Hwang Sok-Yong - The Shadow of Arms

“That’s not our concern. They’re the ones who got us into this in the first place. Our recruits from farm villages came here for the sake of progress and industrial development. Their petty dealings in the black market, helping themselves to some gifts to bring back home, are not worth mentioning. It’s a kind of hazardous duty allowance.”

“Better not talk that way at headquarters. Don’t ever argue with the Americans.”

“The captain already warned me.”

“I know what your men are shipping from Da Nang port in those crates. Appliances like refrigerators and televisions. Do you know where they come from?”

“Aren’t they duty-free PX goods?”

“That’s not what I mean. They’re all made in Japan. Hitachi, Sanyo, Sony, Sharp, Akai, National, Asahi, Canon, and who knows how many others. In Vietnam everything is Japanese, from transistor radios to Honda motorbikes to women’s lotions, all of it.”

Yong Kyu wondered what kind of man Toi was. He remained silent. Toi now seemed very different from his first impression. Why had he gone to work as a CID agent? His pay probably would be about twenty dollars a month, thirty at most. In his early forties, what about his family? What had he been doing in the Quartermaster Corps? As a youth? He needed to look him in the eyes.

“Do you wear those ugly glasses all the time?”

“I didn’t use to.”

Yong Kyu tried to take his sunglasses off, but Toi roughly pushed his hand away. Yong Kyu immediately regretted his move. He had let down his guard and revealed an attitude that was too friendly.

“Don’t worry about it. I lost an eye. That’s the only reason. Lost it because of some shrapnel from a rocket.”

The Land Rover was entering the rec center compound. A few minutes earlier they had been surrounded by trash, but now they were at a South Pacific resort. The beach was already swarming with people. The snack stand was selling hot dogs, fried chicken, sandwiches, Coke, Foremost ice cream, Sunkist drinks, Big Boy hamburgers, and fruit stamped with the California seal of approval. There were beach umbrellas everywhere and, as if a section of Tahiti had been shipped in, big high-ceilinged huts stood in a line with conical thatched roofs, bamboo railings and wooden steps, their walls open for the ocean breeze to blow through.

Inside each hall were half-naked American soldiers, civilians, and an occasional white woman drinking and dancing to the music. Fluttering among the customers were Vietnamese bar girls with long hair swaying down their backs and red plastic roses stuck behind their ears. They wore Tahitian-style grass skirts with their breasts wrapped in colorful swaths of cloth. But there were others who did not seem to fit in the scene; who were they and where had they come from? Vietnamese civilians, looking like tourists, were sitting under parasols with their families and sipping beers.

The American soldiers looked carefree. The entire beach was carefree: surfers were focused on riding the waves, others were playing ball or water polo, sailing, barbecuing on the beach, rubbing on suntan oil, practicing archery, frolicking in the water with Vietnamese whores, glued to slot machines in the clubhouse. Others were playing poker in small groups.

It all reminded Yong Kyu of something he had once heard from a Vietnamese. He had said an army that has its drinking water air-freighted in, eats cookies mailed from Mom, uses battery-run flush toilets in the field and air conditioners in jungle barracks, that can even offer hot showers to platoons out on combat operations, that was an army gasping for breath in the swamps of Vietnam.

They parked at the gate and walked down the beach. The far end of the beach was closed off with a barbed wire fence, beyond which the Korean rec center could be seen. The place was unfinished and since no troops had been on leave to use it yet, the whole area was very quiet. They walked into the office tent where they found Sergeant Yun flopped down asleep and the other soldiers absorbed in the same game of Chinese checkers as before. Yong Kyu rapped the sergeant on the feet a few times and the latter awoke with a grimace.

“Again? What is this? It’s like flies to a honey pot.”

“Careful. .”

Sergeant Yun looked sorry for having been irritated but said, “Give me a break, will you? There’s no reason for you guys to give me such a hard time, eh?”

“What’s got you so scared. . must have done something fishy. This time we’re here for a free meal. We missed the lunch hour back at the hotel.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, it’s my big chance to bribe you real good. What’d you like?”

“Anything you’ve got.”

“How about some rice and so on stuffed in seaweed, good old kimbap ?”

It was a Korean favorite hard to come by in Vietnam.

“Any hot pepper paste?”

“Sure, last year we made gochujang with Vietnamese red peppers. It’ll scorch your tongue.”

“Some rice mixed with that will be good enough.”

“Good, what about your friend?”

“Give him a steak or two. And some beer.”

The sergeant barked orders to the soldiers, then took out a bottle from his private refrigerator. Cognac.

“How about a drink of this, eh?”

“Can’t.”

“Can’t, my ass. Hey, this stuff does wonders for a soldier’s lips. The aftertaste is great.”

They each had a glass. Yong Kyu spoke.

“Actually, there’s something I need to find out. Have you seen a tall Korean woman with a prominent mole on her forehead?”

“Shit. You slimy bastard, I should’ve known. You came all the way back here just to ask me that, didn’t you?”

“Just tell me if you’ve seen her or not. And let’s finish off the bottle while we’re at it. My duty for the day is a lost cause.”

“Wait a minute. . mole on the forehead, you say?” Sergeant Yun hesitated. “You’re not going to send an innocent bystander to the dungeons, are you?”

“Nothing like that. It’s just to keep up appearances. Looks like those American bastards are trying to measure our job performance.”

“Is that a fact?” Sergeant Yun hurriedly poured himself a drink and gulped it down. “I’ve seen her once.”

Toi sat staring out at the beach, unaware of the ongoing conversation. Yong Kyu deliberately waited, letting the sergeant do all the talking.

“It was last month, I think. I went downtown with Sax Pak to have a little fun.”

“With who?”

“Mr. Pak, with the army band. There’s a club called the Da Nang Sports Club. Incredible. That’s where I saw her. Pak knew her pretty well. I asked him to introduce her and he called her over. But I could tell she thought soldiers were no good, know what I mean?”

“Bar girl?”

“No, but quite a looker, that one. I was told she wasn’t an entertainer. . but, hell. Hey, you, go tell Mr. Pak I want to see him.”

As soon as Sergeant Pak showed up, Yun called to him in a loud voice. “Mr. Pak, remember at that club, the Sports Club I think it was, when we went downtown, eh? That woman.”

Pak, a little puzzled, stared at Yong Kyu and at Toi in his mirrored sunglasses.

“Don’t worry, it’s all right. I mean that bitch with the big mole on her forehead.”

“Oh. . you mean Hae Jong?”

Yong Kyu jumped in. “Where is she now?”

Pak smoothed back his hair. “I don’t know. May have gone home, or back to Saigon.”

“Was she an entertainer?”

“No, she used to work at the PX, the navy PX.”

“What did she do there?”

“She’s no ordinary woman. Back home she used to work at the base at Uijeongbu, chief accountant at the PX there. There’s nothing she doesn’t know about the American accounts. She was so good that they put her in charge of all the records when they did inventory.”