Festival for Three Thousand Women (7 page)

When they got to the house Judo Lee opened the door for the Goma, who was struggling along under Bobby's trunk. Headmaster Kim and Mr. Soh were there too, and when Policeman Kim came out Bobby was introduced. He was a broad man of about fifty, who shook Bobby's hand gently, letting him feel the excess flesh of his palm.

“I am rarely home,” he said. “But we are glad to have you.” He spoke quietly and Bobby could see why he and Mr. Lee were friends. He imagined that their judo matches were full of all kinds of protocol.

Bobby met the children and the grandmother and Policeman Kim's wife, and then everyone took off their shoes and stepped up into the main part of the house to look at Bobby's room. The house was square and contained four rooms and a kitchen. Policeman Kim and his wife shared one room and the grandmother and daughter another. The bad English student was in the smallest room by himself, and Bobby's was the second largest. It had a warm floor and was three times the size of his room at the inn. The Goma brought the trunk in and looked around, his eyes wide but keeping his mouth shut, just as Bobby'd told him he must.

“This is very fine,” said Bobby. “I will try not to be a bother.”

Policeman Kim chuckled and turned to nod his approval to Judo Lee. Then, as quickly as they had come, everyone left. Bobby had expected that they might all sit around a while, but the day had been long and the cold night was coming in fast. Headmaster Kim kept rubbing his hands together and sighing, clearly happy to be rid of the burden of finding Bobby a home, and Mr. Soh left without having said a word. This time Bobby's Korean had sufficed. Only the Goma hung about the entrance to the house longer than anyone else. “Good-bye, Goma,” Bobby said. “We'll be seeing each other soon.” He then stepped back into the expansiveness of his new room and closed the door.

Bobby had grown accustomed to the solitude of the inn, for he was surprised when, before he had a chance to organize his things, the grandmother came back in carrying cups on a tray. She was accompanied by the two children. “Let's have some tea!” she shouted. “Maybe I should bring some food!”

Though she was diminutive and old, the grandmother's voice boomed through the house, and when they all sat down, Bobby looked at the children.

“So,” he said, “how would you like to learn some English while I'm here?”

The little girl, whose name was Heh Sook, covered her mouth, and the boy turned red, but neither of them spoke.

“Sorry,” yelled the grandmother. “They don't speak English!”

“I know,” said Bobby. “I wasn't asking whether they spoke English, but whether they'd like to learn.”

All of what he had said was in absolutely correct and clear Korean and he was getting irritated. Why was it that no one ever opened their ears when he spoke? Why did they always expect not to understand?

“Not a bit of it!” hollered the grandmother. “Nothing! Not a word!”

This old woman looked hearty enough, but the effort of screaming everything was too much and before she could say anything more, or before Bobby could, she had a coughing fit that simply would not end. She splattered phlegm all about the room, sending armies of germs into Bobby's mouth and lungs. She slumped forward and coughed and coughed. For a few seconds Bobby and the children waited for the fit to stop, but shortly it became clear that they were in for a long wait. Once or twice the grandmother gained slight control over her tremors and put a finger up in the air, but just then the coughing would take over again and away she'd go. Finally Bobby looked at the boy.

“Get her some water, can't you?” he asked.

This time either the boy understood or he got the idea at the same time, for he stood and went quickly back out of the room. The grandmother was coughing on like an old car, and the little girl saw the concern in Bobby's face.

“Do not worry,” she said. “She always coughs like this. She's got tuberculosis.”

The little girl's face lit up and Bobby looked toward the side of the room. There were bits of the grandmother's phlegm on his sleeve and the memory of some of it hitting his face came back to him. He moved a little on his cushion, pulling himself up. “Has she seen a doctor?” he asked.

The boy who was bad in English came back in with his father, who was carrying water.

“Here, Mom,” he said, “drink up.”

The old woman pushed one blind claw into the air, swinging it around until her son caught it and guided it around the glass. He kept hold of it until she gulped a little of the water down. “There, there,” he said.

