He waited until Tanner had departed again to return it; the reverend had gone off to Seoul, for a dinner meeting with some other clergy. Just after Sylvie left the children for the aunties to take care of for the rest of the evening he went to the cottage. He knocked on the door and called inside. He knocked again. When there was no response he stepped inside, calling “Mrs. Tanner.” The cottage was a three-room railroad flat, with a front sitting room and a rudimentary kitchen with a washbasin and tub in the middle and at the rear a small bedroom with a window and back door. He had often sat with Reverend Hong in the front room and he was surprised to see that a single cot had been brought in and jammed in the corner, with a proper double bed in the bedroom. The rear door was slightly ajar and when he pulled it in he saw her sitting in a chair in the tiny weed-choked plot with her head down in her lap, like she’d been ill. The sky was a curdled mass of high clouds lit in their bellies by the dusky light, the top of her white blouse aglow like dying coals, cooler blue beneath. She was wearing khaki trousers, but she was oddly barefoot.
“Are you okay?” he said.
She startled with the sound of his voice. “My goodness, you scared me.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she said, catching her breath. Her eyes were glassy, shimmering as she looked up at him. But she hadn’t been crying. In fact she now smiled, with a strangely easy languor. “You have my book.”
He gave it to her. She pressed it in her lap and thanked him. It was somehow difficult for him to meet her eyes. Her pupils were so small that the gray-green of her irises seemed as large as coat buttons.
“You left very quickly.”
“Did I?” she said absently. She was now leaning back in the chair like she was near-paralyzed, her wide, pretty mouth slightly hanging open. “Maybe I did. I don’t know why I feel I should be ready and present whenever he comes back. Ames isn’t at all needy, that way, but I want him to see me when he returns, even if he doesn’t care and he’s constantly coming and going anyway. I didn’t even know he was going into Seoul for dinner.”
“Is he coming back tonight?”
“Later, yes,” she said. “Did you look at the book?”
“No,” he answered, though not exactly sure why.
“I’m glad. There’s no reason for you to read it,” she said.
“Why’s that?”
“It’s about a battle. Someone who was a soldier doesn’t need to know any more about that.”
“And you do?”
She was silent for a moment, running her hand over the book’s cover. “Maybe, yes. Like most people, I have my own problems and get wrapped up in things. Everything seems so important. But despite the signs, sometimes I forget what’s happened all around us here. The enormity of it. The cause of all this.”
“You should have been a soldier,” he said to her. “Then you’d be dying to forget.”
Her eyes flashed at him, which at first he took as edged with anger but then realized instead was a disarmed recognition, as if he’d poked through some hard wall. But then she went back to the way she was before, slack again, and she seemed to be washed over by a wave of dizziness and nausea. He asked if she needed to lie down.
“Okay.”
He had to help her to her feet, pulling on both hands, and for a moment she teetered and leaned into him as they went inside. She walked as if the floor were pliant. She passed the bed in the bedroom and when they reached the front room she lay down on her side on the cot in the corner.
“I left the book out there. Again.”
“I’ll get it.”
“Listen, Hector,” she said. He liked the way she said his name, with a faintly Spanish inflection. Not so hard, or Aegean. “I’m so terribly thirsty. Would you get me some water, too?”
Out in the back there was a pump and he let the water run until it was very cold before filling the mug. He picked up the book on the way and when he got back to the front her arms were turbaned about her eyes. He watched her for a long moment.
“Mrs. Tanner,” he finally said, if too softly. She didn’t stir.
He didn’t try to rouse her. He understood now what was the matter with her; he’d seen her kind back in Seoul. Most all of the servicemen and ex-servicemen like himself, and the aid workers and newly arriving businessmen, preferred the scores of lounges and bars, but there were a few places for those who had acquired a special taste, from a stint, say, in Shanghai or Rangoon, or from the treatment of an injury. He examined her closely now, her wrists and her arms, and was surprised to see them unblemished. Perhaps he was wrong. But her leg slipped over the edge of the cot and when he lifted her cool ankle to set it right he could see them, a perfect line, a dozen tiny healed marks tattooing the nook of her heel, the last one still weeping a pin-dot of red.
SIX
THE NEXT DAY at the morning meal the Tanners ate among the children, as always, Sylvie’s heel tucked inside her blue canvas sneaker. Hector sat by himself at the far corner of the pavilion. She was animated and laughing and joking with the children and didn’t look over at him, but Tanner acknowledged him with a typically direct, if bloodless, nod. Hector wondered if he even knew about her habit. Maybe she hardly knew herself.
She could certainly believe all was in order. The atmosphere had changed since their arrival. The orphanage was named New Hope, for obvious reasons, and it surely was that for these children, but there had always been certain reminders of a natural limit to the notion, maybe found in the spartan meagerness of the surroundings, the children’s worn, ill-fitting clothes, but now the air in the play yard seemed eminently clearer and fresher, as if a vibrant, sturdy fir had suddenly taken root in their midst, its limbs heavy with sticky needles. The children were orbiting about Sylvie in ever-denser clusters, following her lead to the last letter and note as she taught them old camp songs and games like Red Rover and Telephone. She had also bought a brand-new soccer ball when she was last in Seoul, and after classes and chores (Tanner would always retire to the cottage, to read or go over plans), she’d often run around with them until suppertime and have to switch teams in the middle to prevent arguments, and it wasn’t hard to see how any of them could begin to forget that she hadn’t always been a part of the orphanage, and wouldn’t always be so in the future.
They began their play in the late afternoon. Hector never tried the game and this was his excuse for not joining in but often now he’d pause at his work and watch the action, the more sporting boys quicker than everyone except for Sylvie, who wasn’t so much skilled as determined; she seemed intent on keeping the contest fair and getting everyone involved, and with her long legs she could protect the ball and keep them at bay so that the more tentative boys and girls could get touches and shots at the goal. She wore light cotton men’s trousers, which she cinched tight with a doubled length of rope; by the end, her knees and flanks would be dusted brick-red from the clayey dirt of the yard. When she took a break she led the rest of them on the sidelines in chants and cheers, and here, too, there’d be a competition among them to see who could sing the loudest, not for their own esteem of course but for the sake of gaining Sylvie’s, and for brief moments Hector almost felt as though he were a young boy again in Ilion, sitting in the high school field bleachers with his father, the crisp autumn air thrumming with hoarse, happy voices.
The only child who never played or cheered was June. Hector sometimes saw her slip into the high brush of the valley, or into the dormitory, making a point of disappearing for the entire time. It was as if June couldn’t bear the sight of the others enjoying Sylvie’s company, even as it was evident to all how special her own position was. But one afternoon she emerged from the brush behind Hector’s quarters and stood leaning against the corner of the building as he cleaned rust from some tools with a scraper and a rag soaked in kerosene. The game now was especially spirited, for it was the boys against the girls and Sylvie, and he could see in her tensed chin that June was wanting to join the action.