Silver Stallion (16 page)

Sarging Fist Nose asked Ollye
“How old you?''''
and Yonghi interpreted; the soldier was asking her age. Ollye said, as she had been taught, “
Tenti po
,” which meant she was twenty-four years old. The
bengkos
couldn't tell even if she cheated by ten years.

Ollye was too drunk now to hold her slippery glass straight and beer streamed down the back of her hand. Ollye was wearing Yonghi's green satin dress with a large cloth rose on the chest.

“Be careful, Sis,” Yonghi said with a fake smile. “Don't spill the beer and spoil my dress.”

“I'm sorry,” Ollye said. “I'll be careful. I think I'll never learn to drink as well as you do.”

“You will learn to drink all right,” Yonghi said. “In time you'll get used to everything.”

That was true. She was indeed getting used to everything—even to sleeping with the foreign soldiers. But she still could not overcome the shock that had stunned her yesterday afternoon when she had found scribbled on the wall of the tobacco shed near the ferry:
Mansik mommy U.N. lady, Mansik mommy Yankee whore.
What worried her most at that instant was the possibility that Mansik might have seen it. If he had not, she wanted to remove it before he had the chance. She dashed down to a rice paddy, grabbed a handful of mud, dashed back to the tobacco shed and erased the charcoal scribbling by smearing mud over it. Now she blushed again, hot anger surging to her face, as she vividly remembered the scribbling. It was in a child's handwriting. It had been scrawled there by one of Mansik's old friends to humiliate her son.

It seemed the whole village knew what she was doing. Nobody could expect the boatman to keep his mouth shut for long. Ollye had bribed the boatman with American cigarettes to keep him silent about her secret trips to Texas Town but Yom must have decided that her time was up. So what? Though they had branded her a filthy woman, Ollye thought they were all accomplices in her fall. She hated the villagers. She hated the villagers, the
bengkos,
the child who had scrawled the dirty words on the wall of the tobacco shed, and everybody around her. She hated the boatman who must have passed the word around that she had become a Yankee whore.

She considered entertaining long-time customers now that she no longer had anything to keep secret. She could not make much money working with short-timers only. But if she were to entertain long-time soldiers she would have to live at the shanty town. She did not want to bring her children to be raised in such a place. She could not make decisions because everything was so confusing and she was so drunk.

Old Hwang would have heard of her activities, too. He might forbid her use of the boat as he had denied it to Yonghi and Sundok. There was no doubt about it. Sooner or later she would not be allowed to use the boat. What would she do then? They might get a boat of their own, as Yonghi had suggested. It sounded like a perfect plan. When they found a boat, they could leave this shanty and move Dragon Lady Club to the riverside house. They could bring the customers across the river. Old Hwang and the villagers would raise hell. Who cared? Ollye was no longer afraid of anything the villagers could do to her. Maybe she was too drunk to fear anything now, but somehow everything seemed to have become easy and simple.

“I think we will retire to my room, Sis,” Yonghi said. “It's not good business to keep them awake when they're not drinking any more. Why don't you give your sarging a good time, too? Looks like he has a great big erection.”

The tall soldier and Yonghi scrambled to their feet, the soldier staggering but Yonghi as sober as an icicle, and with giggles and murmurs they disappeared behind the veneer door. As soon as they were left alone, Fist Nose started to take his pants off, saying “
I wanna fuck you. I wanna fuck you.''''
OUye thought it was funny that any man took his trousers off before his jacket; this soldier took his trousers off first, and then his shorts. In a moment the
bengkos
male thing was exposed; it dangled down under the jacket like a greased sausage. Then he took off his socks, his jacket and his shirt. He came over to her and pulled the green dress with its cloth rose over her head. She had nothing under the dress, because Yonghi had told her that was one sure way to win a steady customer fast. Yonghi had also told her to learn to have some fun out of the business.