To Bobby's surprise, the water worked a miracle and the coughing stopped. The grandmother's head hung like carrion and Policeman Kim looked at Bobby.

“I think that's enough for tonight,” he said softly, and Bobby realized that the man believed his mother had choked on English, that Bobby had started right in teaching her and that the words had gagged her as she tried to bring them up.

“Fine,” Bobby said. “Of course.” He stood and took one side of the grandmother, with Policeman Kim on the other. “This doesn't happen often,” said Policeman Kim. “Only once in a while.”

Lifting the woman off the floor, they carried her out of Bobby's room and back into her own. “Ugh,” she said. “Ugh, ugh.” Once she was safely down again Bobby went back to his own room quickly and closed the door, but in a moment, when he listened, he could hear nothing coming from the old lady's room and he calmed a bit, laughing at the odd sequence of events. The room, after all, was wonderful, the light on the ceiling far brighter than his other light had been. His Peace Corps trunk returned to its normal size in this room, and his books and papers had a desk on which to rest.

Bobby was sleepy and could see his bedding spread neatly against the nearest wall. It was late and there was school again tomorrow, with real teaching and no more rabbit stew. He took his clothes off and climbed under his heavy quilt. As he was settling himself he began to hear the old grandmother coughing again in the other room. This time, however, she sounded as though she was in control, as though she'd be able to stop herself if this fit of hers went on for too long.

Six in the third place means: A man permits himself to be oppressed by stone, and leans on thorns and thistles
.

 

I
t has somehow not become clear yet that Taechon was situated only eight kilometers from a famous beach. There were two Taechons, really—Taechon village and Taechon Beach. The beach, however, like the school heating, had a distinct season, so during the weeks that Bobby had been in town it had not occurred to any of the teachers to take him there. But he had heard of the beach often, and on the weekend before Christmas vacation he decided to go and see it for himself.

It was a rainy Saturday afternoon when Bobby headed out of the house and down past his old inn to the bus stop. He was wearing his heavy overcoat with heavy clothing underneath, and as he passed the inn he pulled his collar up, hoping to avoid the Goma. The inn, however, looked closed, the Goma nowhere in sight. The bus stop was near the train station, so Bobby kept an eye out for the crazy woman as well, but she too was gone. The streets, in fact, were nearly empty. Only a few children were around, coming back from their last Saturday at school before winter vacation, clustered together on the road.

Bobby had the bus to himself and as they wove back through the town he finally did see the Goma, freezing in his threadbare shirt, hopping around the side of the building with a bucket of trash. Soon, however, they were on a road out past the school and into the country, the rice fields shining wet from the side of the road but nobody waving from anywhere for the bus to stop.

There was a kind of town square at the beach, a quirky little turnaround area with a frozen, decrepit fountain at its center. The driver whirled around the fountain, popped the door open and told Bobby to get out fast. “Last bus back is at six o'clock,” he said.

As Bobby walked away he buttoned his overcoat again, though the beach felt warmer than the town. And when he finally stopped to get his bearings he realized that this season business was serious stuff. Nothing was open out here, not a hotel or a shop of any kind. He counted six closed hotels, all on the beach side of the street, and all in the kind of faded disrepair that twenty years of summers had caused.

Bobby walked the length of the street and then found a path that cut down to the beach. As he walked on the sand, he watched the wind lifting bits of debris about, the whitecaps as they moved toward shore. This was the Yellow Sea and he was facing China and there was no one, anywhere, but him. This beach did not look very much like the coastline near his grandmother's house, but it did give him the same feeling of loneliness that he'd had at home, and he remembered Carl Nesbitt's fist again, the way he'd sucked it in between his rolls of fat. On that beach he had watched couples stroll, even in winter, arm-in-arm up into the foggy brush.

To Bobby's right the beach seemed quickly to end in rocks, so he turned left and walked south along the Korean peninsula, imagining as he stepped just where he was in the world and where he ought to be. He was terribly lonely for the first time, but when he tried to think of who he might like to have there with him, no one came to mind. There was only his grandmother; there was Carl Nesbitt, of course. Others had passed through his life quickly, leaving little of themselves for him to hold onto.

