Seoul Survivors (7 page)

Sydney rolled her eyes. Just because she had once called his Gotcha in tears from the most confusing train station ever built. Soon enough she was really going to get lost, disappear into Hongdae, maybe, like Jin Sok had suggested: get a secret launch pad of her own. But it would be nice to watch 3D-TV during the long taxi-rides to her shoots. And it didn't sound like tonight was going to be tough—maybe it would all go down in Hollywood's, with its cheesy Barry White soundtrack and giggling hostesses, and she wouldn't have to wind up in King Club, with that deafening monster rap and
those scary Russian hookers baring their rotting teeth at her whenever she went to the toilet.

She treated Johnny to her most winsome smile. “Plus my regular pay, right?”

“Hey now, I wouldn't let my little girl run out of pocket money, would I? Here, open up: longest day of the year and you're working double time—you got to eat.”

His snake lips parting in his version of a grin, Johnny lifted his chopsticks to Sydney's mouth. She bit the piece of crispy beef and pulled it slowly into her mouth, letting a trickle of grease slide down her chin. Beneath the table, Johnny grabbed her calf and pressed her bare foot against his groin. His cock was rock-hard. She glanced around the restaurant, squeezed once with her toes, then wrested her leg away.

He laughed, and took another swig of his beer. “Hey—” he lowered his voice, “let's finish up here and I'll take you home and lick you out, how's that? I've been thinking about the taste of that sweet blonde pussy all day.”

He didn't get it, and he never would. She was a top model now. He couldn't talk to her like that in public. But he held her gaze, breaking it only to rake her chest with his eyes, and despite herself, she felt her panties dampen.

It had been such a wild day. It might be good to lie down and get some of the excitement out of her system. Not to mention keep Johnny sweet until she figured out her next move.

“Yeah,” she replied in her best kitteny voice, “let's go home for dessert.”

It was dark outside when Mee Hee woke. A thin young woman was sitting on the opposite bed, sewing by the light of her table lamp. As Mee Hee sat up, she put aside her needle and thread.

“Are you thirsty?” Her room-mate leaned across with a glass of water from her bedside table.

Careful not to stretch her feeding tube, Mee Hee reached over and took it gratefully. The water was so fresh and cool. “Thank you,” she whispered.

The other woman had a sharp, glinting sort of face. She was wearing pink lipstick and a flowered blouse and her hair was pinned back with a sparkling brooch. She regarded Mee Hee intently, appraising her face and her figure.

“You'll get plump again.” She smiled, and her pointy face became pretty for a moment. “Look at me!” She pulled back her sleeve and pinched a tiny roll of flesh on her upper arm. Mee Hee's eyes widened. She flushed and looked down at her water. It was rude to stare.

“Ack!” The young woman clucked her tongue, sounding very annoyed. Mee Hee glanced timidly at her again, ready to apologize profusely for upsetting her, but the woman placed her hand on her heart and inclined her head toward Mee Hee. “Excuse me, please,” she said. “I have been very impolite. My name is Moon Su Jin. I am a pig farmer's daughter from North Pyongan-do. It was my birthday last week and now I'm twenty-two.”

Flustered, but relieved, Mee Hee bowed in return. “My name is Lee Mee Hee. My father was a rice farmer in South Pyongan-do. I'm twenty-two too.”

“Same same!” Su Jin clapped her hands. “We're the second-youngest here.”

Here. This small, plain room. “I've never been in a hotel before,” Mee Hee said wonderingly. “It's very cool, isn't it?”

“Air-con.” Su Jin pointed at a vent in the ceiling. “It's a cheap hotel, but it's nice enough. I've been here nearly four months. You were the last to arrive. I helped the nurses change your clothes. And I put ointment on your bruises.”

“Thank you.” Mee Hee fingered the lace trim around the bodice of the nightie. The garment was buttoned up to the top. Beneath it her bruises were humming.

“You'll like Younger Sister. The Older Sisters, well,
most
of them are all right.” Su Jin raised her eyes to heaven and made a face. Mee Hee wanted to giggle, but it would be terrible to make fun of women she didn't know, so she didn't let the bubble of sound escape. “They'll come and meet you soon,” Su Jin continued, “and when you're better we can all go to South Korea. Like Dr. Che promised.”

