Jade Lady burning

8

After showering and putting on fresh clothes back at the compound we went to the snack bar. I got a cup of hot coffee and a copy of the Stars amp; Stripes. The sports page I didn’t read, the front page was beyond belief, and I thought the editorials were a bunch of drivel. I don’t know why I bought it every day. Just that stray article, I guess. About the little girl who had been missing in San Diego for two weeks and then was found and reunited with her father, or the old people confined to their homes in Pittsburgh, who were brought food and companionship by the local kids in the elementary school. I liked to read about people doing the right thing and I wondered how I so often ended up doing the wrong thing.

Ernie plopped into the seat in front of me and clinked down a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns.

I said, “Worked up an appetite last night, eh?”

‘The Nurse. She keeps me healthy.”

Now that the table was guarded, I went to the serving line and ordered a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with a tall glass of cold milk. After I got back, we ate breakfast quietly for a while, amidst the clinking of glassware and the murmer of shuffling customers, both of us thinking about what Kimiko had said.

Miss Pak had been an excitable girl: alive, barely able to contain herself in anticipation of all the wonderful things that were bound to happen to her in life. Her eyes sparkled, according to Kimiko, and she loved to laugh uproariously, eyes wide, even at the mildest joke casually thrown out by some GI who was unaware that he was such a comedian.

She loved men and trusted them, and it was Kimiko who had set her straight. Get the money first. No matter what they say, no matter how much they like you, in the morning they will see things differently. And they’ll start thinking of how many days it is until payday and how much they could do with that ten or fifteen dollars’ worth of freshly minted Military Payment Certificates.

Miss Pak had listened but she’d faltered a couple of times, especially when the guy was young, like her, and made her laugh.

She was pretty, and when she strutted out on the dance floor with her short skirt and her tight blouse, all the men watched. There might be twenty girls on the floor but everyone kept their eyes on Miss Pak Ok-suk.

Kimiko had borrowed some pungent Korean cigarettes from the landlady and she told us about Miss Pak with a clinical detachment as the room filled with smoke. It was a purely professional analysis from an experienced observer.

Kimiko had contacts, and she felt that Miss Pak Ok-suk was wasting herself running from GI to GI in Itaewon when she was young enough and pretty enough to make some serious money. So Kimiko hooked her up with some of the older Americans around, the kind who don’t want to be seen running the ville in Itaewon, also a few rich Koreans and even the stray Japanese tourist. Miss Pak was making good money but, like so many young girls, she had to go and screw it all up.

She got hooked up with Johnny and they put in their marriage paperwork. Kimiko told her not to trust that. The whole process took six months or more and usually, after talking to his immediate supervisor, his commanding officer, the chaplain, the legal officer, and the personnel officer, and after whatever new hurdle the Army bureaucracy had cooked up, the young GI would change his mind.

Kimiko knew. She’d had marriage paperwork put in on her a half dozen times and it had never gone through. She told Miss Pak not to fall for it, but the girl had stuck with Johnny and this is how it turned out.

I asked her if she had seen Miss Pak on the night she died. She said she had. Briefly. She tried to talk her into going to one of the big hotels and finding a couple of rich tourists. Miss Pak refused. The last Kimiko had seen of her was when she left Miss Pak on the front steps of the Lucky Seven Club. She had no idea where she’d gone after that, back into the club, or elsewhere.

I was about halfway done with my BLT, and I was already finished with my cold glass of milk so I got another one. Ernie pushed his empty plate away, sipped on his coffee, and read the Stars amp; Stipes.

I wondered how much justice we’d done that girl. So far, we didn’t have much more than when we started. We knew that she’d been murdered, but exactly how, we still weren’t sure. The Korean medical examiner’s report had been vague. Asphyxiation. That could have been from strangling or from the smoke of the fire. And if it was from the fire she must have been knocked out or drugged or something. No one was too interested now that a GI was in custody. My guess was that the family had fallen under the wing of a lawyer who specialized in claims against the U.S. government.

