“I called for Doctor Hwang,” she said. “He should be expecting us.”
I’m not sure if the young man understood. His face remained blank, but he turned abruptly and started to walk away. Captain Prevault followed, as did I.
The place was quiet. We were obviously outside of their regular duty hours, and only a skeleton crew would handle the night shift. As our feet clattered on tile corridors, I started to realize this place was bigger than it looked from outside. We turned right and then left and climbed a short flight of stairs until we stood in front of a very narrow elevator. I’d seen them before in downtown Seoul, appearing as if they were squeezed into a building as an afterthought or purposely made tiny to save money. The young man pressed the button and the door slid open a few feet. The three of us stepped into the elevator, crammed together tightly, each of us staring in a different direction so as not to wash our fellow passengers with hot breath.
Our floor said six, and the young man pressed the button for two. The little elevator shuddered and descended into the bowels of Bukhan Mountain. I felt as if I were in a coffin. The elevator wheezed and moved down fitfully. Finally, it slowed, then shuddered, and the narrow doors slid open. Captain Prevault got off first. I tried to wait for the white-smocked technician, but he insisted I precede him.
We stood in a smooth walled cubicle with a single bulb glowing above us. The bulb was incased in an iron cage. There was nothing here that could be broken, or used as a weapon.
Brusquely, the technician hurried down a long corridor. I was expecting “tiger cages” like I’d seen pictures of at the Long Binh Jail in Vietnam or rock-hewn cells like I’d seen before in the Korean “monkey houses.” Instead, the technician led us through a double door into a spacious lawn with wrought iron chairs and matching round tables. Beyond that, a gentle slope dropped off into a valley lined with narrow walkways that led to stands of willow trees and small tile-roofed buildings adorned with bulbs blinking merrily in the brisk autumn air. On the far side of the valley, about three quarters of a mile away, the sister peak of Bukhan Mountain rose sharply, its jagged silhouette illuminated now by a low-hanging moon. To the right and to the left, the valley was similarly walled off.
Captain Prevault leaned close to me. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“It’s like a bowl, in the center of the mountains.”
“Yes, a safe place for patients to recover. I wish Eighth Army had a similar facility.”
“What does Eighth Army have?”
“The stockade in Pupyong.”
The silent technician motioned for us to sit. Dr. Prevault strolled toward one of the tables but continued to stand, arms wrapped tightly across her chest, turning in slow circles as she enjoyed the beautiful cool evening and the fresh breeze wafting into the valley from the mountains above. Night birds trilled and wings fluttered, even at this late hour.
The technician disappeared back into the building. I studied the light shining from the homes in the valley below us. There didn’t seem to be anybody moving about, no central hub of activity. So far, there were no zombie-like mad men shuffling toward us, animated by murderous obsession. I felt safe. It was quiet and peaceful.
The technician reappeared with a steaming brass pot and set it on a white towel he folded and placed in the center of the table. Then, from the pockets in his tunic, he produced two porcelain cups. With his open palm he gestured toward the pot.
“Thank you,” Captain Prevault said and sat down primly. The man poured her a cup of steaming barley tea. With both hands, she lifted the cup, sipped tentatively, and then smiled and thanked the man again. He poured me a cup, set down the brass pot, and backed away.
I tasted the tea. Hot, earthy. Little lumps of barley bounced against my lip.
We sat in silence for a while. Finally, I broke the ice. “Who are we waiting for?”
“I told you. Doctor Hwang.”
“You also said he’s both a doctor and a patient.”
“Yes. It’s sort of a long story.”
“Looks like we have time.”
“After the war,” she said, referring to the Korean War, which had ended twenty years ago, “there was so much death and devastation, so many orphans and people separated from their families, that no one was surprised by the widespread prevalence of mental illness. But it was more than that. The war had been so intense and so disruptive, turning almost everyone in the country into a refugee or worse. You might say that, in a real sense, the entire country had gone mad.”
She paused and sipped her tea. In the valley below, branches swayed and leaves rustled.
“Doctor Hwang did what he could. But there were only a handful of trained mental health professionals in the country. The mentally disturbed were handled in traditional ways, which could mean by medical practitioners or even by shamans, but usually it meant they were handled by the police.”
And eliminated by the police, I thought.
Without warning, someone was standing beside us. Startled, Captain Prevault rose. “Doctor Hwang,” she said. Involuntarily, her right hand touched her neck.
I stood also.
A small man stood before us. In the ambient light, I could see he was dei mori, as the Koreans call it, bald on the top of his head with flecks of grey at the temples. He wore the plain cotton tunic and white pantaloons of a peasant from the Chosun Dynasty. His shoes were rubber slippers with the toe pointed upward. The only part of the traditional outfit he lacked was the broad-brimmed horsehair hat. It was as if he’d been in a hurry and had forgotten to put it on. He was a sturdy man, not fat, not skinny, and his face, although lined, was set in a non-committal, albeit pleasant, gaze. He bowed to Captain Prevault and then regarded me.
“Agent Sueno,” Captain Prevault said. “He’s the one I told you about.”
Without changing his expression, Dr. Hwang performed an elegant bow, straight from the waist. I bowed in return. He didn’t offer to shake hands, so I didn’t either.
“Come,” he said, already heading down the long lawn.
Captain Prevault’s eyes widened in an expression of exasperation, but she grinned and tilted her head for me to come along. She gathered up her bag and we followed the quiet little man down into the valley.
We sat on a wooden bench hewn out of a log. Straw-thatched homes surrounded a dirt-floored central courtyard. Villagers stood and squatted, some of them clapping rhythmically as a woman twirled in the center of the circle, with a human rainbow of red, blue, green, and yellow ribbons. She chanted some ancient song and banged on a drum that was looped by a hemp rope over her shoulder. As we sat mesmerized, someone leapt out of the crowd. Women squealed. It was a barefoot man, dressed in white, raising his knees high, as if stepping over knife blades, dancing to the rhythm. He held a brightly painted wooden mask in front of his face, a mask with a huge grimacing red mouth and green eyes flashing evil.
He ran after the woman. She darted away from him but the rhythm of the music grew faster and all around eyes widened and mouths gaped as the demon pursued the shaman. Finally, she stopped and threw her arms toward the heavens and chanted as if directly to the gods. She staggered, gripping her chest, and then struggled back to her feet, as if she had just received a jolt of power. She reached into the folds of her skirt and pulled out a naht, a wooden-handled sickle. Using it, she smote the demon, who backed away snarling, twisting out of her reach, doing his best to avoid the slashing blade until he finally crouched and bowed and retreated from the central square. The shaman banged more on her drum, slowed, and then bowed to the thunderous applause of the crowd and skipped away into the darkness.