Festival for Three Thousand Women (15 page)

“I'm looking for Cherry. I got the day off because of this Robert Kennedy thing. Have you heard the news?”

“I'm reading about it now,” said Gary. “It's in the
Sars & Stripes
already.” He paused. “Cherry's gone, Bobby,” he said. “She left about an hour ago for home.”

Bobby stepped into the hooch and Gary closed the door. “She came up here this afternoon and I got her on a troop truck heading straight for Kimpo,” he said.

Bobby looked down and asked to see the paper. There was a photograph of the guy who'd shot Robert Kennedy on the front page, and Robert Kennedy was there too, his stricken face difficult to see in the bad light.

Bobby wanted only to leave now. Before he could speak, though, there was another knock on the door. God, wasn't it curfew yet, he thought. Gary called out, but when there was no answer he opened the door to find Gloria, Mr. Kim, and the madam Bobby'd met right behind her. The madam was carrying a tray with watermelon on it. Next to the watermelon was a plate of strawberries and a bowl of powdered sugar.

“Ah, Smith,” she said, “looky here. Your friend bring Gloria back. We make a little treat, say thanks.”

Gary looked at Bobby strangely, but moved back out of the way.

Gloria came in first. “I can't believe,” she said. “It like a dream, really. One minute home in bed, next minute back like nothin' happen. Like no time go by.” She turned in the room, expressing the freedom she felt, but then stopped. “Hello, Gary,” she said softly. “How do you do?”

“Hello, Gloria,” said Gary Smith.

Bobby sat against the cushions of the room, hollow-chested but smiling up at the others. The madam, it turned out, was Gary's landlady and Gloria had lived next door. When Gary'd first arrived in Korea, her beauty seduced him early, bringing him out to the Vil, and estranging him from his fellow officers who never left the base. Gloria had been Gary's neighbor and girlfriend whom Bobby had brought back because she was now the wife of the taxi driver he had chosen to carry him into all of this. And he had arrived too late. Cherry Consiliak was gone.

While they ate the watermelon Bobby chimed in from time to time, his mouth spewing words into the room. After the madam left, though, he asked Gary what was going on in Ron's hooch, and was told that Ron was on base, getting ready to be transferred to Seoul. He would have asked if Gloria and Mr. Kim could sleep there, but Gloria touched him once again. “Don't worry, honey,” she said. “Mama got a room for us. Mr. Kim sleepy now, we go back soon. Maybe meet for a beer at Mama's once Mr. Kim asleep.” As the two of them stood to leave Gloria added, “Don't forget, I wait for you both outside….”

But when the door closed, Bobby was suddenly as tired as Mr. Kim. All this pretense was making him ill. Cherry was gone, Robert Kennedy was dead, and if he'd stayed in Taechon he'd have been asleep hours ago, ready to support his friends in the morning for their boycott of spy-catching day.

He was feeling devastated and tired but was cheered a little when Gary Smith got up and left the room too. “I'll go find her,” he said. “If you feel like it, come on over to Mama's for a beer.”

The light was out, the music was off, and Bobby had fallen asleep when the door opened again and Gloria came in. She quickly slipped into the bed beside him, her hands roaming all over his body before she understood that it wasn't Gary she was touching but Bobby, who was quickly waking up from a dream.

“Gloria!” he said. “What are you doing here? What about Mr. Kim?”

“Mr. Kim sleep like dead,” she said. “I been six month on that farm. Where Gary?”

“He went out to look for you. What time is it? Are you sure Mr. Kim's asleep?”

“No problem,” said Gloria. “Not really married anyhow. Just together for convenience sake.”

“What if he comes looking for you?”

Gloria seemed to think about this for a moment, and Bobby decided that the best thing for him to do would be to get dressed again and go outside. He really didn't want Mr. Kim coming in, married or not.

“I'll go find Gary,” he said. “You'd better come along.” He didn't know what else to say. If he left her, he knew she'd be there when he got back.

Gloria was stroking Bobby's arm, considering whether to settle for him, but when Bobby stood and pulled on his pants, she sighed and stood up too. “Can you believe?” she said. “After all this time Gary Smith still here. Mr. Kim no problem at all.”

