Sad Peninsula (9 page)

“Truck!” Natsuki bellowed over the noise. “Find a truck. Find a
truck
.”

They did, at the edge of the courtyard. Hustled aboard with other girls, found wooden crates to sit on under the canvas top. When the truck was full, it tore out from the grounds and sped toward the dirt road leading down the hill. Meiko looked to see other trucks lining up behind theirs, each full of girls and soldiers. A hard whistle and then the vehicle directly behind theirs sank under an eruption of flames, a mad bang that seemed to suck the very air out of her mouth. Meiko buried her face in her arms and screamed. Felt Natsuki's face on the back of her neck.

By dawn, everything was silent except for the rattle of the truck beneath them. Meiko awoke to look at the other frightened girls sitting on their crates. Some were holding one other, others were alone in their terror. Meiko turned to see Natsuki staring at her.

“What happened?” she asked.

“We're moving houses,” Natsuki replied. “I'm surprised we lasted this long. I've moved four times since becoming a comfort girl.” Her face grew serious. “That was the worst of the moves. By far.”

F
our days south and they arrived at their new comfort station. Not a house this time but just a camp of wooden structures cobbled together in the dip of a valley. A scorched forest of bare, ashen trees lay just east of it, offering no protection from whatever lay beyond.
Much worse than the house
, Meiko thought as the girls were unloaded from the trucks.
No “comfort” here at all.

The girls lined up in front of the hospital tent for their examinations. Natsuki stood behind Meiko and held her hand while they waited their turn. Why was the line moving so slowly? Meiko thought. It didn't make sense: There were fewer girls now than before, and yet each one seemed to take her sweet time inside the tent. At one point, an officer came by and bullied his way inside to yell at the doctor for taking so long; the girls could hear their curt argument echoing off the canvas from where they stood.

When it was finally Meiko's turn to step through the flap, she found the doctor standing in the pale light, his face soft and unsmiling and yet somehow kind. “Please come in,” he said. “Do you speak Japanese? What is your name? Come in. Please, come. Don't be afraid.” He was an older man, maybe in his forties. His uniform was neat and well-pressed. He took Meiko's hand and helped her up as if she were a lady climbing into a carriage. And then he surprised her by asking permission —
permission
— to look between her legs. Meiko laid back and spread herself for him by rote, not trusting this kindness. But the doctor's fingers were warm and gentle on her. She could sense his eyes fall on the scars of his legs, could feel him wanting to ask about them. But he didn't. When he finished his examination, he sighed and helped her back up. “I'm sorry, my child,” he said. “But you need the injection.”

So in went the 606, the blinding pain and the flush of poison that seeped right into her organs. The doctor told her to go next door to a shack of cots that he had set up for sick girls like her, a quiet place where she could recover. Meiko left the tent under a cloud of nausea and weaved across the camp's macadam of earth. Found the shack, found a cot. Climbed onto it, collapsed under the heaves and her fading consciousness. Waited for Natsuki to come and stay with her like she had before. Twenty minutes, an hour, but Natsuki didn't come. The afternoon bled into evening and there was still no sign of her
unni
. Just these other girls on other cots, lost in the haze of their own injections of 606.

Meiko was out of commission for nearly a month this time. Except for the occasional soldier sneaking into the shack at night and climbing aboard her cot, she was left alone to recover. For those four weeks, she saw no sign of Natsuki. When the doctor came by to check on her, she asked about her friend. “Which one was she?” he asked.
How can I describe her?
Meiko thought.
Aren't we all the same to you, the same mounds of flesh?
“I think I know who you mean,” he said. “I'm sorry, my child. She was not ill, but your friend was … she was carrying something else.” He lowered his eyes. “The arsephenamine … it can kill more than just disease. If you give a strong enough dose, it can kill something else. Your friend … your friend is alone where she is, to recover. I'm sorry, but you won't be seeing her for a long while …”

I
t took another month before Natsuki resurfaced, floating into the girls' mess one day to collapse next to Meiko. She was as pale as snow and large chunks of her hair had fallen out. Meiko embraced her
unni
and wept into what was left of her shoulder.