Mee Hee shook her head. “I'm so tired. I'll hold you all up.”

“Don't worry. We were all exhausted when we arrived. In a week or two you'll be much better. They feed us very well.”

Mee Hee paused. “With
miyeok
soup, every day?” she asked, her voice quavering. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“The iron in
miyeok
is good for the blood,” Su Jin said softly. “That's why women must eat it for one hundred days after giving birth. Our grandmothers always knew what the doctors tell us today.”

Mee Hee nodded helplessly as the tears streamed down her face. Su Jin slipped down from her bed, climbed up next to her and began to stroke her hair. “Tell me, Mee Hee,” she urged. “Tell me what's wrong.”

Though she knew Su Jin's arms were around her, she couldn't feel their warmth. The sobs echoing around her came from somewhere else, not from her own throat or her drooling mouth. Like fists pummeling her from inside, the words rose up, the words she had been trying to bury in her heart.

“I only had it for
two days
,” she cried out, clasping her knees to her chest and rocking herself back and forth. “Only two days—there wasn't enough
miyeok
in the village.
There wasn't enough!
”

“I know, I know. It was the same for all of us,” Su Jin murmured.

But no, it wasn't, it wasn't the same. “I couldn't get strong again—I couldn't
feed
him. My breasts were dry, no milk, no milk inside me, and he
died
. Song Ju died! I had no milk—I couldn't feed him—and he
died
!” At last she howled, howled like the wind in the fruitless
gom
trees behind the hut she would never see again.

“Shhh, shhh.” Su Jin held her close. “Shhh.”

But Mee Hee only cried harder, tears soaking her face and Su Jin's thin shoulder. Su Jin's hands were pressing into her bruises, pain was flaring across her ribs and her heart ached as if it would any moment crack like a branch in the night. This was the punishment she deserved, the pain she should feel forever, like hunger
and shame, not the sad comfort of this bedroom and the terrible kindness of the doctors and the nurse and this stranger, Moon Su Jin. How could she tell them all that she should have stayed behind, that they should take her back, let her die and be buried next to her son? The son she couldn't feed, the son her breasts had failed.

Furiously, Mee Hee began to bang her fists against her thighs. Her husband had been right to hit her, right to beat her with a stick, right to tear her hair out of her head. She had deserved every single blow he had rained down upon her as she crouched, screaming, in the corner of the hut.

“No!” Su Jin gripped her wrists, pinning her fists to her sides, stopping her. “I'm so sorry, so sorry, Mee Hee. Everyone was so hungry, so many people died.”

Like a black cloud swallowing up a mountain peak, an enormous heaviness drifted across Mee Hee and she slumped back against the sheets. Su Jin lay beside her as she shuddered quietly, her breathing torn, her bruises burning. She could hear the traffic outside, and the gentle ticking of Su Jin's watch.

“It was worse than when the Great Leader died,” she said quietly. There: now she could be really punished. Now the doctors could come and take her away to be shot, to be put out of her misery at last. “At least we knew that the Wise Young Leader was there to protect us. But when my baby died, I had nothing left.”

Su Jin snorted softly. She sat up, dangling her legs off the bed. “And did the Wise Young Leader protect any of us? Not in my village. Or in yours.”

A cold wave sluiced through Mee Hee's veins. She sat up hurriedly and fixed her clothes. “May the Wise Young Leader and the spirit of the Great Leader please forgive my feeble woman's words,” she said in as loud a voice as she could muster. “Moon Su Jin, may you also please forgive me.”

“Me forgive you? What for?” Su Jin sounded almost amused.

“For being so selfish—for crying over my sacrifice to the nation when others made far greater. Did you lose your baby too?”

Su Jin shook her head and examined her painted fingernails. All of them except one, the little one on her left hand, were chewed down to stumps. “No, I was never married. I was only sixteen when the hunger came, and there were no more weddings in our village after that. But I helped my sister give birth and I fed her
miyeok
soup for three days, until it ran out. Then I helped her bury her daughter,
two months later. And now my sister is dead too, and my parents, or I would never have left my village.”

Su Jin put her fingers to her mouth. But Mee Hee reached for her hand and clasped it tightly. It was a small, bony hand, but very strong. They were silent for a moment.

