,” said Yong Kyu. “You didn’t have yours, and that’s why they confiscated your things.”
“It’s the first time I ever heard of that, sir.”
Tears started welling up in the private’s eyes. That too, Yong Kyu knew very well. Anyone fresh off the battlefield is very vulnerable. Due to the excitement, actually like a state of intoxication, he finds it hard to adjust to the atmosphere of ordinary society. Yong Kyu remembered once, right after returning from a mission, he had cried his eyes out after glancing through movie ads in a newspaper that arrived by mail from home. It reminded him how people’s daily routines went right on as always, totally oblivious to the critical danger to his own life. If he had had a weapon in hand, he might have broken down and shot himself, or just sprayed the people in the street with bullets. This man in a similar state was going back home now, returning home a different man. Despite himself, despite the ineradicable scars in his brain, gradually he will revive or reform. But now, what about the two hundred dollars?
“If you had no ration cards, why didn’t you just go to the Americans and demand that they pack up everything in the PX and give it to you? Why the hell were you snooping around the barbed wire fence, you fools. Just wait, boys, I’ll get you your money back; I will, even if I have to sell my body. By the way, I hear you signed some kind of confession statements, is that right?”
“The Americans asked us to write our names in Korean, so we did.”
“You didn’t know what you were signing, did you?”
“No, sir. It was filled with squiggly letters in English.”
“I see. Goddamn bastards just did whatever they liked.”
Yong Kyu finished his report and saved the carbon copy for himself. Then he made a separate report to file with Krapensky and attached to it a request for refunds of the prices of the goods, eighty and one hundred twenty dollars respectively.
“You boys can go now.”
“It’s all right to go now?”
The private was bewildered, unable to believe how easily he escaped from the disaster.
“Why, you’d rather crawl back down into that cell? Listen, after an operation, you need a good rest so you can be ready to fight again, right?”
“Sure. .”
“Right, so I’ll call the rec center for you boys. They’ll send a Jeep so you don’t have to walk back. I’ll recover the money and send it to you.”
Yong Kyu telephoned the recreation center and asked them to send a driver. Then he gave the handwritten report to the girl in the next room and asked her to type it up, since Miss Hoa was off that day. When the document was finished he took it back over to the investigation office. This time Lukas was there along with the sergeant in charge. Yong Kyu laid the report down on the desk. Lukas picked it up, but the sergeant spoke without even glancing at the document.
“No use bringing me any more paper now, the case is closed and done with. We’ve already taken proper measures, and what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m not finished with it yet,” said Yong Kyu, stifling an urge to punch him. “Sergeant Lukas, is this the way you get statements from suspects? Our soldiers couldn’t read your language, and that’s why they signed it.”
Lukas replied in clear Korean. “Don’t get excited. The guards at the PX checked them and reported to us. They broke regulations, no ration cards, and you know we can’t tell then what is black market and what isn’t.”
“Up to that point, proper measures were taken. But isn’t it only fair that when the goods are returned you give them their money back? Your job is to seize the goods and hand them over to us, that’s all. We punish them and we are entitled to recover the money from you. The money they paid and the punishment they get are two different things. I’d like you to send this report to the chief of the investigation office.”
The American sergeant pointed at Yong Kyu with his finger and shouted, “Sergeant, stand up straight when you speak. I was in Korea for a long time too. I know you people very well. You make trouble whenever you come into our zones. Your soldiers try to make illegal profits by buying and reselling PX goods. We don’t give back money used for that. Maybe then in the future the Koreans will stop coming into our PXs for their black market dealing.”