“The doctor was kind to me,” Natsuki said, almost in a trance. “Did you not find him kind?”

Meiko sobbed and nodded.

“He offered me a choice. The injection — or the hook.”

“Don't speak. Don't speak, my
unni
.”

“Stupid me — the hook would have made more sense.” She ran her tongue over her bloated lips. “It's unpleasant, but only for a few minutes. They stick that wire inside you as far as it will go and then just pull the whole mess out. Instead, I asked for the injection. Why did I do that?” She sucked air through the space left by her missing teeth. “Maybe I wanted two months off.”

“Did you know? Natsuki, did you even know?”

“How could I? I haven't had my period in two years. Too many diseases. But the doctor said it will never happen again. Not for as long as I live.” The leathery flakes of Natsuki's face quavered. “The 606 made sure of that.”

F
ewer men lined up outside Natsuki's stall when she was eventually allowed to go back to work. The extra doses of 606 had left her hideous. There were days when she had no tickets to return to the manager at all. Meiko watched as her
unni
shook her empty ticket box over the manager's podium in a fit of melodrama. “What, don't the boys want me anymore?” she said. She threw her box down, then raised her skirt and waggled herself at the manager. “I still have one of
these
, you know.” The manager came around the podium and kicked her to the floor, kicking her again when she began to laugh. “Back to your stall,” he said. “You sad old hag. Maybe one of our brave men will take pity and fuck you like the dog you are.”

Meiko was not with her
unni
on the evening she brought her empty box to the podium and found it unattended because the manager had gone on a break. Meiko was in her stall, crushed under a noncommissioned officer, her legs wrapped limply over his pounding hips, when she heard strange words reverberating down the wooden hallway. At first she didn't realize what they were, but then it dawned on her: those were
Korean
words; those were
Korean sentences
. She needed another second to realize that it was Natsuki who was screaming them.

“The ledgers! These aren't the same ledgers we had in the other house! Hey! Hey everybody! Listen to me! They aren't keeping records!
These aren't the same ledgers!
”

Meiko heard the clomping of boots in the hall even as her officer's thrusts grew toward their crescendo.
Natsuki, shut up!
she wanted to scream, but the man's lips muzzled her mouth.
Oh, Natsuki, please shut up. They'll kill you, don't you know. Shut up! Stop speaking Korean!

More yells in the hall, more boots on the floor. “You didn't take the ledgers out of the last house, did you? You let them burn. You let our records
burn!
” The sound of the podium banging down onto the floor. It matched the sudden yelp of pleasure that the officer hovering over Meiko gave as he finished his business. When enough of his strength melted away, Meiko scrambled out from under him. Pulled her skirt down over herself and dived through her curtain.

In the main chamber she found a naked Natsuki throwing ledgers at the soldiers who had surrounded her. Other girls had come out of their stalls to see what the commotion was. Natsuki was weeping and holding open a ledger with just a couple months' records in them, wagging it at the Japanese faces closing in on her. “You lying bastards!” she sobbed in Korean. “You haven't been keeping good records. Everything I've worked for.” She backed toward the corner. “Look at me. I was a
woman
. I wanted to be someone's wife. Someone's
mother
. You have taken it …
taken it from me
. No man will want me. No child will spring from my womb. Look at what you've taken.
You haven't been keeping good records of what you owe m
—” An officer finally tackled her to the floor. Pinned her down and then raised her up.

“Everyone, out in the courtyard, now!” the manager screamed at the girls. “Every last one of you!” He pointed at Natsuki's squirming limbs as the soldier lugged her outside. “Look at that girl. Do you think this will stand? We'll show you want happens when you speak your doggerel language among these men.”

This is pointless
, Meiko wanted to yell at him.
You don't speak Korean and most of these girls don't speak Japanese. Nothing was exchanged here. Just let Natsuki go. Beat her and put her to bed. Tomorrow is another day.

