Hwang Sok-Yong - The Shadow of Arms

“Let’s leave it at that, but during the rest of your hitch, be sure to train the new recruit. And do a decent job on the transfer of duties.”

“Not my responsibility. He’s the leader’s problem.”

“You bastard, now. . do something about the boy. Start with the hair and buy him some new clothes.”

“Give me money. I’m not a private tutor.”

The man being called “leader” kept on muttering, but he crumpled ten dollars in military currency into a ball and tossed it over.

“All right,” said the man in civvies. “Let’s throw him a Korean barbecue at the Dragon Palace.”

The leader stood up and stretched. “You scum, you’ve got five crates set aside and you still want more, eh? I’ve never seen anyone so poisoned by money.”

“And you’re not. .?”

“Watch yourself, private. Now get the hell out of my sight. I’ll have to be at the office before the kids come back.”

“I’m on my way to the Bamboo.”

“You’ve got to have that boy report to his captain.”

“Got it.”

Yong Kyu followed the man out of the room.

“They call me Blue Jacket Kang. I’m being discharged this month as soon as I get back to Korea. You’re a corporal, which puts you second from the top. Better learn to behave. Let’s get you out of that ratty uniform.

Blue Jacket Kang took him to the privates’ room. There were two sets of bunk beds and another single cot. The room was quite spacious and had a bathroom and cabinet for stowing personal effects.

“Get out of those rags and have a bath and a shave. No need for a haircut since you’ll be letting it grow long anyway. You’re to play the role of a civilian technician employed by the US Army. If you’re ever smelled out as a soldier, all your work is fucked.”

Yong Kyu took off his jungle fatigues, tattered and soaked with sweat and mud.

“Put your helmet and rifle in the locker over there.”

Opening the locker Yong Kyu saw a number of rifles covered in a thick coat of dust. “Is the duty always unarmed?” he asked.

“Buy yourself a.38 revolver.”

“Buy a gun?”

Blue Jacket Kang snickered at Yong Kyu’s puzzlement. “Think it’s better to pack a dumbbell-sized.45, do you? There’s nothing you can’t get at the market. You can get one for twenty bucks. I suppose I could hand mine down to you, but I’m taking it home with me. It’ll be my tough luck if it’s found and confiscated at entry.”

For the first time in six months, Yong Kyu looked at himself in a full-length mirror. He saw a stranger. The cheeks were sunken, the skin tanned dark brown, and there was not an ounce of tenderness in the eyes. So skinny and dark he looked like a man from South Asia. Too tall for a Vietnamese, too dark for a Korean. Looked more like a Filipino, he thought. As he shaved, Blue Jacket Kang kept on babbling.

“Everyone here thinks only about himself. Watch out and trust nobody. After all, it’s the lowest rank that takes the blame.”

Yong Kyu turned off the electric shaver. “What did you say?”

“If you’re replacing me, you’ll probably be a market inspector.”

“Market?”

“Right. The Da Nang marketplace is the biggest black market in central Vietnam. Market intelligence is more important than information on tactical movements. When you get sick and tired of writing up reports, that’s when you start feeling disgusted. Headquarters will assign you to different fountainheads of black market supply so you can familiarize yourself with the distribution channels of the economy. Once you get acclimated, you’ll be living deep among the merchants and dealers. Don’t ever forget the advice of your predecessor. I mean, don’t waste your time opening up your textbook of ethics. We’re in a dump here. You’re up to your neck in filth. If you swim in it, you’ll survive. But if you struggle, you’ll get sucked down deeper and deeper and you’ll drown.”

“I’ll do as I’m ordered.”

Blue Jacket Kang stuck his head into the bathroom and shouted, “I’m not saying you shouldn’t do as told. Our duty is limited duty. Our position here is different than that of the American army or the Vietnamese army. An order on a grand scale moves step by step, and if you write in your report that it wasn’t like that, what you saw was like this, what you heard was like that and the result of your investigation was such and such, and so forth, you’ll be the one getting into a jam. I’ll give you an example. You know the commander of the Vietnamese First Army, General Liam, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Three stars. He may become a cabinet member, you never know. He has a villa out on the North Cape, overlooking the Monkey Mountain. It serves as the safest warehouse for black market dealings. Now, do you know what the American bastards do?”

Blue Jacket Kang tried to drive his point home. “You see, we’ll just serve our time, go back home, and forget all about this. There’s no business greater than a war. Those American bastards, they have all kinds of teams formed solely for economic operations, concentrating only on black market dealings. Those few crates of TVs and refrigerators we think of as loot as we carry them off are drops of water in the ocean. Never dig deep, never assume you’re in the know.”

Yong Kyu listened absent-mindedly. Noticing the vacant look on his face, Blue Jacket Kang stopped wagging his finger at Yong Kyu.

“Stuck in the middle, I’ve been ground to pulp. I’ve crawled on field operations a few times, but it’s much more relaxed there than here.”

“You’re being discharged, aren’t you?”

“Yes, it’s over and done for me.”

“I appreciate what you’ve told me,” Yong Kyu said.

Blue Jacket Kang rummaged through his personal locker, pulled out a white shirt and a pair of pants and threw them to Yong Kyu. As Ahn changed, Kang said, “You look fine, black as any Vietnamese.”

“I don’t look like a soldier?”

“When your hair grows out a little you’ll be all set.”

Kang threw a pair of tennis shoes over, and Yong Kyu finally felt free of his platoon.

“Let’s go to the office and make a report to the command. The detachment leader is a captain.”

“How about our non-com chief?”

“One’s a pointer and the other a snake.”

If the captain was the pointer, the chief had to be the snake.

“We get three vehicles.”

Kang went over to the motor pool and drove out in a Jeep with civilian markings. The engine stalled as he let out the clutch, and he muttered, “Piece of shit car. I never drive this one. There’s a place where you can rent one for a couple thousand piasters. We use their cars. They have new model US military Jeeps, freshly repainted, all purchased on the black market.”

As they sped down Doc Lap Boulevard Blue Jacket Kang taught Yong Kyu the names of various streets and intersections. They drove into the back of a run-down two-story building at the mouth of Puohung Street. Several company Jeeps like their own were parked there.

As they entered the building they heard the chatter of wireless radios sending and receiving messages in English and Vietnamese. Civilians flowed between the rooms. Once in a while a military uniform could be seen inside an open door. The clacking of typewriters was noisy. They walked into the Korean office where a Vietnamese girl was sitting at the front desk, typing away in English.

“This is Miss Jiang Hoa, and this here is a new member of the family, just arrived.”

“I’m Corporal Ahn.”

They bowed to each other. Her eyes were big and bright but her nose was stumpy.

“Where’s the captain?”

“He’s gone out to meet Krapensky but he’ll be back soon.”