Auntie Mee stopped-still mumbling to herself-and seized three large bronze coins with small squares punched in the middle. She threw them up in the air and allowed them to clatter to the surface of the wooden table. When they had stopped moving, she took note of how they landed and resumed her search through the grimy stack of curled paper. Finally, she grabbed Miss Kwon’s hand, and started chanting again.
I could follow little of what she said. Much of the incantation was whispered in Miss Kwon’s ear, so only she could hear it. Also, my Korean is conversational, not completely fluent. If I steer the topic of conversation to areas where my vocabulary is extensive, and if the person I’m talking to keeps the words and syntax simple, I can communicate effectively. But when someone takes off into the exotic realms where Auntie Mee was heading, into ancient incantations pulled from the hoary recesses of time, I become lost. Only a few words or phrases seeped in: “trouble with your family;” “men who don’t respect you;” “foreigners who treat Koreans badly.”
I wondered how much of this was fortune-telling and how much common sense. The Korean economy was desperately trying to rebuild itself in the early seventies, some twenty years after the devastation of the Korean War. Things were tough for the working poor in Seoul and, when crops failed, even tougher for the farmers in the countryside. Despite massive population growth in the cities-Seoul was up to eight million people-most of the Korean population still lived in agricultural areas. When girls reached marriageable age, they found it difficult to find a husband. Landless boys were not only drafted into the army for three years but afterward they ran off to the cities to find work. The girls were left to labor in factories hoping to build a dowry or, if their grades weren’t so good in school, as bus attendants or janitors or scullery maids if they were lucky. The unlucky ones signed contracts with labor recruiters. Money would be sent home to their parents. They would work as “hostesses” in bars or nightclubs. Hostesses are expected to perform additional duties, duties that encompass prostitution. Often, after poverty and the system has broken them down, the girls give up all hope of living a decent life and plunge into drunkenness and drugs and sex-for-sale. These are the ones who end up being hauled into jail by Korean cops or, occasionally, G.I. cops like me.
I’m not a fortune teller but I saw all this in Miss Kwon’s future. So did Doc Yong. The difference was that Doc Yong was trying to save her. I didn’t know how.
Now Auntie Mee spoke in a strong clear voice. Miss Kwon was crying and bowing. Auntie Mee asked her an occasional question. Miss Kwon answered. Auntie Mee made what seemed to be pronouncements and Miss Kwon nodded vigorously.
During all this, Doc Yong had been sitting quietly, her head bowed. But now her fists clenched and she stared directly at Auntie Mee.
“Weikurei?” Doc Yong demanded. Why this way?
Auntie Mee shrugged and gestured toward the tattered manuscript, as if to say, That’s what the book told me.
Finally, the reading was done and Auntie Mee and Miss Kwon hugged one another. Then Auntie Mee slid backward on her bent knees, and Miss Kwon, crying more than ever, bowed twice. Doc Yong, still scowling, comforted her and dragged her off to the side of the room, away from the glow of the flickering candlelight. They whispered to one another, conferring over the full meaning of the fortune that had just been told.
Auntie Mee motioned for me to sit before her. I slid across the floor and knelt, although my butt wouldn’t descend as low as Auntie Mee’s. My head towered a foot above hers. She backed up a little, uncomfortable looking up at me.
Many Koreans find Westerners unattractive. Upsetting, even. Our features are too gross, our bone structure too oddly shaped, our bodies too massive and reeking of the odor of meat. Apparently, that was Auntie Mee’s attitude.
When she had put some distance between us she relaxed, arranged her blue robe around herself and began to talk, speaking Korean slowly and simply so I could understand.
First, she asked me for my date of birth. I wouldn’t give it to her.
“Why? Don’t you want your fortune read?”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe in these things,” I said.
She seemed greatly amused. “But many people do.”
“Many people do a lot of things,” I replied.
“As you wish.” Auntie Mee sighed and slammed shut her pile of dog-eared pages. Then, still in Korean, she said something to me. It was a jarring change of subject and it took me a few moments to translate the sentence, mentally, into English.
“I want you to arrest someone,” she told me.
I waited.
“A compatriate of yours,” she said. “An American soldier.”
“What has he done?” I asked.
“He bothers me every night. Wakes me. Makes me rise from my bed and forces me to light sticks of incense and speaks to me through the Conquering General of Heaven. He even interrupts me when I’m working with my clients, causing delays and confusing my readings. He’s quite a pest. Rude, like so many of you Americans. And impatient too.”
“Impatient?”
“Yes. Why doesn’t he wait to take his revenge in the land of the dead like everyone else? Why must he bother me to take action on his behalf, here in the land of the living? What has he ever done for me?”
I was more confused than ever. “This American soldier,” I said. “He is your boyfriend? He lives with you?”
The smooth contours of Auntie Mee’s face twisted into a sneer. Doc Yong and Miss Kwon had both stopped talking.
“No!” Auntie Mee shouted so emphatically that I could scarcely believe the sound emanated from so slender a woman. “He visits me at night,” she said. “He awakens me. He interrupts me when I am in trance. He bothers me always and he won’t go away until someone finds his bones.”
“His bones?”
“Yes. His bones. They are buried in Itaewon. I don’t know exactly where, but as to when he said something about ‘at the beginning of peace.’ Shortly after the end of the war.”
The cease fire ending the Korean War was signed in July of 1953. That was over twenty years ago. Still, the implications of Auntie Mee’s words hadn’t fully sunk in.
“Whose bones is he talking about?” I asked.
“His bones.”
“Then he’s dead?”
Auntie Mee sighed, sat back, and crossed her arms. “Of course.”
I glanced at Doc Yong. She nodded her head slightly in agreement.
I turned back to Auntie Mee. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Find his bones. Send them back to America, back to his family, so they can be consecrated or whatever you people do with them. Then he will be happy and he will stop bothering me.”
“How will I find his bones?”
“You are a detective,” she said, as if that solved everything.
“I can’t dig up all of Itaewon looking for old bones. I need somewhere to start.”
“He said he was killed ‘at the beginning of peace.’”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “You said ‘killed.’ Are you saying this American G.I. was murdered?”
“Yes. That’s why he’s so upset. He wants someone to find his bones. He was murdered here in Itaewon, when the fighting had stopped and people were able to return to Seoul and start rebuilding.”
“Who killed him?”
She shrugged.
“Koreans or Americans?”
She shrugged again. “Find the bones,” she said.