No one had any particular interest in proving that Spec-4 John Watkins hadn’t been the one to commit the murder. Certainly not the family. They didn’t want to blow a bundle. And not the Korean National Police, who were glad that, once the GI suspect was turned over to them, they’d get the press off their backs. Even Eighth Army was ambivalent about the whole thing. With Spec-4 Watkins as the sacrificial lamb, their public-relations problem was solved and they could go back to business as usual.

Of course, maybe Johnny Watkins did kill her. I couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t, but it didn’t seem to fit. He just wasn’t mean enough. But who knows? I’m wrong about people more often than I’m right.

Then there was Kimiko. No one in Itaewon had known Miss Pak Ok-suk better than Kimiko. Not even Johnny. But why would she want to kill that young girl? Was she stepping on territory Kimiko considered to be her own? Or maybe it was jealousy engendered by years of bitterness and ridicule in the oldest and toughest of professions.

And why had those guys come looking for Kimiko? They had been after her for something. Only what? Kimiko didn’t appear to have any money at all. Or had she been squirreling away a little bit at a time over the years, with a big stash somewhere? Or maybe they were looking for something else.

Kimiko hadn’t seemed too concerned about the whole thing. She’d relaxed right away, as soon as they left, and she didn’t seem worried that they might come back.

The Korean National Police? They hadn’t gone at this case aggressively. Like Milt Gorman said, they must be protecting someone, or something.

Those two guys we’d seen this morning-were they members of the local syndicate? Sent by Mr. Kwok? If so, why? If Mr. Kwok wanted to kill one of the girls in Itaewon, he could do it a lot more efficiently than Miss Pak’s assailant had. Why would he want to ice some bar girl anyway? Even if Miss Pak was a little money machine, getting married and backing out of the business was routine in Itaewon. Hundreds of girls married GIs every year. No sweat, there were plenty of replacements.

I looked down at my plate and realize I had finished my BLT. I hadn’t tasted it. Not that there was much taste to an Army snack-bar sandwich.

I felt a chill. Or maybe it was just that I knew we had to go into the office and face the first sergeant.

“Where the bell have you two guys been?”

Ernie cracked his gum. “Doing what you told us to do, Top. Trying to get a line on who murdered Pak Ok-suk.”

“More evidence on Watkins?”

“We’re not so sure he did it.”

“Then who did?”

“We don’t know that either.”

“You got any evidence?”

“Nothing new.”

He looked at us long and hard. “Dicking off again, eh?” Neither of us moved. “Let the Watkins case be,” he said. “The Korean courts will take it from here.”

Ernie clicked his gum again, wandered over to the big coffee urn, and started fiddling with the cups and the spoons and the non-dairy creamer.

“There’s no reason in the world,” I said, “to think that Johnny Watkins murdered that girl.”

“Other than that he was going to marry her,” the first sergeant snarled, “and she was messing around with other guys.”

“I’m talking about physical evidence. Sure, maybe he had a motive. But we got no direct evidence putting him near the scene of the crime.”

“But we got no evidence putting him anywhere else, either. A strong motive and the lack of an alibi is enough for the Koreans.”

“Because the newspapers and the locals want blood?” I said.

“Yeah. But I wouldn’t worry about him too much. The judges are fair. They won’t give him too much time if they can’t pin it on him. And they’ll probably let him ease on out of jail quietly, after about eighteen months, and deport him back to the states.”

“And kick him out of the Army.”

“A general discharge. No sweat.” The first sergeant shrugged.

“And if all this happened to you and you were innocent?”

“I wouldn’t let it happen to me,” he said, softly.

The first sergeant leaned across his desk and picked up a manila folder. He probably wouldn’t; he was a very cautious guy. But you never know.

I rubbed my eyes. “And what about the real killer? What happens to him?”

“If it isn’t Watkins, the Korean police will find the real killer.”

Ernie snorted. Some of his swirling brown coffee splashed onto the counter and the dingy brown carpet below. The first sergeant waited while Ernie sopped it up with a brown paper towel, then started again.

“Besides, I need you two for yet another load of shit that’s come up at the Korean Procurement Agency.”