Bobby walked to a bend around which he could see nothing but sand and brush and water, no signs of other life at all. He was beginning to feel really cold now, with the new rain needling him and the wind cutting in between the folds of his coat, and he wished he had not let the little bus go back into Taechon alone. Suddenly, though, a voice bleated at him from a spot some distance away. “Baaa,” the voice said, and Bobby was reminded of sheep on a hillside, of the springtime countryside on the side of his grandmother's house opposite the beach.

“Baaa! Baaa!”

Though he looked toward where he thought the voice came from, he saw nothing but a bunch of slippery boulders facing the churning sea. He stood still, and in a second one of the boulders stood up, pointed a machine gun at him and spoke again.

“Baaa!”

He had been thinking in English. This was no sheep but a Korean saying, “Hands up.”

Bobby raised his hands slowly and on the way put his collar down, exposing his foreign face. The soldier was dressed to melt into the rocky seascape, with seaweed hanging down from his helmet in a strangely feminine way.

And the soldier had seen that Bobby was not Korean, for when he got closer he spoke in English: “Who goes there?”

“It's only me,” Bobby answered. “The Peace Corps volunteer from Taechon village.”

But speaking in Korean seemed to have been a mistake. The soldier didn't lower his rifle but waved it, up toward the higher ground, telling Bobby to march in front of him. “North Korean spy,” he said.

They marched off the beach and through the brush until they came to the gate of a small army compound. Another soldier stood at the gate, and Bobby's captor gave him the first evidence that he wasn't taking things too seriously when he saw the other man. He clowned for the new man a bit, raising and lowering his rifle and sticking out his tongue.

“What do you think, Pak?” he asked the other man. “Is this a North Korean spy?”

Pak didn't understand Bobby's captor's desire to toy with him. “No,” he said simply. “He's the Peace Corps volunteer from Taechon village.”

Bobby's captor lowered his rifle and gave his friend a disgusted look. “He's not supposed to walk this far down the beach,” he said. “What are we going to do?”

He still hoped to throw a scare into Bobby and Bobby was more than willing to go along, but Pak simply said, “Take him down and turn him over to the teacher,” and the captor nodded, telling Pak to watch the beach while he was gone.

There were paths all around the army compound and Bobby was told to stay on them, still walking in front of the soldier but noting this time that his rifle was down.

After about five minutes, when his adrenaline had diminished enough for him to be getting cold again, they came to a little clearing where a farmhouse stood. The soldier told Bobby to wait while he went inside. Bobby noticed that the sea was visible again through the trees. They had curved around and come out on the other side of the rocks that the soldier had been guarding. They had now reached higher ground.

The soldier was only gone a moment, but as soon as he left children began to appear, coming around both sides of the house to look. Bobby would have spoken to them, some of whom he recognized from school, but the soldier came out and went back up the path without so much as a farewell. And standing in the doorway, smiling slightly and cleaning his glasses on his tie, stood Mr. Kwak. Bobby still had his hands up, and Mr. Kwak waited until he put them down.

“Taechon Beach is off-limits during the winter season,” Mr. Kwak said slowly. “I think there is a sign, but it is written only in Korean.”

“I didn't see it. If I had seen it I could have read it,” Bobby said.

Mr. Kwak nodded, and then stepped back, inviting him into the house. He had heard the competitive note in Bobby's voice and said, “I would be happy to speak to you only in Korean, if you wish. After all, it is the only way that you can continue to learn.”

Though his English was again delivered slowly, it was faultless, and Bobby realized how juvenile he must have sounded.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “It's just that among Peace Corps volunteers, ability in Korean is a bone of contention.”

Mr. Kwak's English was old-fashioned and deliberate, and when Bobby heard himself speaking, he realized that he was echoing Mr. Kwak's style, playing a role.

They stepped into the main room of Mr. Kwak's house but the children stopped quietly at the door. This room faced the sea and had such a large window that all of the rain and leaves, even the clouds off the bluff, seemed to cling directly to it. It gave Bobby the feeling of being outside but warm.