But the girls, in various states of dress and dishevelment, were herded out the doors, down past the muddy square, and to the edge of the easterly forest with its burnt, bare trees. The men made the girls line up in an oval in front of a large trunk, its branches a gleaming black from some long ago blaze. Meiko looked over and saw the camp doctor, the doctor who had shown her such kindness, who had given Natsuki the choice — the hook or the injection — standing on the edge of their gathering and arguing with the soldiers about what they were about to do. And the soldiers, just boys really, were
laughing
at him, laughing at his foolish pleas. Soon the manager came pushing through the oval with Natsuki over his shoulder and some hemp rope dragging behind him. Meiko watched the men tie the ropes to her
unni
's wrists and ankles. Natsuki was screaming at them, but not with words that sounded like Korean
or
Japanese. Meiko crushed her palms into her face as the men pulled the ropes tight and strung Natsuki upside down among the lowest branches. Meiko couldn't help it — she let her fingers run down her face to stare at her naked friend, and for a moment their eyes met.
Die quickly
, she wanted to say.
Please don't fight them
. And Natsuki looked back as if to say —
Live slowly, Meiko. Live a long time, despite what you've suffered. And remember this always. Remember the records they didn't keep
.

A soldier pulled his ceremonial sword from its scabbard and climbed onto a crate that someone had set up at the tree's base. He grabbed Natsuki's left breast and hacked it off. The whole tree shook, the branches knocking together like bones. He let the breast fall to the ground like a clump of sand before grabbing her right one and doing the same. Natsuki continued to her yell her non-language as the soldier climbed back down to watch her bleed. Seconds passed but she didn't even lose consciousness. Another soldier appeared with the poker from the main building's charcoal stove, its iron point a blazing orange. He scaled the crate and then smiled down at all the terrorized girls watching, as if this were his moment of fame. He reached around to drive the hot poker between Natsuki's spread legs, shoving it into her like a penis. She sucked a glorious mouthful of air and then wailed a sonorous melody that echoed off the mud. The soldier held the poker there, tight, shaking it with little quivers of his forearm before pulling it out. Another gasp, almost silent, and then Natsuki resumed her monologue of gibberish. The soldier shook his head in disbelief, threw the poker to the ground, and then withdrew his pistol. Meiko's eyes were streaming.
Just die, Natsuki. Why have you chosen this moment to fight them? Just die.
The soldier slid the pistol's barrel into her smoldering vagina and yanked the hammer back. When he pulled the trigger, Natsuki's narrow hips blew apart like a cake dropped on the floor. The tree shook as if pounded by rain. The man climbed down and joined the others to watch. There was another beat of silence and then Natsuki picked up her soliloquy, speaking in a tongue that did not exist. The man with the sword spit out a Japanese expletive and then approached the tree with his weapon raised over his shoulders. For as long as Meiko lived, she would remember this — that it didn't look as if he
cut
her head off; it looked as if he had
knocked
it off, as if his sword were a club and her head a piece of hanging fruit. It fell and bounced like a child's ball onto the mud. And then everything was still. Everything was silent.

Where to let her eyes fall now? Not on the tree. Not on the butchered body that lived in its branches. Meiko instead let her eyes take flight like a crane to the edge of the oval. To the kind, powerless doctor standing there with his shoulders slumped in defeat. And why?
Why
? Because he was not looking at the tree, either. He had been staring at Meiko the entire time.

R
ob
Cruise laughs at me, and then laughs again.

“Rob, shut up.”

“You got the whole ‘pull back,' didn't you?” He mimics Jin's facial expression perfectly. Justin and Jon can't help but chuckle.

“I said shut the hell up.”

Rob blows cigarette smoke out my open bedroom window and into the evening's smoggy showers.

“I hadn't been on a date in a long time,” I tell them.

“You
never
try to kiss a Korean on a first date.”

“Rob, what are you talking about? You
slept
with her the first night you met.”

“That's different.”