The
bengko
hastily mounted her, his rubbery thing slipped into her, and the floor seemed to roll and pitch like the deck of a ship in a storm. She recalled what Sister Serpent had told her that afternoon. She did not know why she suddenly remembered her words at this particular moment, but she did. As Fist Nose kept pumping she feared her entrails would squeeze out of her anus under his heavy weight. You should make a careful choice of your customers, Yonghi had advised her. There are two kinds of U.N. ladies, you know—those who entertain the white Yankees and those who entertain the blackies. At some larger Texas Towns, there're even separate sectors for the whites and the blacks. The whites never sleep with any girl who has ever entertained a nigger. The whites treat the niggers like dirt, you know. The girls who entertain whites can switch to blacks any time they want, but the blackie whores can never sleep with a whitey. So, if you ever allow yourself to go with a black soldier, you will be a nigger whore for good. Ollye told her that one of the two
bengkos
that had raped her was black. Yonghi warned her not to tell it ever, ever to anybody, if she wanted to remain a white whore. Fist Nose kept pumping and squeezing her and Ollye could no longer stand the punishment. She started to vomit violently with the
bengko
still on her.

Part III

THE CHILDREN

ONE

T
he river was silent in the dark behind them, but from the direction of Texas Town the three boys could hear a throbbing female voice on an old squeaky phonograph. At times the sound rose and then faded as it was swept away by the wind. Shivering in their wet nakedness, the boys hurried down a narrow path through the reeds.

“This is an awfully cold night to go to watch anything,” said Chandol in a low voice, pressing his navel with his index finger to stop the night air from getting into his insides and loosening his bowels.

“But it's worth the trouble,” said Jun with a chuckle, following close behind Chandol. “I've never seen anything like what the U. N. ladies do with the
bengkos.”

Kangho kept apprehensively silent, hiding his crotch selfconsciously with his folded hands. He was not too sure about this whole thing. This adventure was unlike anything they had ever done before. Neither the Autumn War with the Castle boys nor the raid on the dump was as dangerous and strange as this new game of theirs. If they were ever caught by the
bengkos,
the soldiers would be so mad that they might shoot and kill them.

The three boys had sneaked out of their homes. They swam across the river to Texas Town when the whole village was asleep, for the boys knew the boatman would tell Rich Hwang of their visit to the islet if he spotted them. Bong had been left behind because he could not swim well enough to reach Cucumber Island and also because Chandol decided that he was too young for this adventure.

They quickened their pace. They wanted to see the whores as soon as possible. The breeze felt as chilly to them as air right before it snows on a winter morning. When they reached a sand dune by the shanty town, they looked at one another, their eyes glinting.

“You boys wait here until I pick the house,” Chandol said and crawled up the dune, wriggling his hips sideways like a lizard.

Lying flat on top of the dune, Chandol surveyed the whoretown which was colorfully decorated with signs and painted pictures and electric bulbs, deciding which house they would peep into tonight. There were almost fifty shanties in Texas Town now, and the soldiers, in their garrison caps like
origami
boats, slouched around by twos and threes among the crowded shacks, glancing at the young girls sitting on plank benches in the alleys. The whores, displaying their half-exposed tits and open thighs and whatever they had to offer, invited the
bengkos,
“Hey, Joe, buy me drink, okay? Buy me drink, okay?” A girl laughed shrilly somewhere unseen and a soldier swore “Goddamn!” somewhere else.

Chandol quickly made his choice. He knew there would be a lot to watch with this particular couple. The tall soldier and his whore played with each other in a way conspicuously different from that of other soldiers and U.N. ladies. There was lots of pulling and tugging and pinching and hugging and hand-holding going on among the Yankees and the whores but this lanky soldier and his pancake-faced girl
really
knew how to play with each other. The soldier was so tall that her head barely reached his shoulder and his hand could reach around her neck down to her breasts. He kept squeezing and kneading them through the neck of her loose scarlet blouse all the while he was chatting and laughing and walking with her to her house. The girl, in a Chinese skirt, that was slit on both sides to reveal most of her legs, apparently liked what he was doing to her; she giggled, clinging to his waist tightly with one arm, her free hand playfully rubbing and stroking and jerking the bulge in the soldier's pants between his legs. The couple disappeared through the strings of wooden beads covering the doorway of a frame house which looked like a compost shed.

Chandol quickly slid down the dune backward to the waiting boys. “We're going to have a nice show tonight. Come.”