The pathway in front of the hooch was pitch dark, and when Bobby started to speak Gloria put her hand over his mouth. “Curfew very bad news,” she whispered.

They walked to the end of the row, where the madam's room apparently was, but when they stopped in front of it, the only sound they heard was coming from a bucket of cold water under a dripping tap. Suddenly, though, Gary materialized, coming out from somewhere and standing beside them like a ghost.

“Hi,” he said.

Bobby jumped, but Gloria grabbed Gary's arm. “Oh Gary, where you been?” she asked. “Come on, let's go back inside.”

“What about Mr. Kim?” asked Gary Smith.

There was no moon, though Bobby remembered that there had been when, so many hours before, he'd stood out from the taxi at Mr. Kim's farm. When Gloria turned Gary toward his hooch, Bobby stayed back, letting the darkness surround him. If he stood just in the center of the path he could not see the hooch doors, and if he looked up he could not see the sky, and there was mud below his feet from where the tap bucket had overflowed. He waited until he could no longer hear Gary and Gloria ahead, and then he followed them. Only he went past Gary's door and stepped into Ron's hooch, where the walls were painted black like the night outside.

When Bobby kicked off his shoes and pulled the filthy blankets around him, he was alone again in a world of his own. In the other world Robert Kennedy had died and Mrs. Nesbitt's son was missing. And an hour ago Cherry Consiliak had left for home. But it wasn't Bobby's intention to dwell on any of that. His intention, rather, was to wonder for the ten-thousandth time how people could pass through his life so easily, marking him with their presence but taking nothing of him with them when they left.

Six at the top means: One falls into the pit. Uninvited guests arrive
.

 

W
hen Bobby stepped off the train the next evening, the Goma was waiting for him, and his expression was not one of peace. “Where have you been?” he asked. “Didn't you know today was special?”

“I had to see somebody,” said Bobby. “Why? What happened? Who was the spy? Who caught him?”

“The whole thing's been called off, put back until tomorrow. But the spy's in town somewhere, hiding out.”

Bobby thought of Mr. Kwak and the Lees. “Why did they postpone it?” he asked.

The Goma looked at him carefully. “Because tomorrow is market day. Strangers will be coming to town and the streets will be confused. It's cheating to use a farmer for the spy, but we all think they will. And farmers always act like fools. Who'd know whether they were supposed to be spies or not?”

“So nothing happened at school? They just had an ordinary day?”

The Goma shrugged and turned, taking the bank note Bobby'd given him over to the biting lady and then joining Bobby as he headed up the street. “There's a bet on that again this year it won't be a school kid who finds him. Not for two years has it been a school kid. It's always one of us finding him and then selling the information. School kids get money from their papas and pay us off.”

Bobby eyed the Goma walking along. He was so upset by this postponement that even his Korean was clarified by it. Once they reached Miss Moon's tearoom Bobby turned to take him in for tea. He found the door locked, though, and the light off. He had never known the tearoom to be closed before, but he was too exhausted for tea anyway, and since it wasn't late he wanted to go home and get his towel and soap. The public bath was open until eleven and he knew he'd have the place to himself.

“Well, good luck tomorrow,” he said. The Goma stepped closer and lowered his voice. “You know who it is, don't you?”

“No,” said Bobby. “How would I know? I've been gone.”

“Everyone knows that the headmaster chooses. We've got guys watching his house every minute but he's tricky. Come on, who is it? I know he told you.”

“Be serious. No one tells me anything around here. I'd be the last one he would tell.”

The Goma gave Bobby a measured look, before he nodded and slumped off in the direction of the inn. “I've got to sleep,” he said. “This whole thing starts early…”

When Bobby got home, it seemed like everyone he knew had been there. The grandmother had notes and spoke to him so fast that he couldn't catch all of what she said. He did gather, however, that Headmaster Kim had been by, and that there was a message from Seoul, news of some trouble, or even, the grandmother whispered, a death. Bobby was to call the headmaster immediately. His phone number was 007—perfect for spy-catching day, Bobby reflected—so he went into Policeman Kim's room and asked the operator to connect him. No one was home at the headmaster's, but when he came out, the grandmother looked at him with poised hands anyway, ready to tear her hair for whatever the bad news had been. A chance to mourn was an important release, and when Bobby said he'd try again after his bath she was upset. “What?” she said. “You'd better wait right here. Go to the bath tomorrow.”