Justin and Jon laugh again. Everybody knows things that I don't.

“Ahh, Michael, don't look at me like that. Jin and I never dated. We fucked, once. Ages ago. You're trying to date this girl. The rules are different.”

“He's right, you know,” Jon says. “For Koreans, dating's all about going for coffee for six months and then you're magically engaged.”

“But don't get us wrong,” Rob goes on. “Jin's not like that. She's a cool chick — very modern, very Western. I
love
the fact that she's fluent in English. Did you know it only falters when she's pissed off or horny?”

“Rob, don't tell me these things.”

“Do you want my advice?”

“No, I don't.”

“Well I'm gonna give it to you anyway. Because you're smart about so many things, Michael, but you are fucking stupid about this. Don't invest too much in Jin. I know you're sweet on her, but that chick's nuts. I mean, serious fucking issues.”

“Hey,
I've
got issues.”

“Just stick with me, man,” Rob says. “Play the field. Let me help you. You got so much going on, Michael. You deserve
more.
More than chasing after some girl who doesn't know if she's coming or going. And more than being stuck in this dry spell,” he motions vaguely at my groin, “that's gone on for
how long
now?”

“Rob, I'm not a fucking frat boy. This isn't just about sex for me.”

“Bullshit,” he says. “Bullshit. Bullshit.
Everything
here is about sex.”

Later, we gear up for the bars. While Jon and Justin are putting on their shoes, I pull Rob aside.

“Say, Rob,” I ask him, “how's your little … problem?”

Makes a sweeping gesture at his own groin. “All cleared up.”

“Listen. When you and Jin, you know … is it possible that —”

“No. Not a chance. Believe me. Don't worry about it. Seriously. Don't even let it cross your mind.”

I nod, and when I look back up his grin is wide. “You
are
the same,” he sings at me, proud and, perhaps, relieved. “You are the fucking same.”

I am a little bit the same
, I think.
But I am also a little bit different.

J
in plays the cello. I learn this about her on our second date — dinner and a movie. I learn that she resents it a little despite her proficiency. Lessons were a childhood chore, her mother's insistence. “I hated it,” she says. “She pushed me to practise every day. ‘Jin-su, it's time for the cello … Jin-su, why aren't you rehearsing?' She was always bringing me out to play at parties to impress the neighbours.” I laugh. “You were what we call in English a parlour trick.” She lights up. “Yes exactly! I was a trick. Like a ten-year-old Mozart.”

On our fourth date, we visit the Korean War Memorial in Noksapyeong. It's a huge stone museum laying out the entire history of conflict on the Korean peninsula, going back five thousand years. Jin is great at explaining her country's violent past as we move through the sequential exhibits and dioramas. How does she know so much? Afterwards, we go outside and stroll around giant black statues of South Korean soldiers in various warlike poses. I ask to take a photo of Jin with them and she agrees. I pull out my cheap analog camera — “Ohh, Michael, you should go digital!” — from my satchel while she gets into position at the base of a statue. As I point and focus, I expect Jin to flash the traditional V-sign with her fingers and let out a gleeful
“Kim'cheee!”
— the Korean equivalent of saying “cheese.” She doesn't. She remains still and serious. Then, right before I press the button, her limbs burst into action as she mimics the pose of the statue above her, mimics its stony, stoic face. I think I fall in love with her a little when she does this. I ask about it after I've snapped the picture. She says she finds the cheery V-sign annoying, goofy — like the honeymooners in identical clothes. “I'd rather have the photo capture my
personality
,” she tells me.

Several dates through February and March and I behave myself entirely. I don't try to kiss her again, or anything. Jin seems fine with this arrangement — she is a paragon of personal control. I'm once again curious how Rob could penetrate that citadel of restraint. The boys offer no help: after each outing, I return to Daechi to endure their chants of “Did you fuck her yet? Did you fuck her yet?” I can't bother explaining to them that something else is happening. Jin and I are growing into each other a bit, leaving our mark on one another in gentle, benign ways, like you do with someone after a few dates. I've mastered chopsticks, thanks to her, and expanded my Korean vocabulary five fold. In turn, I've converted her into a coffee drinker following an afternoon visit to my apartment. “I was strictly, how you say, a green-tea person before this,” she says, taking generous sips from one of the pink mugs that came with the apartment, “but you make excellent coffee, Michael.”

