The front door of the hooch creaked open. Miss Choi drummed a little faster. A figure in white stepped out onto the porch. Then she stepped off the porch, slipping into her plastic sandals, and followed a flagstone walkway until she stood just a few feet from us. Moonlight reflected off a pock-marked face: the Widow Po.
I expected her to smile at Ernie. After all, they’d practically been intimate during the kut. Instead, she ignored us and frowned at Miss Choi.
“You insult me,” the Widow Po said in Korean.
“These are good men,” Miss Choi retorted. “And you asked me to bring them to the kut. This is your doing.”
“You expect I will hurt them?”
Miss Choi stopped drumming, slipped the instrument back into her bag, and pulled out a long red scarf embroidered with gold thread. I couldn’t make out what it said but the embroidery was clearly stylized Chinese characters. She draped the scarf over her head.
The Widow Po took a step backward.
“You are insolent,” she said. “Do you think I can’t ward off evil spirits on my own?”
“Not evil spirits,” Miss Choi said. “I want to ward off you. You must have some plan. It is not me who brought these men here tonight. It is you.”
The Widow Po turned to me and then slowly turned to Ernie. She smiled.
“I should offer you tea,” she said in English.
“Not necessary,” Ernie replied. “We just want to ask you some questions.”
“Will you be able to appease the troublesome spirit who has been haunting me?”
“That’s up to you,” I said. “How old are you?”
Her eyes widened. “A woman should never answer such a question.”
“American women shouldn’t,” I said. “Korean women are proud of their age.”
She smiled again. “I am older than you think.”
“Old enough to have known Moretti?”
Miss Choi pulled a small prayer wheel out of her bag, started spinning it, closed her eyes, and chanted softly beneath her breath.
We waited.
Far below in Seoul, neon sparkled and an occasional horn honked. The orange moon was completely above the horizon now. Miss Choi’s gentle chanting seemed to encourage its glow. Finally, the Widow Po spoke.
“I knew him,” she said. “I was young then. And beautiful. Yes, beautiful,” she repeated, as if I had challenged her. “Despite the marks on my face I was beautiful. We were never married in your Yankee way, what with all your military paperwork. It was only there to discourage American GIs from marrying Korean women. But we were married in the proper way, taking vows before the Goddess of the Underworld, swearing that our devotion would be eternal. That we would never part. Not like you Americans who change husbands and wives so often.”
She was speaking Korean now. Ernie couldn’t understand but he was following the intensity in her voice. I struggled to understand every word.
“But Moretti was like all you Americans, consorting with evil. With that woman called Whiskey Mary …”
Ernie understood that.
“… and with the girls who worked for her. And who knows who else? He wouldn’t come home. He wouldn’t perform the filial rights during the autumn harvest or visit the graves of my ancestors and introduce himself to them. He laughed at such things. Laughed!”
Now she was crying, her lips quivering in rage.
“When he was gone, I had to make a living. Not by finding another GI like so many women did but by honoring my ancestors. By doing this.”
She waved her arms to indicate the totality of the little village of shamans and mediums.
“When he was gone,” I said. “He was gone because you killed him.”
The Widow Po stared into my eyes a long time. Miss Choi’s chanting grew more rapid.
“Yes,” the Widow Po said. “I killed him. I had no choice. He was dishonoring me. He was dishonoring the Goddess of the Underworld.”
“And the Korean police left you alone.”
The Widow Po smiled through her tears and thrust out her chest. “They were afraid of me.”
“You allowed Whiskey Mary to go to prison.”
Widow Po shook her head rapidly. “For a while. There was no choice. But I sent spirits to protect her.”
I briefly translated everything that had been said to Ernie. He took a step toward the Widow Po. Miss Choi stopped chanting, alarmed.
“Why did you ask Miss Choi to bring us to the kut?”
“Because Moretti kept interrupting me,” the Widow Po answered, looking surprised, as if it should be obvious. “Sometimes he took over the whole ceremony, upsetting everyone. Making my clients unhappy. How can they talk to their dead parents if some GI is always in the way?”
Miss Choi translated the answer for Ernie.
Ernie grabbed the Widow Po’s elbow. Miss Choi gasped.
“Moretti won’t be interrupting any more kuts,” Ernie said. “Because you’ll be in the monkey house. No kuts allowed.”
The Widow Po understood the GI slang. Monkey house meant prison.
I was watching intently and as best I could tell, the Widow Po made no move. But maybe the light was bad, or maybe the glow from the orange moon and the candlelight in the hooch and the neon flashing from the city below caused me to miss something. But suddenly a rush of air escaped from Ernie’s mouth and he doubled over as if punched by a two-by-four.
Miss Choi resumed her chanting, frantic now, garbling her words.
Ernie knelt in the dust. The Widow Po spoke once again in broken English.
“No monkey house. The Widow Po no go there. I show Moretti he can’t beat me. That’s why I called you. No one will ever know what I did to him. No one alive.”
A glimmering butcher knife slipped out of the Widow Po’s long sleeve.
Before I could move, Miss Choi shouted and leapt toward the Widow Po.
The knife was in the air but Miss Choi rammed head first into the body of the Widow Po. Amazingly, the mudang maintained her balance and hopped back a few steps, still holding the knife. I ran toward Ernie but he was in so much pain that he couldn’t rise to his feet.
The Widow Po bounced nimbly on the balls of her feet, holding the butcher knife aloft, her long hair swaying loose in the mountain breeze, daring us to come at her.
I grabbed Miss Choi and held her. She bowed her head once again and started her chant. A different one this time, more guttural. Not Korean, I didn’t think. As if she were speaking some ancient language of the dead.
The Widow Po stopped bouncing. The knife dropped from her hand. She took a huge intake of breath, held it, and then a roar emitted from her frail frame. A roar of pain. Deep voiced. Thundering. The voice of a wounded man.
The Widow Po staggered, clutching her chest. She twisted, turned, knelt to the ground. She roared again in her deep-throated voice and then spat blood straight out into the air.
I rushed toward her but before I could reach her she crumpled to the ground. I turned her over. Still breathing. A pulse in her neck but she was out cold.
I rushed back to Ernie. He was on his feet, staring at me. “What happened?”
“She sucker punched you.”
“How the hell did she manage that?”
I looked back at the Widow Po. She still hadn’t moved. “I don’t know.”
Miss Choi was on her feet now, no longer chanting. She pulled off her white skirt and blouse, revealing blue jeans and a red T-shirt below. Carefully, she stuffed the white clothing in her canvas bag.
Lights flickered on throughout the village. Electric bulbs. A television chattered to life. The announcer spoke in rapid Korean: Ilki yeibo. The weather report.
People emerged from their hooches, completely ignoring Miss Choi and Ernie and me, except for three neighbor woman who approached and tried to help the moaning Widow Po to her feet. The exhausted mudang collapsed, the muscles in her legs like straw. I stepped forward to help but the women waved me back. Unbidden, two men emerged from a nearby home. Together the five of them carried the Widow Po back into her hooch.