“It happened,” Su Jin said crisply. “Now I'm here. And so are you.”

“Ugh. What's cooking?” Damien uncurled from his fetal position on the bed-mat. The studio room was suffused with a ghostly light and the stealthy scent of cinnamon. He squinted at his watch: two in the afternoon. Christ, he'd slept for twelve hours.

Jake was lying on the sofa with his electric bass, quietly running through a riff. “The cake!” he cried, flinging the guitar down on a cushion and bounding out into the galley kitchen. Jake was chunky, but he moved with fluid speed.

“I thought you didn't have an oven.” Damien raised his voice above the rattle of the fan blowing over his chest. It was, as promised, bloody hot in Seoul in June.

“Ancient Korean-Canadian secret,” Jake hollered back. “I made it in the rice cooker. No fuss, no muss, no microwaves! Aha: perfection!”

“Great, I'm starving.”

Jake chuckled. “You don't wanna explode, buddy, you better get your mitts on that hash first.”

Damien groaned. The great bowel evacuation was still ahead of him. Jake had taken him for a barbecue last night to get things moving, but while the
kim chi,
a fiery garlic pickle, had stripped the roof of his mouth, the 35-proof
soju
had just sent him to sleep as soon as they'd got back to the flat. It had been good to chat with Jake, though, reminisce about India, catch up on the last couple of years. After Mumbai, Jake had gone back to Toronto to run a market stall, do a few dope deals, and save enough money to come out to Korea and connect with his roots. He liked it so much here he was going to invest his own share of the dope dosh in a bar in Shinch'on, with his Korean cousin Sam. Sam was in Canada at the moment, doing a course toward his MBA, but when he got back the cousins were going to move into a penthouse flat further up the hill. Jake was lugging his stuff up there in a couple of days.

Damien—well, Damien had left one or two things out of his account of Brighton life. It hadn't been the right time or place to ask about the passport either. First things first.

“Better make me a coffee,” he called out. Hopefully the four Imodium tablets had loosened their grip on his intestines by now, or else he'd be taking some senna pills too.

“Coming right up, buddy. Coming right up.” An espresso-maker hissed in the kitchen, then Jake appeared with two cups of java. “Whay-hey. That's my Dames. Looking alive again, dude. You were whiter than my iBook when you came through that gate yesterday.”

“Ta, mate.” Grinning weakly, Damien sat up and reached for the coffee. The airport had been excruciating. The visa officer had pored over his passport for an age, practically the whole Anthropocene.

“December twenty-one. You need new document soon.” The man had sounded troubled, as if this were a situation he couldn't quite remember how to deal with.

Clearing his throat, Damien had taken the printout from the British Embassy website out of his pocket. “Yes, I know. I was told I can renew it here.”

The officer had stared at the sheet, the rusty cogs of his mind had ground into place; his chipped face had reset itself in stone. Then he'd told Damien to look into the camera, stamped his passport for six months and waved him on.

One ordeal down, one to go. The baggage carousel had taken forever to get moving, but finally his grubby backpack had thumped onto the conveyor belt. It contained mostly summer clothes and CDs; as far as luggage went it was light and entirely blameless. He'd hoisted it onto his shoulder then, with knees wobbling like blancmanges, joined the customs queue. Even if the officers took a routine peek, there was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

The officers hadn't even glanced up from their white-gloved perusal of Laptop Guy's bags. With sweat streaming down his back, Damien had floated into arrivals, straight into Jake's combo bear-hug and clap on the back. To the lo-fi trundle of suitcase wheels and the random space-talk of the Tannoy, his friend had whisked him out of a revolving door, then through the glare of sunshine and hot stink of petrol fumes into a taxi outside.

Now only Jake knew where he was: safe in a ropey little rooftop flat above a labyrinthine Seoul neighborhood—a flat that would soon be all his.

After just one more not-exactly-salubrious experience.

The caffeine got to work with a sharp twist in his gut and Damien groaned. “Here she comes, special delivery, down the night tunnel.” He put his cup down and rolled to his feet.

Jake was at his desk, shuffling through papers. “What doesn't kill you makes you stranger, Meadows.”