We waited.

‘There’s a guy named Lindbaugh-Fred Lindbaugh. According to Tom Kurtz, our snitch over there, he’s been approving a lot of the changes in contracts. We want you to follow him, find out a little more about his personal life. He’s single. Other than that, we don’t know much about him.”

“I thought Burrows and Slabem were going to handle this KPA thing.”

‘They are. The paperwork part. But their faces have been seen in the main office. Lindbaugh knows them.”

“Does he run the ville?”

“Probably. He’s single.”

“Which is why you want us to follow him?”

“Yeah. The experts.”

“What are we looking for?”

“A flamboyant life-style. He’s only a GS-7. We want to find out if he lives above his means.”

“GS-7. Single. That’s a lot of loot for Korea.”

“Yeah. And we understand he’s very popular with the ladies.”

“He doesn’t have to be on the take to be spending pretty free.”

“Just watch him. Burrows and Slabem will be checking out his bank account.” The first sergeant gave us a long once-over. “You two look sort of haggard. Take the rest of the day off. Lindbaugh gets off at five. Be there.”

On the way out, we turned into the Admin Office. Miss Kim had on a bright green dress that clung to her figure and when she smiled my nerve endings flared like flower buds triggered by the sun. Ernie offered her his customary stick of gum, she took it, unwrapped it, and they fell into their customary monosyllabic conversation punctuated by grunts and giggles.

Riley was out. I sat down behind his desk and pouted. Over Miss Kim and over the Watkins case-I wasn’t happy about being taken off it. On the other hand, I really didn’t know what else to do. The only lead I had was Kimiko and she wasn’t the type to spill much of anything. If this guy Lindbaugh was a ville rat, though, we could still keep an eye on her. And also I had my free time. Top couldn’t say anything about that.

I wondered why I gave a damn about the fate of Johnny Watkins and, to be honest, I probably didn’t. Top was right. He would be okay. A little jail time-max. Unless they actually proved that he did it. It wasn’t him that I was worried about. It was the late Miss Pak Ok-suk. She would never be okay. Maybe she wasn’t a saint but she wasn’t the worst person in the world either. She didn’t deserve to be murdered that way and none of us who were still living deserved to have her killer walking around free.

Back in the barracks I got out a pencil and paper and wrote down as much as I could remember of what the Korean thug had said to us that morning.

The first part was clear. E yoja dala kamyon meant “if you follow this woman.” The second part was a little more difficult. Jamji chaluhkeita. This meant he was going to cut something. Something of mine. Something called a jamji.

I got out my little plastic-bound Korean-English dictionary and thumbed through it, humming to myself. Happy to have something academic to do for a change. My humming stopped when I found the definition.

Jamji was the diminutive reference to the male member: the penis of an infant.

The offices of the Korean Procurement Agency were in a small compound off by itself, away from the main Eighth Army Headquarters complex, near Samgakji. The buildings were the familiar two-story red-brick jobs built by the Japanese Imperial Army during the occupation prior to World War II.

The parking lot was small and almost full. A lot of the American civilians who worked here had cars. The Koreans, without exception, took the bus. We were sitting in Ernie’s little jeep, wedged between a beat-up old Chevy Impala and a quarter-ton delivery truck.

“We should be off by now,” Ernie said, getting ready to run the ville. Not waiting around for some overpaid civilian asshole.”

Ernie, when he wasn’t raving, was usually a pretty calm person. One of the calmest people I’ve ever met in my life. Almost comatose. But don’t mess with his Happy Hour.

People started to pour out of the offices, as if a whistle had gone off. Then we heard the distant bugle call and the blast of a howitzer on the main post. The flag-lowering ceremony was under way. Nobody stopped for it here. The Korean men in suits and ties and the women in smart office outfits shrugged on their overcoats on the steps, wrapped mufflers around their necks, and headed purposefully towards the bus stop just beyond the gate, manned by two Korean security guards.

