“Who told you she was dead?” I asked.
“One of the business girls. She came here to ask Auntie Mee to read her fortune. The front gate was open. When there was no answer she came inside, found Auntie Mee like this.”
“And she came straight to you?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it?”
“Miss Kwon.”
Again, Miss Kwon. She seemed to be everywhere at all times.
“She recovered quickly from her accident,” I said.
“Very quickly.”
“And she’s determined.”
Doc Yong nodded. What, I thought, was Miss Kwon so determined about? Even if she couldn’t afford to stay in the hospital, certainly Doc Yong would’ve loaned her enough money to enable her to eat and to rest a few days. Instead, Miss Kwon had gone right back to work. In fact, she’d become a busybody. What was the purpose of all this determination? Or was I becoming paranoid? I said, “And after telling you about the body, Miss Kwon went to the Seven Club to meet Hilliard?”
Doc Yong shrugged. “She has to live.”
“But just a few days ago, she tried to kill herself.”
“That was then. Now she wants to live.”
Yes. She did. Even to the point of putting up with Sergeant First Class Quinton Hilliard. But life, even a life of shame, is preferable to death. That’s what I thought at the moment, with the reek of lifeless flesh filling my nostrils.
A fly buzzed our heads and landed on the edge of Auntie Mee’s smooth jawline. I waved it away.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“I want to pray first.”
And then, reading from the codex, Doc Yong instructed me in how to assist her in lining up candles and igniting incense in a bronze burner and reciting chants in a language so ancient I couldn’t understand it. We spent the better part of an hour doing this, she instructing me carefully in the arcane rites of the dead. Meanwhile, outside, the silent storm brewed. And when we were finally done, Doc Yong gently closed Auntie Mee’s eyes.
“Goodbye, my friend,” she said.
We stayed still, kneeling, for a long time.
When we emerged from that place of horror, the outside world had been transformed into a universe of darkness and swirling snow. The electricity had gone out and the glow of the moon and the stars were just a memory. I knew we’d never find our way back to Doc Yong’s clinic, not while we groped blindly through this endless maze of narrow pathways. And the thought of reaching her apartment or the front gate of 8th Army compound was completely out of the question. They were much too far away. Meanwhile, the city of Seoul, blasted by the Manchurian weather, had shut down. Anyone with any sense had long ago taken shelter. There were no taxis roaming the streets, no buses; even the white mice curfew police had given up trying to find North Korean infiltrators and had taken shelter somewhere, probably in an igloo.
With a gloved finger, Doc Yong pointed ahead.
A plastic sign. Unlit. I could barely make it out in the darkness but the sign said yoguan. Literally, mattress hall. A traditional Korean inn. After staggering a few more steps, I pounded on the double wooden doors. They were locked tight and there seemed to be no life within. Still, I kept pounding. We either found shelter here or we lay down in one of the snowdrifts behind us and when the storm finally subsided the local residents would find us, frozen stiff. After every major snowstorm in Seoul, dozens of people are found dead on the streets the following day. The city fathers don’t like to advertise this fact but it’s true. In Korea, poverty is rampant but being homeless is rare. Most everyone has somewhere to go. But for those few who don’t, life is short.
Doc Yong started pulling on my elbow, ready to give up and move on but I resisted. Instead, I continued hammering my fist on the unmoving wooden door. After ten more minutes even I was about to call it quits but just before I did, metal creaked loudly behind the door. It wedged open, crusted snow falling everywhere, and then finally, with a sigh of warm air, the door opened.
A woman wrapped in a cloth overcoat motioned for us to enter.
“Bali,” she said. “Chuyo.” Hurry. It’s cold.
Doc Yong and I rushed in, stamping our feet on a flagstone walkway. The woman slammed the door shut behind us and without saying a word, scurried back toward the warmth of the two story building. Before entering, Doc Yong and I brushed as much snow as possible off our outer coats and then, in the foyer, we slipped off our shoes and stepped up on the raised lacquered floor.
“Aigu,” the woman said, “wei pakei naggaso?” Why did you go outside?
“We made a mistake,” Doc Yong replied in Korean. Then she asked if we could rent a room. The woman nodded and led us down a hallway. There was no light in the building but the owner provided us with a candle. It was an ondol room, meaning it was heated by charcoal gas running through ducts below the floorboards. This meant that even though the electricity was out, the room was warm and cozy. The owner arranged the yo, the sleeping mats, and opened a cabinet that held silk-covered comforters. She showed us where the outside byonso was located and later she came into the room carrying a tray with two cups and a thermos of warm barley tea.
I paid her and after she left, Doc Yong and I took off most of our clothes, grabbed the comforters, and lay down on the warm sleeping mattress on the floor. Within seconds we were clutching one another, strictly for warmth. We were both exhausted and after a few minutes our mutual body heat and the warm floor below finally allowed us to thaw out. And then I was kissing her and she was kissing me back.
Maybe it was the death we’d seen in Auntie Mee’s hooch. The horrible death and the horrible pain. It made life, every second of it, seem more important. And then I was slipping the last of Doc Yong’s clothes off and she was slipping off the last of mine. We found a joy in one another, a joy that people rarely find, both of us becoming rabid with our desire to touch one another and suddenly, and completely, embrace life.
When we woke up on the mattresses in the yoguan, we didn’t talk to one another.
Gray sunlight filtered through the oil-papered windows and I tried to speak but Doc Yong shrugged me off, not making eye contact, acting as if I’d committed a great sin. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said nothing. Maybe she needed time; time to deal with what we’d done last night. I didn’t need any time myself. I felt great. But I had no idea what feelings she was dealing with so I left her alone. She didn’t even use the byonso but started to leave before I was half dressed.
“Wait,” I said. “I’ll go with you.”
“No.” It was a shout. Too loud. And then she realized that she was showing panic and she took a deep breath. “Better,” she said, holding out her hand in a halting gesture, “if I go first. Anyway, I must go to the clinic and you must go to your compound.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. She was ashamed of me. Ashamed to be seen on the street with a big-nosed foreigner. But I didn’t blame her. All the Koreans would look at her with amused smiles on their faces and later they would talk about her. Relentlessly. “Yang kalbo,” they’d whisper. Foreign whore.
I longed to step toward her and take her hand and tell her I understood. That she didn’t have to be seen on the street with me if she found it embarrassing. But she looked so skittish, like a yearling ready to bolt, that I didn’t dare. Instead, I stayed where I was and just nodded. Dumbly.
She said, “OK,” and walked out and closed the door behind her.
I listened to her footsteps retreat down the hallway.
The provost marshal was about to pop a blood vessel.
“You did what?”
Ernie stood in front of Colonel Brace at the position of attention, his jaw thrust out, his lips set into a grim sneer. “I punched his lights out.” Then he said, “sir.”
“Oh, I see. You punched his lights out. Any particular reason why you punched his lights out?”