The bathroom was a tiled cell containing a toilet, sink and shower, not even a curtain. Jake had left a pair of rubber gloves, some detergent; a plate and a plastic basin on the floor. Damien pulled down his boxers, crouched over the basin and farted. It was a wet, wheezy fart, but produced not a dollop of solids. They were coming, though, in their own time: three meals and six latex hash bombs painfully inching their way down his rectum. Christ, it felt like he'd swallowed his laptop instead of auctioning it on eBay; like an SAS squadron was elbowing through his colon. He gritted his teeth and pushed.

A pellet of shit hit the basin, its propulsive exit tearing the rim of his arse. Fuck. He felt his anus, gingerly. A swollen nodule wobbled under his finger. Great, a hemorrhoid.
Remind me never to give birth
.

The next push hurt more, but—voilà!—produced a hash packet. Then, with a big ploppy rush, three came at once. Number five emerged slowly but relatively smoothly, but six was a fucking bugger. At last, though, with the help of some judicious prodding, probing and cursing, the job was done.

Damien washed his hands and wiped his arse. The tissue was scarlet with blood and his anus was stinging, no doubt shredded inside and out. He grimaced. If there was permanent damage, he'd demand Jake pay him extra. But first, part two of this particular unpleasantness.

He pulled up his boxers, and examined the basin. For some reason, as he'd discovered on that hike in Nepal, your own shit didn't actually look or smell so bad. There, he'd buried it, digging shallow holes in the earth with twigs. Here he put on the rubber gloves, fished out the hash baggies from their excremental stew and rinsed them off in the sink. Give or take the odd fleck of fecal matter in the folds of the latex, you'd never know where they'd just been. He arranged the parcels neatly on the plate, then he flushed the contents of the basin down the loo and filled it and the sink with detergent, leaving the gloves to soak too. As he picked up the plate of hash lumps he felt a quirk of pride. Howard Marks he wasn't, but he wasn't “son of Hugh Grant” either.

“Yo, bro!” Jake had arranged a knife, a roll of Clingfilm and a set of electronic scales on his desk. He saluted as Damien re-entered the room, plate aloft.

“For the pleasure of Korean youth, and the profit of us both.” Damien set the plate of hash on the desk and pulled up a chair.

Jake handed him a pair of scissors. “I'm not touching that latex, buddy.”

“A drug mule's job is never done,” Damien tutted. He snipped open the parcels, and their rich, peaty aroma was a reward unto itself. Jake crumbled off a pinch of the hash and rolled it under his nose.

“Umm
ummm
. The buyers are gagging for it. Now what do you say to a little quality control?” Jake took a packet of Rizlas from his pocket and rolled a Canadian-style skinny toothpick joint. He took a drag, coughed, and passed it to Damien. There was an appreciative silence as they finished the joint, then Jake started to giggle.

“What?” Damien stubbed out the roach in an ashtray made from a woven beer can.

“Buddy,” Jake gasped, “I can't believe you just fucking did that!”

Was there tobacco on his face? Damien wiped his mouth. “Did
what
?”

“Carried this dope to Korea shoved up your ass! Man, if I'd got a letter asking me to do that I'd have fucking burned it!”

Now they were both howling with laughter and Damien's stomach was aching for all the right reasons. “Friendship flower of life,” he spluttered. “Ancient Korean saying, yeah?”

“Our friendship?” Jake shook his head. “Must be a hydroponic skunk bud.”

“Skunk-buddies!” they shouted in unison.

Damien was wiping the tears away when Jake slapped his forehead. “Dames, you done your part of the deal; time for mine.” He rifled through the papers on the desk and handed Damien a brown envelope. Inside was a thin sheet covered in the Korean alphabet, Hangul. He had tried to explain it last night in the restaurant, but the letters were still a complete mystery to Damien. Still, he could see the paper was a contract of some sort.

“The tenancy agreement.” Jake was serious now. “Tomorrow I'll take you to the 'lord and you can sign me off. He'll give you another six-month lease and when you go, he'll give you back the key-fee—two point five million
won
, see? If you leave before then you gotta find another tenant to take over or you lose the deposit, get it?”

The hash was obviously firing Jake's synapses. It was having the opposite effect on Damien. He peered at the contract. At least he could understand the numerals. He nodded; that's what they'd
agreed. Tomorrow he'd have half the selling price of the hash to his name—on paper, anyway.