A roly-poly rascal bounded down the stairs. Tom Kurtz trotted to keep up with him, almost tugging on his sleeve, and finally got him stopped in the parking lot, chatting quickly. The fat guy looked around, trying to make a getaway, totally uninterested. Kurtz had promised to show us Lindbaugh by glomming on to him at the end of the workday. The fat guy was our boy.

Finally Kurtz smiled a goodbye and let Lindbaugh go. With a sigh of relief, the fat man waddled towards a green Army sedan on the other side of the parking lot.

Lindbaugh was average height, maybe five nine or so, but he must have weighed about two hundred pounds, most of it lard. His hair was straight and black and parted, so it had a habit of sliding down across his forehead into his eyes. He kept brushing at it with his pudgy fingers. He wore a three-piece suit and the vest was stretched so far beyond its limits that it rode up a couple of inches above the overloaded belt, exposing white shirt.

He bundled into the sedan, fired it up, and pushed his way through the crowd of Korean co-workers. Ernie started up the jeep, rolled slowly forward and, after watching the thick calves of a pair of nice-looking female office workers, he popped us into the Seoul rush-hour traffic.

Lindbaugh seemed to be in a big hurry so he fit right in, because everybody was. Kimchi cabs swerved in and out of one another’s way, straining for that extra few inches of advantage over their competitors. Lindbaugh swerved, accelerated, slammed on the brakes, and seemed to be cursing a lot. Ernie sat back in his canvas seat, hands lightly touching the steering wheel. Relaxed. And he had no trouble keeping us an almost constant fifteen or twenty yards behind the erratic Lindbaugh.

Lindbaugh turned right at Huam-dong, ran up the long straightaway between Camp Coiner and the ROK Marine Corps Headquarters, and was waved through by the gate guards at the back entrance to Yongsan Compound. We followed him in and past the barracks and the gym and the main PX and the big Army Communications Center, back out through Gate 5, across the MSR, back to the sedate environs of Yongsan South Post. He turned left in front of the Officers’ Club, raced past it, turned right down a tree-lined avenue, and stopped in front of one of the small houses that served as BOQs-Bachelor Officers’ Quarters. That’s what the civilian workers get: their own private rooms, a communal living room, kitchen, and latrine with an old mama-san who did the laundry and the cleaning. Pretty convenient life-style really and, other than the monthly tips for the cleaning woman and the aged houseboy, free. All part of their pay and benefits.

Ernie rolled on past. Lindbaugh was struggling to get his chubby body out of his car, not paying any attention to us whatsoever. Ernie cruised around the block, came back, and parked under a tree where we had a clear view of the sedan and the front of Lindbaugh’s BOQ.

We could have busted him for unauthorized use of a government vehicle. The sedan was for use during the day, for official business, not for running back and forth from your hooch. Lindbaugh seemed pretty brazen about its use, not caring how many of his co-workers saw him using it to get home at the end of the workday. Small wonder Kurtz had fingered him.

Ernie drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “We could be here all night.”

“No way, pal. If he doesn’t go out in an hour or two, we’ll just figure he’s going to stay in for the night.”

“Any place to get beer around here?”

“There’s A Class VI store back by the Officers’ Club.”

Before we could decide whether one of us should walk over there or if we should take the jeep, Lindbaugh left his quarters. He wore a pullover golf shirt that fit him like Saran Wrap. His blue jeans were baggy and faded and his white sneakers scuffed. Just a regular guy kicking around the neighborhood. He drove off. We followed.

“He can’t be going to the village dressed like that.”

“No way,” I said. “Got to be a local run.”

We followed him down a narrow lane that led up around the rear of the Officers’ Club to a small back parking lot where most of the food and beverage deliveries were made. Off to the side was the Class VI store, a PX Shopette, and the Steam and Cream.

The Steam and Cream was known officially as the Army and Air Force Exchange Service Steam Bath and Massage Center. Lindbaugh parked out front, popped from his car, and ambled through the door as if he’d been there a million times.

Ernie parked the jeep between some other cars in the lot.

“Now I know it’s going to take a while.”

“Five dollars for thirty minutes or seven-fifty for an hour.”

