“In there,” he said.
It was a four-foot-high opening that was just wide enough for a man to crawl through. The monk handed me the lantern and said, “Go.” Then he swiveled on his leather sandals and quickly trotted back down the trail.
Ernie stepped forward and peered into the cave. “Nothing,” he said. It was completely dark in there.
I stood next to him and breathed deeply. “No smell of incense.”
“Maybe he ran out,” Ernie said.
“After a few days, I suppose so.”
“Must be cold as hell at night.”
“I suppose so.”
We stood in front of the cave. Stalling. Without admitting it to one another, we were both hoping that Pruchert would hear us and come out of the cave on his own. When he didn’t, I looked around. The sun was going down quickly now and Chonhuang Mountain would soon be in total darkness.
“I’ll go in first,” I said.
“No,” Ernie replied. “I’ll go in first. You hold the lantern and stay right behind me.”
“Okay.
He crouched and entered the darkness.
10
National Geographic sometimes runs articles about the mysteries of the underground world, the caves and rivers and lakes that human eyes have never seen. The photographs are beautiful and the caverns they depict breathtaking, but spelunking was not a pastime that I thought would ever appeal to me. Crawling through the moist dirt in this narrow tunnel, holding a flickering lantern in front of me, was anything but my idea of fun. After about ten yards, Ernie scrambled forward. We emerged into a tomblike cavern. I held the lantern aloft.
To our right, atop a stone shelf about four feet high, was an indentation large enough to hold a seated man. We climbed up on the shelf. I poked the lantern into the room-like space. Straw mats had been arranged carefully on the dirt floor, and above them a bronze effigy of the Maitreya Buddha sat serenely on a stone pedestal. Sticks of burnt incense drooped out of a bronze holder. Ernie and I checked the rest of the chamber. There were no exits except the way we’d entered.
“The son of a biscuit took off,” Ernie said.
“Wouldn’t you?”
Ernie spit on the dirt floor. “I wouldn’t come in here in the first place. Not unless I had to.”
“Careful, Ernie. This is a holy place.”
Ernie nodded toward the carved Buddha. “Sorry,” he said.
As fast as we could, we crawled back out of the tunnel.
We pushed through the bead curtain covering the front door of the Chonhuang Teahouse.
“This is more like it,” Ernie said. “Our kind of joint.”
The problem was that they didn’t want to let us in. A middle-aged man stood at the end of a short hallway, waving his palm at us negatively. “Migun andei,” he said. G.I. s not allowed.
“What’d he say?” Ernie asked me, incredulously staring down at the little man.
“He says American soldiers aren’t allowed.”
“Is he out of his freaking mind?”
Ernie reached out and shoved the man aside.
We paraded into the main room, which was mostly booths and a small serving counter, illuminated by the pink shaded light of table lamps. We wandered toward the back and used their bathroom to clean up. When we seated ourselves at a corner booth, we looked fairly presentable-we’d batted most of the dust off our trousers-and, better yet, there were two pretty hostesses waiting for us. Three or four of the other booths were occupied by middle-aged Korean gentlemen, all of them smoking and being served coffee or tea by attractive young ladies. The elderly man who’d tried to stop us from entering puttered around behind the serving counter, shooting us evil stares. The Korean customers didn’t acknowledge our existence. The hostesses assigned to us, however, had no choice.
“Anyonghaseiyo,” one of them said to me, bowing.
I acknowledged the greeting, and, after she asked me what we wanted to drink, I told her coffee for both of us. Out of a stainless-steel pot, she poured boiling water into two porcelain cups filled with Maxwell House instant. She stirred the concoction with a slender spoon and then offered sugar and cream. I took neither. Ernie took two heaping spoonfuls of granulated sugar. Neither of the hostesses spoke English, so I took the conversational lead.
“The Chonhuang Teahouse is very famous,” I said.
“Famous?” The hostess seated next to me opened her eyes wide.
“A G.I. who I know, Robert Pruchert, told me about this place. He said the women who work here are very beautiful.”
It wasn’t such a long shot that Pruchert, after he made good his escape from the monastery, would stop here. This village, known as Chonhuang-ni, was by far the closest village to the temple. And the Chonhuang Teahouse was the only place in the tiny settlement that had a public toilet. The only place where somebody like Corporal Robert Pruchert could clean up after a long walk, and the only place where he could buy a cup of coffee or something to eat before bargaining with a cab driver to drive him the hell out of here. Still, when I mentioned his name, both girls stared at me blankly. I persisted.
“He is studying at the Dochung Temple,” I told them. “He shaved his head. He wants to become a Buddhist monk.”
One of them smiled and placed both her slender hands in front of her mouth. “Oh,” she said. “Bob-bi.”
“Yes,” I replied. “That’s right. Bobby. Bobby Pruchert.”
They exchanged words and then they both turned back to me and started chattering happily. Bobby had come in here more than once, always wearing his russet-colored Buddhist robes, which is why the owner, Mr. Roh, allowed him to come in, because Mr. Roh was devout and would never deny entry to a monk of the Dochung Temple.
“Why doesn’t Mr. Roh usually allow G.I. s?” Ernie asked.
I translated the question. The girls almost cheerfully explained that in the past G.I. s passing through in convoys had occasionally stopped and used the latrine and made a mess. They’d ordered Oscar-the Korean-made sparkling burgundy-or brought in their own soju and gotten drunk and argued with the regular customers.
“Too much trouble,” one of the girls said, summing up the entire American experience.
I turned the conversation back to Pruchert.
He came in here wearing his robes, the girls told me, but he always brought a bag slung over his shoulder. He’d go into the bathroom and change into civilian clothes, and then he was very polite and kind to the girls and he’d order a plate of pork fried rice; and when he was finished, the cab driver would come and take him away.
“The cab driver?” I asked.
“Yes,” the girls replied. There was only one in town, the same man who even now was sitting outside in his hack.
“Where did Bobby go?” I asked.
The same place every time, one of the girls told me. They knew because Kwok the cab driver bragged about the large fare he was paid.
Ernie was leaning forward now, his coffee finished, catching much of what was being said.
“And where was that?” he asked in English.
I translated.
The girls answered in unison.
“Taegu,” they told us. “Bobby always went to Taegu.”
“Where in Taegu?” I asked.
At that, they shrugged their slender shoulders. We’d finished our coffee and exhausted the totality of their knowledge concerning Corporal Robert R. Pruchert. I slipped them a thousand-won note, thanked them, and left.
Kwok, the cab driver, made me bargain for his information.
“Business is not good,” he told me in Korean. “Nobody takes a cab anymore. Rich man has his own car now. Not like before. G.I. no come no more. Maybe sometimes I carry pigs or chickens from one village to next. That’s it.”