The three boys crawled around the dune and approached the house. Like most shanties in Texas Town, this one had no fence around it. The boys crept to the back of the house and concealed themselves in the dark, pressing their backs against the wall.

“Somebody must be lookout,” Chandol whispered.

Kijun cast a furtive sidelong glance at Chandol and promptly looked away, hoping he would not be assigned the first shift of lookout duty tonight.

“I'll be lookout,” Kangho volunteered. He had been reluctant to join this game anyway. He wondered why he had come in the first place.

“Good,” Chandol said. “You go over there to that outhouse, Kangho, and watch out for anybody coming in this direction. Toad will relieve you in ten minutes.”

Kangho hid himself in the shabby outhouse, which was only two canvas walls like a folding screen, and watched the U.N. ladies soliciting and catcalling at the passing soldiers.

Chandol and Kijun positioned themselves among the logs and broken planks and mud bricks at the rear wall of the shack and peeked through a chink in the window frame. The
bengko
and the whore were almost naked now under the bare electric bulb. The girl, clad in flimsy underwear as thin and transparent as a dragonfly's wing, was lying sprawled on the floor like a dead frog; the
bengko
mounted her like a huge white hairless bull. The soldier began to suck the girl's mouth, making a lot of slobbering sounds.

Holding their breath, Chandol and Kijun watched the naked grownups play in the room.

“The girl kept moaning and whimpering all the time that huge soldier was swimming on her stomach to push himself into her.” Kijun was telling the boys what he had seen at Texas Town.

The four boys were on their way to the
bengko
dump for another afternoon raid.

“Go on, go on,” prompted Chandol who had missed that exciting scene because he had had to go on lookout. “What happened next?”

After a dramatic pause Kijun continued, “When the Yankee was about to force himself into her with his cock like a horse, the girl babbled something, pushing him away. The
bengko
fell down on the floor and lay there on his back, waiting with a grin as he rubbed his balls, and the girl stood up. She was facing the window and, oh, boy, I could see everything. Her breasts were wet, as damp with sweat as if she had just had a bath. And she had such bushy black hair down there. Then she came over to the electric bulb and turned the light off.”

“Damn!” said Chandol, disappointed. “I wonder why they always turn the light off when they do it.”

“Some
bengkos
keep the light on,” said Kangho, drawing an endless line on the sand with his stick. “Like the
bengko
we watched the other night.”

“Couldn't you see anything more after they had turned the light off?” Chandol asked.

With a complacent beam, Kijun said, “I could see what they were doing clearly enough because the other girl and her
bengko
drinking in the hall kept the light on outside the paper door.”

“Well, tell us what they did, then.”

“The girl, giggling, sat astride the
bengko's
stomach, the way you ride a horse, and picked up a packet of balloons from the sewing basket by the door. She placed the rubber balloons at the tip of the soldier's cock and began to roll it down like this, like this, until the whole thing was covered by the silvery balloon. And then she began to pound him down with her hips, gasping again, and the
bengko
was on top of her next moment, and she began to squeal like a stoned bitch. Watching all that made me have an erection myself. Boy, they really knew how to play.”

“It's really exciting to watch them play naked,” said Chandol and he began to describe what he had seen. With some inevitable exaggerations, because he was the boss and supposed to have seen more strange and exciting things than any other boy had, he told them about the Yankees and the whores he had watched. There was a lot of repetition, with only slight changes in detail, but nobody minded. “As the Yankee fumbled her tits and cunt, the whore began to pant like a dog in summer. And then they began to suck at each other's mouth.”

“What for?” said Bong, puzzled. “Why did they suck each other's mouth?” The little boy had heard so many strange things about the grownups' game, and he was sorry that he had never gotten a chance to watch the whores' rooms at night.

“They just do, all the time,” Kijun said. “The Yankees just love to suck and lick the girls mouths, and everywhere else, too.”

“Why do they suck the girls so much?” the little boy said, his curiosity still unsatisfied.

“How can anybody know why they do that?” Jun said. “Dogs also suck at each other's muzzles before mating, don't they?”