“And this”—Jake passed him another sheet of paper—“is your teaching schedule.” He pointed at the top of the list. “The kindergarten is two hours every morning, it's a blast. These are a few privates, after-school stuff with kids, a pain to get to, but good cash. And there're always more jobs coming up. With the current situation, people aren't staying as long as they used to. The social scene ain't what it used to be. Still, you can rack up some won pretty quick if you want to.”

Damien gazed at the numbers. Math had never been his strong point, especially when stoned, but according to Jake's figures, it seemed he'd be working twenty hours a week for about two thousand pounds a month. “Looks great to me.” Slowly, his mind worked back through the conversation, the way it often had to do after a puff. Something was puzzling him. Oh yeah. “What do you mean: ‘the current situation'?”

“You know”—Jake yawned—“climate change. All that Hammer mumbo-jumbo. Some people think we only got until December; they want to travel, not teach Korean businessmen how to place an order at McDonald's.”

The dope rush had subsided, leaving Damien with goosebumps and a slight case of muscle tremor. He rubbed his arms. “So what do you think?”

“About what?”

“You know, the Hammer.”

“Ah, yes, the mighty Lucifer's Hammer.” Jake eyed up a chunk of hash, sliced it neatly in two and placed the larger piece on the scales. “Do I believe that a dense metal asteroid is currently traveling toward us at enormous speed from the Oort cloud, at an angle to the sun that makes it invisible to even the most sophisticated astronomical instruments?” He removed a pinch of hash from the lump he was weighing and shrugged. “Nah.”

“But what if it were true?”

“It ain't true. The world was going down the drain at the Millennium, and the 2012 Solstice too, as I recall. Sheesh, they couldn't even pick a new date.”

Damien's teeth were starting to chatter. Man, this stuff was strong. “The websites go over all that, Jake. Maybe the Mayans got the year a bit wrong. Or we miscalculated their calendar.”

“Dames: the whole scene's just a bunch of freaks waving
The World is Gonna End Tomorrow
placards. Tomorrow comes: world still here. Still, at least they can re-use the placard.”

Damien sat up. Some people needed a little persuading. “Jake, meteors have slammed into Earth over and over again during its history. We're due a big one, and we're not prepared. The Hammer would make the 2004 tsunami look like a spilled paddling pool. Only people way up a mountain or deep inland would stand a chance. The astronomers were all talking about it until four months ago, then the head of the Royal Astronomical Society got the sack. The government didn't want her to tell us the truth, because—”

Jake cut him off. “Because there'd be nothing they or anyone could do about it. So why freak out until it happens? Or
doesn't
happen.”

Damien gave up. If people didn't want to face the truth, you couldn't make them. “Okay, so there's no Hammer. But what about global warming? Every year we get more hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, epidemics. I mean, how long before bird flu takes off?”

“Life's a gamble. So long as I'm living high up a hill, I'll take my chances.”

Damien's muscles were shivering now. He reached over and rummaged in his backpack for a sweater.

“You cold, buddy?”

It was now or never. He pulled on his V-neck. “No—kind of. Look, Jake, I gotta ask you something.”

Jake put the knife down. “Shoot.”

“Your contacts here . . .” Christ, there was no point pussyfooting about. “—could anyone get me some Canadian papers?”

“Canadian papers?” Jake raised one eyebrow, a neat trick. “You mean
The Globe and Mail
?”

“No. I mean a passport. And a SIN card.”

Jake raised both eyebrows now. “Okaaaay. So why would you be in the market for those, exactly?”

Damien took a deep breath. “Britain is fucked, man. Police state, rains all year round, stabbings on the Tube every week, no room to move, and everything costs a fucking arm and a leg. If there's going to be floods and plagues, it'll get way worse.”

Jake shrugged. “So go live in Europe. You Brits are lucky, you can teach English there.”

Damien shook his head. “Europe's just as crowded. Any diseases, they'd spread like wildfire. And Russia's got nukes pointing at every major capital. I'm telling you, it's no time to move to Poland and drink cheap beer.” Jake opened his mouth to protest, but Damien rolled on, “Look, my UK passport expires soon. To get a new one,
I'd have to virtually sign my DNA away—isometrics, eyeball prints, blood test, face-scanning. I don't believe in that shit.”