She actually tried to stop him from finding clean clothes and a towel, and he had to dodge her at the door. As a partial apology, he called over his shoulder that he would hurry.

When Bobby got to the public bath he paid his thirty won and went inside. Taechon had three baths but this was the only one he'd ever used. The Goma, in fact, had first brought him here, though the Goma had never been inside himself.

The first room was lined with wooden lockers and benches, reminding Bobby of the ancient high school he'd attended at home. Somehow the grandmother's foreboding hadn't affected him much. Surely no one was dead. His real grandmother was too healthy to be in danger, and who was left?

Bobby had put his clothes in the locker and walked into the steaming bath room itself before, suddenly, the thought struck him that the call he had received concerned Cherry Consiliak. Cherry was dead on the road, or killed in some accident while waiting at Kimpo for her airplane ride home. Why else would he get a call from Seoul?

Bobby cried out once in the empty room, but finally he controlled himself and sat on a stool at the edge of the boiling tub, holding his excess flesh in his hands. His body looked terrible this way, worse than it had when he was fat, and he marveled that Cherry had been able to stomach being with him at all. He looked like a thin man wearing an elephant suit, and though he took pride in his loss of weight, he now awaited the moment when his skin would respond. Where was its elasticity, where its renowned ability to bounce back?

He filled the wooden bucket with water and quickly poured it over his head, stinging himself into clarity with the heat. Was he going crazy, letting such thoughts as those last ones overtake him so? Cherry was gone, that was the truth of the matter, and even if she were injured why in the world would anyone call him? Nobody in Seoul even knew that they had been friends. It was ridiculous, and he was ridiculous too. Still, as Bobby sat there all alone and dismal, as he soaped his body and rubbed the calluses off the soles of his feet, all this time he mumbled to himself, “Not Cherry. Not Cherry. Please let it be someone else…”

Bobby rinsed the soap from his back and stepped into the incredibly hot water and tried to sit down. As he sank slowly into it he could feel his pores opening, and he imagined bits of deep-down grime slowly floating up and leaving him clean. Underwater his body was like a fetus, and as he watched it turn redder he imagined his skin shrinking, saw himself stepping from the tub a new man.

Because it was late Bobby was surprised to hear the sounds of other bathers coming from the locker room. When the door opened and he looked through the steam, though, he realized that these men weren't naked but dressed. They waved their hands in front of their faces to help them see through the fog.

“Hello?” one of them said. “Ah, Mr. Bobby, we have found you.” It was Mr. Soh and Headmaster Kim, wearing business suits. And as they began pulling up stools to sit down at the edge of the tub beside him Bobby thought, “Please, not Cherry.”

“What's happened?” he asked. God, here they were all dressed up. This must be serious.

“You must help us,” said Mr. Soh.

“Did you get a call from Seoul? Did somebody die?”

Mr. Soh chuckled. “Oh, we are sorry,” he said. “Please don't worry. We had to say that to throw everyone away. Otherwise they would have been suspicious.”

“Ah,” Bobby said. “To throw everyone off.”

The two men talked for a while in a dialect that Bobby couldn't understand. He felt wonderfully relieved but angry. What the hell kind of thing was that to do? Surely they hadn't meant it as a joke. Maybe it had something to do with Mr. Kwak and the Lees.…

“It's about spy-catching day,” said Mr. Soh. “It has been put off until tomorrow. Do you remember Headmaster Kim's uncle? The man you met at the funeral shortly after you arrived?”

“Sure,” said Bobby. “‘Love Potion Number Nine.'”

“Well, he was going to be our spy, but he's broken his foot and he suggested that you take his place.”

“Take his place doing what?” Bobby asked. “How did he break his foot?”

“Take his place as the spy, of course,” said Mr. Soh. “An ox stepped on it.”

This entire conversation had been in English and Mr. Soh had never sounded better. “Don't be silly,” Bobby said. “The spy has to be Korean.”