Martin Limon - Joy Brigade

“Tonight,” he said, “food will be brought to you. Until then, you are to wait and make no sound whatsoever.”

After the workout, he’d had me change back into the Romanian officer’s uniform. I’d been perspiring so much from the workout that the once-clean Warsaw Pact uniform was soon soaked through with sweat and the coarse wool rubbed mercilessly against my skin. We’d slipped out of a different exit from the underground tunnels and made our way about a half-mile, with me hobbling as fast as I could behind Hero Kang. Finally, we stepped into a deserted building constructed like a yoguan, a traditional Korean inn. There was a double door out front, a small wood-floored foyer, and a central stairway that led upstairs to long halls with cubicle-like rooms behind small doors. The only problem was that there was no proprietor. As usual, Hero Kang strode in like he owned the place and bade me follow him upstairs to the last room in a long hallway, where, once inside, I collapsed on the floor. In the next five minutes or so, I heard a few distant footsteps in the building and the occasional bump of wood on wood.

Hero Kang turned to leave. “I will lock the door from the outside.”

I sat up, feeling the bruises along my thighs and forearms. “Lock it from the outside? When will you be back?”

Hero Kang shushed me. “Tomorrow. Early. But like I said, someone will bring you food.”

“What if I have to go to the bathroom?”

He pointed at an iron pee pot in the corner.

I nodded, realizing angrily that my options for self-controlled action were rapidly diminishing.

“Don’t worry,” he said, reading my thoughts. “There are many out there looking for you, but right here in the middle of the city, you are well hidden. And there are many of us too, to protect you.”

“Why is it so important to bring me here? I told you before, I must see Doctor Yong In-ja first. Before I do anything.”

Hero Kang backed out of the door. A metal hasp squeaked closed and a padlock clicked. I groaned and lay back down on the floor. It was cold in there. Almost freezing. The perspiration turned clammy on my skin. I rolled over and groaned again, hungry, miserable, frightened. There was a world of hostility out there, and I hadn’t a friend in the world except for Hero Kang. And who knew when he’d come back?

These thoughts caused my stomach to churn, and so, with an effort of will, I thrust them out of my mind. Eventually I dozed, for how long I’m not sure. Finally, after what must’ve been two or three hours, a metallic clang brought me fully awake. I sat up. The room was dark now, illuminated only by moonlight seeping through a transom-like window.

I listened carefully. At first nothing, and then the sound of someone rummaging around near the front of the room. I crouched and searched for something to use as a weapon. Nothing available but my fists.

Another metallic clang as a small hinge creaked open and then what sounded like something being dropped into a chute. I recognized the sounds. I’d heard them often in South Korea: someone replenishing the cylindrical charcoal briquettes in the underground heating system. I placed my hand flat on the floor. No heat yet. Then more clanging as tongs and a metal pan were being put away. Footsteps approached the front door.

Someone fiddled with the lock, the rusty hasp was pulled back, and the door swung open. Whoever it was held a candle low in front of his or her body, head bowed and hooded. I couldn’t see a face. Then I saw a long woolen skirt rustle forward, and the candle being placed on the floor. The woman, whoever she was, had a huge wooden disc strapped to her back like a shield, and tied to that were three layers of tightly folded material. In her left hand she held a large brass pot stuffed with a brown paper bag, and in her right a canvas bag smeared with soot. She let both drop to the floor.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The woman ignored me as she closed the door and slid shut the inner bolt. Then she placed the candle atop the wooden box meant to hold shoes. She shrugged off the shield and the material strapped to it, and a canvas bag, hidden between the layers, plopped out on the floor. Finally, she turned and knelt in front of me. I waited, afraid of what I thought I was seeing, terrified to allow myself to believe what my mind was telling me-not until I was sure. She slid back her hood.

There are moments in our lives that, because of pain or joy or terror, are unforgettable. This, to me, was one of those moments. I felt as if a surge passed through my body. Until that moment, I had suppressed my feelings of longing, of loss, and of loneliness. As I beheld the face I thought I’d never see again, I realized how much I’d missed her.

Doctor Yong In-ja stared at me somberly, not smiling. Hers was a smooth face, even-featured, with short bobbed hair and thick-rimmed glasses. No one, at least in the West, would accuse her of being beautiful. But I thought she was. In fact, at that moment, I wanted to embrace her, but I knew better. Being Korean-and a most reserved Korean at that-she kept her distance for this formal moment. Then she did an odd thing-she lowered her forehead to the ground, held it there, and said, “Choesong hamnida.” I am terribly sorry.

As far as I was concerned, Doctor Yong In-ja had nothing to be sorry about. I told her that.

“You are wrong,” she replied. “I have much to be sorry about. Due to my own selfishness, I have brought you into terrible danger.”

She was speaking English now. One of the things that always fascinated me about her was that even though English was her second language, she spoke it better than most GIs did. Including me.

“No. You have nothing to be sorry about,” I told her. “I wanted to come here. I would’ve had it no other way.”

She stared at me quizzically. “Why?”

“Because of you,” I said.

She turned away. “You will change your mind when I tell you all that I came here to say.”

“No,” I replied. “I won’t change my mind.”

Then she turned back and stared deeply into my eyes, evaluating what she saw, turning it over in that finely tuned mind of hers. Finally, she did what I hoped she’d do. She made a decision. The right decision. She held my eyes steadily and then smiled. The most beautiful and the most radiant smile I’d seen in my life.

“You’re filthy,” she said.

“Yes.”

She gestured toward the charcoal briquettes in the dirty bag and the brass pot. “I’ll heat water for your bath.”

“And then?” I asked.

“You’ll eat. Rice. Bean curd soup.”

She unfolded four short legs on the wooden shield and set it on the floor.

“And after that?” I asked.

“You’ll sleep.” She allowed the folded sleeping mat and comforter to flop loosely onto the floor.

“Alone?”

“We’ll see,” she replied.

Doc Yong shook me awake. In the pale moonlight, she placed a forefinger against her pursed lips, warning me to be quiet. I sat up. Outside, boots pounded on pavement. I rose to my feet and crossed to the transom, trying vainly to reach the top latch. Doc Yong knelt on all fours and motioned to her back. I understood. She wanted me to use her as a stepladder to reach the latch. I was too heavy, I knew, but she pointed again to her back, insisting furiously. Gingerly, I stepped on her back with one foot, pulling myself up on the transom’s ledge, supporting most of my own weight, and reached the latch. I slipped it back, pulled open the transom and, for just a second, peeked out.

There, standing on the sidewalk, in the glow of the headlights of a military vehicle, stood a female military officer. She was tall and wore high leather boots and a dark-blue overcoat tied tightly around a slender waist. Black hair hung long and loose, glimmering from beneath a leather-brimmed cap. She barked orders. Armed men trotted down the sidewalk at her command. They were moving fast, apparently searching the area.