“At least he brought us to the Class VI.”

Ernie got out of the jeep and came back in a few minutes with a six-pack of cold beer. We popped open a couple of wets and waited.

In the Army you get used to things like this: not really being in charge of an investigation, not knowing all of what’s going on, just being told to watch somebody and report back. People think of the Army as being demeaning. In a lot of ways it is. Though I think many civilian jobs have the same demands: don’t ask questions, just do it.

The one thing the Army has going for it is that you can’t be fired. Not easily, anyway. You have to do something wrong, almost commit a crime. Of course the Army’s standards for what constitutes a crime are a little less stringent than those of the civilian world. For instance, being late for a formation or not showing up for work-in the Army those are crimes. But if you avoid the obvious stuff, the things they can nail you for under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, then you have a lot of latitude. If your boss doesn’t like you, he can make your life miserable but he can’t fire you. Not without specific charges. And being a smartass isn’t good enough. In fact, if he brings it to the attention of his higher-ups, they’ll probably wonder why he isn’t capable of handling the situation himself.

So in a lot of ways the Army offers more freedom than the civilian world. I don’t have to worry about whether or not the company I work for is making a profit or if the wife of the boss doesn’t like the way I look. I can mostly count on having a job as long as I don’t get stupid.

Besides, who else would send me to Korea and pay me to drink beer outside of a Steam and Cream?

We had gone through the entire six-pack and both taken a leak in the bushes behind the parking lot by the time Lindbaugh came out. A young lady in a blue steam bath uniform held the door open for him and waved goodbye. He looked like a pink new baby-pampered, powdered, and now patted on the butt on the way out. He walked next door to the PX Shopette and emerged again with a shopping bag full of groceries and a magazine wrapped in cellophane. Then he drove back to his hooch. Ernie and I parked outside for a conference.

“He ain’t going nowhere.” Ernie said.

“Naw. Tomorrow’s a workday. He’s had his fun.” I checked my watch. It was still early. Nineteen-thirty. ‘Time to head out to the ville.”

“You got that right.”

When Kimiko spotted us she strutted across the King Club, brown OB beer bottle in hand, and reached for my crotch. I jumped back spasmodically, barely avoiding her grasp.

“How’s it hanging, GI?” she said.

“It’s hanging just fine, Kimiko,” I said, “all by itself.”

“You buy me drink?”

“Hell no. You’re supposed to buy us a drink, for saving your kundingi.”

The same beige dress she had had on this morning was now washed and pressed and her long black hair had been shampooed and combed. She had scrounged some makeup from somewhere. The oldest business girl in Itaewon was back in town.

She considered my proposal about the drinks. “Okay,” she said. “I buy, you pay.”

Ernie and I elbowed our way to the bar. I ordered three OBs and ceremoniously handed one to Kimiko. She curtsied, her knobby knees flared slightly to the side.

The joint was busy, as usual for this time of night, and Miss Oh hadn’t noticed our entrance yet. She served a tray of drinks and was heading right for us when Kimiko, with that incredible sense of timing that women have, threw her arms around my waist and buried her face in my shirt.

I tried to pull her off but she had a tight grip and Miss Oh walked by, increasing her speed as she passed, glowering at me for the loss of face I was causing her.

If she didn’t have time to see me, because she had to party with a bunch of big-shot Koreans, did I get mad? No. But some old broad throws her arms around me, without invitation, and she acts as if I’ve just broken a sacred vow.

I pried Kimiko’s biceps away from my ribs. She looked up at me, her face clouding.

“Whatsamatta you? You no like Kimiko?”

“Yeah, I like,” I said. “Just don’t break my back, okay?”

She pouted and lifted her beer bottle to her lips. Tilting it straight up, she let the bubbling hops gurgle and swirl down her pulsating throat. My kind of chick. Then she burped. Me and Ernie too. Three-part harmony.

Miss Oh was snapping quick looks at me from the waitress station. Hell with it, I thought. Ernie had commandeered a bar stool and sat down, his back to the bar, knees pointing towards the crowd. He was chortling. I said, “Pretty hilarious, eh, pal?”