Rob Cruise watches these developments from his island of sexual bravado. If he's jealous of the bond that Jin and I are forming, he hides it well. He seems stumped that I would persist with a situation that hasn't led immediately to sex. But of
course
he's stumped. He doesn't understand that my five-year dry spell has been so much more than a lack of physical contact. It has been
everything
in my life, a weight that sits atop me and will not go away. I often refer to it as my permafrost.

M
arch 21, 2003. A date of demarcation — for me, for Rob Cruise, for the world at large. For Rob, this Friday marks his final day at ABC English Planet; he's managed to finish his twelve-month contract without getting fired, and intends to fling forth into a brand new life, into days that will finally be under his control. For me, it's my thirtieth birthday. A segregation between a decade of potential and a decade of rapidly closing doors. Still, there is a festive air in the halls of the
hagwon
, and a crew of us will be heading into Itaewon after work.

Rob has been ecstatic these last few days about his accomplishment. He has been in Ms. Kim's bad books practically since his arrival. The two of them have jousted about the school's pedagogy during countless staff meetings, arguments that leave the rest of us cringing as if doused in cold mud. For properly trained teachers like Rob and Justin, much of what we're asked to do in the classroom makes no sense. Rob has practically made a game of how far he can defy Ms. Kim — but has known, rightly, that she holds all the cards. In the
hagwon
system, the school controls your work visa, rents your apartment for you, and can fire you without cause at any time. The flipside is if you can survive your twelve-month contract, you're legally entitled to a thirteenth month's pay as severance and a free plane ticket home. This is what Rob has been holding out for, and it's vital to his “master plan.” He intends to return to Canada for a couple of months, then fly back to Seoul on his own dime, teach under-the-table privates until the fall, then start the new job he's lined up for himself: a permanent position teaching ESL at Seoul National University.

At the end of the night, we all gather around for a small ceremony for Rob and a couple other teachers who have also finished their contracts. This is Ms. Kim's ritual, perhaps to show she has a
humane
side: she hands out little presents in glittery gift bags to each of the departing teachers as thanks for their year of service. Rob accepts her gift with mock gratitude, bowing deeply to his nemesis and smiling his oily smile. She won't even look at him. Then, before she's even finished handing out the other two gifts, he does the unthinkable: he pulls open the gift bag and yanks out its contents, a felt blue box. He cracks it open to find a silvery pocket watch with the school's logo engraved on the front. He takes the tinkling thing out and holds it up to show everyone while Ms. Kim tenses with horror. This is his final violation of her: in Korea, you
never
open a gift in front of the giver.

We file out of the school's office building and head straight to the curb to hail a taxi. Because it's my birthday, I've been allowed to pick where in Itaewon we're going. I've chosen a proper pub called Gecko's — no dance music or strobe lights anywhere to be found, just dart boards and wooden tables, and a good variety of beer on tap. I'm also keen that it's got a big screen TV with access to CNN. After all, March 21, 2003, is not just my thirtieth birthday and Rob Cruise's last day at the
hagwon
. On the other side of the world, Shock and Awe has begun in earnest.

F
orty minutes later, we arrive at Gecko's to find the place packed; as I suspected, a crowd of GIs and foreign teachers has assembled in front of the large projection TV to watch CNN's coverage of Baghdad giving birth to balloon-like explosions. While the boys fetch me birthday beer, I find us an empty table and look around to see if Jin has arrived. I haven't seen her in a week and a half; she's been in Shanghai on business. I'm still looking when the boys return with sloshing pitchers and glass steins. Justin pours for me. “Is she coming out tonight?” he asks.

“She said she was.”