“Dogs only sniff at each other,” Chandol said.

“Imagine sucking out anything from a girl's mouth,” Bong said, mystified. “Some girls must smell bad at the mouth. Many people have a foul smell in their mouths, you know.”

“Sometimes they do lots of other strange things too,” Jun said. “Indeed there are lots of things to watch at Texas Town if you go there at night. Anyway, Chandol, what did they do when they were through mouth-sucking?”

“The
bengko
stripped down her panties. Her black panties were so beautiful, with lace and frills and everything. Then he took his own pants off and climbed on top of her. In no time he started to thrust his cock into her crotch.”

Laughing and chattering, the four boys hurried along the shore and arrived at the dump to find two strange boys picking through the garbage heap of steaming coffee grounds, crushed tin cans, wet papers and soiled chicken bones.

“What the hell is going on?” Chandol said, stopping short and squinting.

“They're stealing our garbage,” Kijun said.

“Come,” Chandol said. “We have to drive them away.”

“Hey, you!” Chandol shouted. “Don't move!”

“Stay there and don't move!” Jun shouted.

As the four Kumsan boys swarmed to the pit, yelling, the two intruders looked up at them. The taller boy holding a “pillow bread” soggy with swill and grease was Sinil, the fifteen-year-old captain of the Castle village boys. Sinil started to climb out of the pit, his feet sinking into the slimy garbage and leftover food and his eyes blazing as he glared back at Chandol. The smaller boy was as young as Bong. Something rattled in the can he carried in his hand as he followed his captain as if he was afraid to be abandoned in the pit.

Chandol blocked Sinil's way at the edge of the pit and, trying to stare him down, said, “Who says you Castle boys can come here and steal our things?”

“We are not stealing anything from anybody,” said Sinil. “And nobody can say we can't come here either.”

“This dump belongs to Kumsan,” Chandol explained. “I cannot let you take anything from this place.”

“I think differently,” said Sinil, who showed no intention of giving in. “I don't think you should try to stop us from coming here. This is an open place. Anybody can take anything he finds here. And I find lots of things that I want to take home with me.”

Chandol quickly examined the situation. He had never had a fist fight, one-to-one, with Sinil yet, but there was no doubt that Kumsan would beat Castle now in a group fight. Kumsan outnumbered them by two to one.

“You'd better watch out,” Chandol warned, “unless you're ready for punishment.”

“You want to punish me?” said Sinil. “All right, Chandol, come on and try.”

There was no need to exchange any more words. Sinil had hardly finished his challenge when Chandol kicked him in the groin as hard as he could. As Sinil was about to fall forward, Chandol butted him in the forehead like a charging ram. Sinil collapsed on the bed of garbage, blood streaming from both nostrils. The little Castle village boy trembled in fear, expecting he would be attacked next. Children's fights usually ended when one boy had a nosebleed, the undeniable sign of the loser. But Sinil would not admit that Chandol was the better fighter.

“Don't think this is the end of the fight,” said Sinil, wiping the blood off his nose with a handful of sand. “I'm coming back. I'll be back soon, with my boys, and then we will have a real war.”

Sinil's announcement meant that this year's Autumn War between Kumsan and Castle would be a contest over the right to the dump. It was going to be a bloody fight, Chandol thought. Up to now, the boys of the two villages had never fought over anything tangible. This time some boys would get hurt for sure … But he did not want to give the Castle captain the wrong impression that Kumsan did not want to fight.

“Get going. Quick!” Chandol said. “You'd better not dream of coming back here. If you show up around this place again to steal something, I'll chop your hands off with a straw-cutter.”

Staring after Sinil and the small boy walking toward the ferry, Chandol began to worry. He knew Sinil would not forget the shame of his nosebleed in the presence of the other boys. Chandol had won today owing to the success of his surprise attack. Now Sinil would be wary and he had longer arms than Chandol's. Kumsan would need a lot of preparation to win the fight with the Castle boys this year. The annual mock war with stones between the boys of the two villages had been delayed this autumn due to the outbreak of the war among the grownups and the coming of the World Army. Chandol was sure that Sinil would not wait much longer to declare war, because of today's humiliation.