“You’re a riot, George. Better than Dobie Gillis.”

We decided to get into some serious drinking and ordered shots and another round of beer. When we had finished, the three of us paraded out into the streets of Itaewon, not really sure where we were going, letting the surging pedestrian masses lead us. Shortly, we found ourselves in front of the American Club. Ernie dragged us in. I was worried about running into Miss Lim but the lust for more booze kept my feet moving.

Ginger saw us and her face brightened. She started her charge down the planks behind the bar when she saw Kimiko and, slowly, her face hardened. She sauntered down to us at the open bar stool we had found. Kimiko jumped up on it and Ernie and I wedged ourselves close to the railing on either side of her. Ginger filled our order and gave us our change without saying anything. I hadn’t spotted Miss Lim. Then I noticed Ginger on the phone, face grim.

Some of the old retirees at the bar knew Kimiko, and soon she was glad-handing around as if she were running for mayor.

Ernie and I leaned into the drinks heavy-who knew when the stuff could run out?-and then the C amp;W band started and all of my thought processes stopped. During a particularly hideous cowboy lament, Kimiko returned and at the same time Miss Lim walked in the door. Kimiko’s beer bottle was empty and she tried to get me to refill it for her. Miss Lim sashayed past without looking at me and joined one of the more presentable retirees at the end of the bar. He smiled so broadly I thought his cheeks were going to pop. Then he stood up and offered her his bar stool. Offering someone a bar stool is the greatest sacrificial gesture a retiree can make.

Miss Lim took off her coat, assisted by the ex-lifer, sat down primly, and ordered a drink from the concerned and attentive Ginger. When the drink appeared, she dupshida-ed with the guy, took a sip, and glanced at me.

Yeah, I was riveted to her every move. And kept trying to brush Kimiko off. Finally, Kimiko realized what was going on, stared for a while at Miss Lim, and then turned back to me.

“She married. Why you mess around with married woman?”

I didn’t answer, just ordered another round of straight shots. Morality lectures from Kimiko, yet.

After a while Ernie and I both got tired of standing so we took a tiny table and Kimiko followed us. We were working our way through Ginger’s liquor storehouse at a pretty steady clip; the table started to pile up with empty beer bottles.

Kimiko turned her attention towards Ernie since I was beginning to slow down on the generosity angle. They were warming up to a major public display when a woman materialized from the crowd. I didn’t recognize her at first but when I realized it was the Nurse, I knew this just wasn’t our night.

The Nurse wore soft-soled shoes, blue jeans, a black turtleneck, and a black bandana around her forehead. Her small knotted fist brandished a four-foot-long cudgel. Actually, I think it was a broom handle but at the moment it looked like a cudgel.

She floated towards us, taking small steps arms raised high, and then she whacked the broom handle across our small cocktail table. Beer and shattered glass flew everywhere. The crash stopped the band and the talking. The only sound was me and Ernie scuffling back our chairs, and then she was advancing, jabbing the stick at Ernie, screaming at him in incoherent Korean.

Kimiko salvaged a full bottle and scuttled off to the side, hiding herself in the crowd.

Ernie twisted and dodged, hands outstretched, trying to ward off the stick, stumbling backwards over chairs and tables as people jumped out of the way, drinks and glassware smashing. Finally he crashed into the amps of the band on stage. Ernie grabbed the broom handle, trying to pull it out of the Nurse’s grasp. They grunted and cursed at each other. She let go of the stick with one hand and clawed at his face, screaming.

“You go out every night! Play with woman! No take care of home! No take care of rent! No take care of food!”

Ernie ripped the stick from her grasp and just stood there panting, not knowing quite what to do with it. The Nurse lunged again. He dropped the stick and threw his hands up to protect his face.

She screamed and clawed and slavered, and Ernie backed closer and closer to the main door. I tried to pull her off but she elbowed me in the ribs, stomped on my foot, and went after him some more. Locked arm in arm, they went out the swinging doors of the club. A crowd gathered.