“It's your birthday,” Rob Cruise says. “Maybe she'll actually give you a
hug
or something.”

“Hey, shut up …”

Trumpets blare and there's Wolf Blitzer in the CNN Situation Room. Iraq's government is in disarray; nobody's sure if Saddam is alive; American tanks are plowing northward from Kuwait; there are rumours of Iraq's National Guard already laying down its weapons, of ordinary Iraqis unfurling American flags in welcome. It's all framed like one big seduction, with Iraq in the role of not-so-coy mistress. I notice that the GIs here are gripped with obvious envy. They long to touch that flush of war — so much more appropriate to their training than the banal peace that has gripped Korea these last fifty years.

There's a tap at my shoulder. “Happy birthday, Michael Barrett!” I turn and see Jin hovering over me. I rise from my bar chair and, much to my shock, she
does
hug me – a big birthday squeeze. Before I can even absorb the feel of her lissome energy in my arms, it's over and she takes the empty seat next to mine.

“How was Shanghai?” I ask, sitting back down.

“Fucking awful,” she replies. “Fourteen-hour days and I didn't make a single sale.” She looks at the TV. “What's going on?”

“Oh, just a war,” Jon Hung replies.

“Just a war,” she repeats, eyeing the screen with a shadow of anxiety. She turns back to me. “Michael, I brought you a present.” She digs into her purse and takes out a gift: it's an exact square (clearly a CD) and wrapped in baby-blue rice paper.

“Thanks,” I say, giving it the mandatory examination before moving it toward my coat pocket.

“No, no, open it now. I don't mind.”

I shrug and begin to pull the wrapping apart to reveal Romantic Classics. I flip it over: Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Liszt, Chopin. “Jin, this is grand.” I reach over to hug her again and strangely, inexplicably, she tenses under the bend of my arm. When I let her go, she nods at the boys. “Did these layabouts buy you anything?”

“Hey, we're buying him drinks.”

“So buy him a drink, Rob Cruise. And get me one, too.”

A
nd buy me drinks he does.

I can't remember the last time I was irretrievably drunk. You know the feeling — when your friends keep yanking you toward reality but all you want is to sink into the swamp of semi-consciousness. You drift down into a kind of wakeful sleep, but then a friend will say your name, maybe shout it out, and it snaps you up, snaps you back to notice that everyone's staring at you —
Your presence is required here
. I'm fine while the beer is flowing, but once the gin/Scotch/double shots of tequila/soju trays start arriving, I begin to phase out of my commitment to lucid conversation. Rob Cruise is a demanding raconteur, especially with the Iraq invasion unraveling on the TV in front of us. He delights everyone with his exploits in the first Gulf War, wants my journalistic insights on what's happening now, on what
will
happen. Someone puts a vodka on ice in front of me and I gulp it down, think of my mother and her obsession with the stuff, drift into the hazy fog that was her shelter from grief. Actually it's not too bad here; I find myself drumming up childhood memories; I had a plastic motorcycle as a toddler and I used to —

“Michael!”

Your presence is required here.

“He's a fucking asshole!” I say, and instantly can't remember who we're talking about. Oh right. Bush. “I wouldn't trust him with a pair of scissors, let alone the presidency.”

My words attract angry stares from some GIs at the next table, and I chuff up to say something to them, something like
Don't flex your triceps at me!
I actually get up to confront them, then black out for a moment. Come back later to discover myself playing darts with Jin on the far side of the pub: I've been taken aside to “cool down.” Jin is
so cute
the way she throws darts like girly-girls do, using her whole body as if trying to knock down the wall. She touches my arm, and questions bubble up from my core. So obvious what I want from her tonight, my birthday wish. I lean in and she leans away, as if I stink. I chase my disappointment down the drain, tell her how disappointed I am. She says something in return, perfect and perfectly neutralizing. I'm hopeless, bloody hopeless. Follow her heart-shaped derriere back to our seats around the TV. A glass of beer will surely stabilize the situation.