Martin Limon: The Door to Bitterness

When I returned, the smiling woman was still waiting. Sitting at my table, staring at the flat glass of beer in the center of our round table. As I took my seat, she tilted the smooth flesh of her face toward me and her smile was broader, and madder, than ever.

Looking back, I realize that, while I was in the latrine, she’d done what she’d come to do.

As I sipped on the drink, not noticing its altered taste, I thought about her naked. Instead of thinking about how she’d been abandoned by her father and the hunger she must’ve suffered during the cruel years after the devastation of the Korean War and how her psyche must’ve been distorted by so much hardship and how I didn’t want to contribute further to her debasement, I thought instead of the smooth flesh of her long legs. It didn’t take long for desire to make me ignore the essential depravity of taking advantage of a damaged woman, economically desperate. It made me think only of what I wanted. I wanted only her. The physical part of her. Nothing else.

I rose from the table, and when she took my hand I remember being startled at the roughness of her palm. Together we walked outside, through the big double doors of the King Club, out into the cold Korean night.

Despite the blustery wind that enveloped us, I felt warm. Cozy. Close to her. And despite what was about to happen, I think, in my inebriated state I was at that moment happy to be with the smiling woman. Not proud of myself. But happy.

After searching in vain for my. 45 and my badge, I gave up and left the dark alley, returning to the main drag. The rows of unlit neon signs still hung listlessly over the barred and shuttered doors of the joints that, by night, teemed with American GIs, optimistic young men on the prowl for new and innovative ways to waste their money.

The dark, early morning street was empty. The King Club, the Seven Club, the Lucky Lady Club, were all closed. Locked. No movement. A lone GI appeared from a narrow alley. He marched bravely to the bottom of the hill, turned left at the MSR-the Main Supply Route-and began his slow trudge back to 8th Army’s Yongsan Compound. About a mile. Most units hold their first morning formation at zero six thirty. I didn’t have a watch but I figured it must be past five.

The woman and I had walked down the main drag together. I remember a few glimpses of flashing light, outof-tune rock bands. I remember staggering, her clutching my waist, shoving her shoulder into me, holding me up. Then darkness. Probably the alley.

If I’d just been drunk, no one would’ve attacked me. They wouldn’t have had the nerve. I’m six-foot-four and in good shape. I know how to fight. If I’d been drunk, I would’ve heard footsteps behind me. I would’ve swiveled and faced my attackers and jabbed, or, given enough room, I would’ve hopped forward and side-kicked someone in the ribs. They wouldn’t have taken me down easily. Probably not at all.

From behind me, something scurried. Footsteps? Even then, in my almost comatose state, I tried to turn. I tried to raise my hands. Apparently, I hadn’t been fast enough.

I remember the pain. The pain of a heavy clunk slamming into the top of my skull. I remember being upset by it. How had this happened? And then I remember nothing.

Who were these guys? Were they working with the smiling woman? If she’d drugged me, she had to be part of the plan. But why me? Why had they singled me out? Just blind luck, or had they targeted someone-someone alone-carrying a CID badge and a. 45?

To have any chance of answering these questions-and to have any chance of recovering my badge and my. 45-I had to talk face-to-face, once again, with the smiling woman. But after what she’d done last night, I could count on her to become scarce. To find her, I had first to talk to someone who’d been there in the King Club. Someone who might be able to help me develop a lead. Ernie. He was the logical candidate. He and I had been partners for almost a year and a half. He might seem like a flake to most people-a guy who drinks too much and chases skirts too much-but Agent Ernie Bascom is a good cop. Fearless, first and foremost, and observant. Two excellent traits for someone in his profession. But where could I find him?

A cold autumn breeze blew out of Manchuria and whistled down the main drag of Itaewon. I stepped out onto the street, holding my coat wrapped tightly around my chest, trying now to think like Ernie. What would he have done last night? Where would he have gone? Had he been attacked too? Was he lying in some alleyway nearby, bleeding to death or already dead? No time to worry about that. I had to assume, for the moment, that he was still alive. Ernie had no steady girlfriend out here in the ville. Since his old flame, the Nurse, had been killed, he hadn’t shacked up steady with anyone. Not in mourning, mind you, but more as if he were compelled to hop from woman to woman in a mad rush to embrace life.

Or embrace something.

He’d become a regular at 8th Army’s VD Clinic. Many days I’d see him hanging around his customized jeep in the CID parking lot, a couple of glass slides behind his ear. When I looked at him quizzically, he said, “In case it starts to drip.” I still didn’t get it, so in exasperation, he explained. “So I can capture a specimen.”

Standing alone on a cold overcast morning in the center of Itaewon, I tried, once again, to think like Ernie. Chances are, last night, he wouldn’t have returned to the barracks. We’d been at the King Club. Plenty of Korean business girls there. He’d have grabbed one. Almost certainly. Whenever Ernie saw something he liked, he took it. He never planned anything or put anything off until later so as to savor a particular delight; rather, he always obeyed every physical urge, immediately, no matter how primitive.

A scene from last night flashed before my eyes. Me and Riley hanging onto the edge of the bar, two or three women wrapped around Ernie. One of their faces became clear. Unbidden, her name came to me: Julie. That was the Anglicized version. In Korean it was Pak Chu-li. A waitress, not a business girl, although there’s usually not much difference. And I knew she lived somewhere in one of the hooches on a narrow pedestrian pathway behind the King Club. Not off the alley I had been lying in, but farther back amidst the tightly packed jumble of brothels and hovels that house the denizens who work the night.

That’s where I had to go.

A cold breeze gathered. I tightened my jacket and began my march into the dark heart of Itaewon.

At the top of Hooker Hill, I entered a cobbled walkway lined by brick walls. Shadow enveloped me.

It took me twenty minutes, pounding on wooden gateways, waiting for someone to emerge from a room and cross the courtyard, and then asking if this was the home of Pak Chu-li, had they seen Ernie Bascom. More often than not I described him: Tall, just over six feet, short blond hair, round-lensed wire-rimmed glasses. Last night he had been wearing a coat and tie, as required on-duty for every agent of 8th Army’s CID.

It was the third wooden gateway I banged on that finally opened.

I crouched through and entered a long, rectangular courtyard with a few scrawny chickens behind a wire coop. A row of earthenware kimchee jars lined the far wall, and a rusty iron water pump dripped water into a plastic pail hanging beneath its spout. As I approached a row of hooches, the smell of charcoal gas emanating from beneath the ondol-heated floor became stronger. A paper-covered door slid open and a sleep-puffed face peered out.

Julie. I recognized her from the King Club. Her eye makeup was smeared and her long black hair was bundled behind her head, held in place by chopsticks puncturing a knot.

I stepped toward the raised wooden porch and said, “Ernie isso?” Is Ernie here?