They strained against each other, muscle on muscle, and then the Nurse let go, all at once, and Ernie had to hold her up to keep her from collapsing.

She was crying, pulling away from Ernie. And Ginger was there, comforting her. Other women stepped forward to help.

Both the Americans and the Koreans in the crowd turned their attention to Ernie and me. Their comments became progressively uglier. I tugged on Ernie’s elbow. He seemed to come out of his trance and he followed me as I pushed our way through the crowd, heading for the welcome darkness of ltaewon’s back alleys. And then we were running.

Heels clicked behind us. Kimiko.

When the light from the street lamp hit her face, she stared at us. Deadpan, she said, “You buy me drink?”

Ernie looked like chalk. I stifled a laugh.

I turned back to Kimiko. “Sure. Why not?”

I dragged both of them to Milt Gorman’s place, the Roundup. Ernie went to the latrine to rearrange his ripped shirt and his scratched face. Kimiko stuck close by me while we ordered our drinks. Ernie returned. He sipped listlessly on his beer. He paid no attention to our conversation, and my efforts to cheer him up were useless. After he drained the last of his suds, and without a word, he got up and left.

Milt Gorman stopped by and asked me how the investigation was going. I told him it was over. He smiled and had one of his waitresses bring us a couple of beers. The nice-looking young woman gave us some strange looks as she poured our beer and tidied up the table. Kimiko ignored her. A lot of the GIs were giving us strange looks, too. I was a little uneasy about the attention but I ignored it.

Something made Kimiko decide to tell me her life story. I didn’t have anywhere to go so 1 listened.

Her father was a very rich man, rich enough to own large tracts of land in North Cholla Province, land that was worked by tenant farmers. He had a main wife and second and third wives, but Kimiko’s mother wasn’t a wife at all. Just a scullery maid. And her earliest memories were of running through the pigpens and the open fields and the orchards ripening with pears and apples. There were plenty of children to play with and most of them were related to her in some way, but as she got older and started school, her place was made clear to her. She was not a real child of a real wife and as such she would be allowed six years of schooling and then must go to work, like her mother.

There was a large household to feed, the biggest burden being the noon meal, when Kimiko’s father was obligated to feed the day laborers who were so often working in various of the fields. She and her mother packed up wooden carrying boxes with rice and bean curd soup and cabbage kimchi, and her mother would head in one direction and Kimiko in the other.

After Kimiko finished her sixth year of schooling, she noticed changes in her body and, much sooner than the other girls her age, she started to turn into a woman.

It was her breasts that caused her the most grief. They were large and pointed and she strapped them in tightly, hurting herself every morning when she put on her chima and chogori, hoping they wouldn’t get any bigger and cause her any more shame. In Korea large-breasted women were considered to be stupid, and her body seemed to be betraying her, confirming everyone’s already low opinion of her.

I asked Kimiko about her first experience with love. It must have been on a beautiful spring evening, I said, under the blooms of a cherry tree in the orchard.

She shook her head. No one touched her at her father’s house. “No can do. Not supposed to.”

As Kimiko reached her thirteenth year her mother’s health started to fade. More and more of the chores in the big kitchen fell to her, and her father would allow no new help. Finally, after months of hacking and spitting up blood, in the heart of a cruel winter, Kimiko’s mother wasted away and died. Her father buried her, without excessive ceremony. The snow was too deep and the watching eyes of the first, second, and third wives too critical to allow for much in the way of mourning. Only Kimiko grieved. And now the full weight and responsibility of the kitchen fell upon her and she threw herself into her work.

As she lay dying, her mother had given Kimiko a small brooch, a gift from her father when they had first started meeting, late at night after the first wife had gone to bed. It was made of jade, a finely etched design of white cranes rising from their nests.

In the spring, when the orchards burst back into life, Kimiko packed a small bag and walked through the fragrant fields, away from the life into which she had been born. She walked for three days, sleeping on the side of the road, begging handouts from strangers, until she arrived in Chonju, the capital of North Cholla Province.

