“Forget it,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“Like hell. This son of a bitch is calling me names and waving his finger. Who the hell does he think he is?”
Two of the men stepped forward, holding their hands up, in the Korean gesture meant to placate an argument. Before I could react, Ernie stepped forward and pushed one of them. A woman screamed. Others jumped in, and soon Ernie and I were wrestling in the middle of the aisle with what seemed like a sea of angry Korean faces. But no one was hitting. That’s the Korean style. When there’s an altercation, they grab one another, they push, they shove-and they certainly scream-but no one hits.
Except Ernie.
He smacked the man who’d called him a yangnom full in the face.
By now the conductor had been called, and he joined in the fray. Women were screaming and children were crying and I was pushed by the crush of bodies backward across a chair and into an old woman’s lap. Ernie by now had been totally overwhelmed and lay on the floor in the center of the aisle, cursing and kicking and trying to punch somebody, but his arms had been pinned down by the two men who’d originally been trying to stop the fight.
The conductor kept calling for order, but no one paid him any attention. I was still trying to struggle to my feet, apologizing to the woman I’d almost crushed, when a loud voice broke through the din of fear and confusion.
“Ssau-jima!” the voice said. Stop fighting!
Everyone froze and looked at the man standing at the end of the car. Everyone, that is, except Ernie, who kept kicking.
The man who had hollered was the halaboji wearing the blue pantaloons and jade vest. The man I’d seen across the aisle from us, teaching the children the ancient art of calligraphy. His hands were behind his back but his face was red, glowering with disapproval. He strode forward, barking orders in Korean. “Back to your seats! Let that man go. What is it with you? Have you no education?”
The men in the aisle faced the venerable grandfather, bowed their heads, mumbled apologies, and backed up to their original seats. Finally, the two men atop Ernie stood up, faced the halaboji, bowed, and hurried away down the aisle.
Ernie bounced to his feet, shaking his arms free, raising his fists and staring around for a target. All he saw was the much shorter halaboji staring sternly up at him.
I was still wedged between two seats and anyway too far away to reach Ernie in time. Instead, I prayed.
I could see anger cross Ernie’s face. He was about to launch a straight left jab and I was about to scream for him to stop. The halaboji, calmly, stepped closer to Ernie. Ernie glared down at the man. Then the older man said in English, “You must think before you accost women.”
“‘Accost?’” Ernie replied. “I didn’t ‘accost’ anyone.”
“You interrupted her in the performance of her duties.”
“She wasn’t doing nothing.”
“While she’s on this train,” the old man said, “she is responsible for the kibun of the passengers, for their sense of calmness and safety. You interrupted that.”
Ernie seemed confused. He knotted his fist. His face was red, he was embarrassed, and when a young American man is embarrassed-when other people see him as a boob-his natural response is to hit somebody. Violence, in the American mind, will make you seem smarter.
The halaboji read all this in Ernie’s thoughts. He continued to stare up at Ernie, but now his face wasn’t stern. He was calm, waiting patiently for something. For what, I wasn’t sure. I was just hoping it wasn’t a right cross.
Ernie glanced back at me. Mercifully, what must have been a rational thought flitted across his visage like a skittering storm cloud. He turned back to the old grandfather, hesitated, and, at last, lowered his right fist.
I exhaled, not even realizing that I’d been holding my breath.
More mumbling broke out in the crowd; a few of the Korean men would’ve just as soon punched Ernie out. The halaboji motioned for Ernie to follow. He did. I followed them out of the passenger car and back toward the front of the train.
In the dining car, the old man stopped and sat at a table. He motioned for Ernie to sit, and then he stood again and greeted me with a short bow. Suddenly, he didn’t seem old at all. It was because of the traditional getup that I’d assumed he was a grandfather. Now that I looked more closely, I realized that his physique was still sturdy beneath the silk vest and pantaloons, his hair gray on the edges but black on top. I revised my estimate of his age downward to about fifty. Still, he was twice the age of either Ernie or me. After the three of us were seated, a waiter approached and the man spoke.
“Have you ever tried ginseng tea before?”
“Often,” I replied.
He ordered three cups of ginseng tea. We sat silently until the hot brew was served; then the older gentleman raised his handleless cup with two hands, gestured toward us, and drank. Ernie and I did the same. We continued like that, without speaking, until only the dregs of the ginseng powder remained.
The man leaned back and smiled. “My name is Gil,” he said. “Gil Kwon-up. Chief Homicide Inspector of the Korean National Police.”
Every American MP and law-enforcement official in Korea knew of Inspector Gil. But Americans have trouble pronouncing the first letter of Gil’s name. In Korean, the sound falls somewhere between the harsh English k sound and the soft g sound. I listen carefully when Koreans pronounce the letter, and I can replicate the sound reasonably well, but most MPs and CID agents at 8th Army didn’t bother. They referred to Inspector Gil Kwon-up as “Mr. Kill.”
It was said that he’d made his name in law enforcement some twenty years ago, during and after the Korean War, first by hunting down Communist saboteurs who were planting bombs and blowing up trains, buses, and public buildings. Supposedly, Mr. Kill captured or killed dozens of them. After the war, he then turned his attention to the criminally insane: men-and in a few cases women-who’d been driven mad by the brutalities of the Korean War. Some of them had seen such horrific things and suffered so much that only by pain and blood and terror could they somehow continue to live. After the war, madness was common, despair rampant. People who had once been human were now inhuman, capable of the most appalling acts of violence. Inspector Kill, along with other dedicated members of the Korean National Police, had to wipe out those who were incapable of returning to a world ruled by peace.
Kill had been ruthless, we’d been told, wiping out the worst of the criminals-not even bringing them to trial, but rather bringing peace and justice back to the world out of the smoking barrel of his little pistol. And now, disguised as a calm calligrapher, Inspector Kill sat across from us, his hands resting placidly on white linen, studying me over the brim of a porcelain cup.
Finally, he spoke. His English was excellent, which is probably the first thing most G.I. s would notice. He’d almost certainly studied in the States, maybe trained there during the fifties and sixties when anti-Communist cadres around the world were being prepared to fight the Red demons lurking behind both the iron and bamboo curtains.
“The second rape was less daring than the first,” he said, “but more brutal.”
The KNP report, written in Korean, still sat in my AWOL bag back at my seat. I had yet to decipher it.
“A foreign man,” Gil continued, “boarded the southbound Blue Train, either in Seoul or Taejon or East Taegu. We’re not sure which. What we’re sure of is that a woman named Mrs. Hyon Mi-sook departed the train at the end of the line and then made her way through the Pusan Station, dragging two bags and three small children: the oldest, her son, aged nine, and two younger twin daughters. She queued up at the taxi line and eventually caught a cab that took her to the Shindae Tourist Hotel.”
Lodging establishments are divided into three categories in Korea. The lowest is a yoinsuk, nothing more than a building, usually somebody’s residence, with a traditional warm ondol floor heated by charcoal gas flues in the foundation. For a small fee, you rent a sleeping mat and you can spread it out in the communal hall and catch some shut-eye. The next step up is the yoguan, which again is furnished in the traditional Korean style, bedding on the ondol floor. The difference is that the room you rent is separate. The top of the line is the tourist hotel, which is a fully Westernized hotel with central heating, beds and mattresses, and indoor bathrooms with shower stalls and towels.