There she sold the brooch, for much less than it was actually worth, and bought a new skirt, new blouse, and a ticket on the steam vehicle to the capital city of Seoul.

When she arrived in bustling Seoul Station she had no money, just her wits and her burgeoning young body.

Kimiko wandered, trying to find employment. She wheedled information and food but after a few days she was profoundly hungry and tired of sleeping in the street, huddled under the clay-shingled alcove of a temple or a large house.

In a wine shop, an old woman with a brazenly made-up face looked Kimiko over.

“Do you speak Japanese?”

“Only what they taught me in school, ma’am.”

The woman laughed a harsh laugh. “That’s enough. The Japanese soldiers don’t expect too much talk from you. You can get a full-time job, food, and a place to stay. In Itaewon, the Japanese village.”

Kimiko’s eyes widened and her throat convulsed. She was unable to speak.

“Well, what do you say, girl? I have a friend there who owns a wine shop. A large, grand wine shop. Not like this little hovel.”

Kimiko nodded, and in a few minutes the woman had bundled her into the back of a pedicab and they were heading south, past Namsan Mountain, into the sloping Han River lowlands of Itaewon.

The wine shops were large, made of wood and concrete, and signs with Japanese lettering were everywhere. Some of the buildings were two or three stories high, and young women looked down at the urchin in the pedicab from their balconies above the puddled dirt street. Kimiko felt small and alone.

The woman who had brought her got out, went into the largest of the wine shops, and was gone for what seemed a long time. She came out all smiles, and another, even older woman came out and took a good look at Kimiko. She was led into the bowels of the darkened shop and she realized now that she had been sold.

It was hard to adjust. Many of the other girls hated her immediately, just because she was new and younger. But slowly she made a few friends and they washed her up and gave her new clothes and taught her how to wear her hair piled up in the Japanese style and how to put on makeup. Soon she was entertaining the Japanese soldiers who came to the wine shop every night to eat and drink rice wine and clap their hands and sing. The work was much easier than that in the kitchen at her father’s house and soon the men started to notice her. They noticed her shyness and her youth and quietly they began whispering to the old proprietress. One evening Kimiko was sold to an older balding man who, it was said, was a very important officer on Yongsan, which was the headquarters of the Japanese Imperial Army in Korea.

She didn’t mind so much, it didn’t hurt, and the next morning the old woman gave her a share of the money. It was more than Kimiko had ever seen in her life.

After that, she began to make her own friends, and have her own customers, men who would vie for her attention, and the jealousies of the other girls grew greater.

Then suddenly the war was over. The emperor had surrendered Japan. The cruel forty-year reign in Korea was ended. That day, the soldiers stopped coming to Itaewon. They stayed in their barracks, fortifying themselves for the vengeful onslaught of civilians that they expected before the Americans or the Russians could arrive. But the Koreans had no arms, and those of heroically rebellious spirit had died long ago.

The old woman brought all her girls together and gave them each some money and told them they must go. She could no longer afford to house and to feed them. Kimiko did not know what to do. That night there was a great fire and men ran through the streets yelling curses at the girls of Japanese quarter. They grabbed them by the hair and pulled them into the street, calling them traitors. The fire spread rapidly, and Kimiko put on her old clothes and bundled all her money and her few possessions into an old rag.

The village of Itaewon was reduced to charred rubble, and Kimiko was back on the streets of Seoul, where she stayed for five years, until war again came.

“During the war, not so bad,” Kimiko said. “I had to move a lot but there were many soldiers and they gave me food or soap or cigarettes. Other people were very hungry, but I did okay.”

“And after the Korean War, you came back to Seoul?”

Kimiko spat on the floor. “No. I was sick of Seoul people. Too cold heart. I stayed up in the country. North. In the Second Division.”

“What made you come back?”

“I got in some trouble. Went to the monkey house. So after, I come back here.”

By then she was too old to compete with the young girls farmed out to the Second Division area. Guts and sheer hustle could get you further in Seoul.

It was almost curfew. Nobody else was left in the club. I sent Kimiko home in a taxi and walked halfway back to camp before I hailed one myself.