bar. “Kapshida,” he said. Let’s go.
She looked up at us with her heavily lined eyes, trying to make up her mind. Finally, she shrugged, stood up, and spoke to the other women seated against the wall.
“Jokum itta dora wa,” she said. I’ll be right back.
She grabbed her coat and sashayed toward the door.
The three of us wound through a couple of hundred yards of narrow pedestrian lanes. Sewage ran through open stone-lined gutters reeking of ammonia and filth. High walls made of brick and stone lined either side of the passageway, studded on top with brass spikes or shards of embedded glass. An occasional streetlamp glowed yellow at the intersection of two lanes, but mostly we were guided by the dim silvery rays of a half moon. Finally, the hostess crouched through a door in a larger wooden gate. Ernie and I followed. The hostess hollered, “Jeannie Omma, issoyo?” Is the mother of Jeannie here? Apparently a child was involved.
We stepped into a courtyard of swept dirt. Kimchee pots lined one wall. A byonso-an outhouse-behind us smelled of lime and human waste. Across the courtyard, light glowed behind a latticework door stretched with oil paper. The door slid open and a woman’s face peeked out. “Nugu-syo?” she said. Who is it?
As soon as she saw the hostess, with Ernie and me looming behind her, she slid shut the door. A metal latch clicked into place.
Weyworth’s hooch wasn’t much. Just a large ondolheated room with a cement-floored kitchen on the side.
“I’ll check the back,” Ernie said.
As he marched off into the darkness, the hostess who’d brought us here surreptitiously retreated toward the entranceway. I ignored her until I heard the door in the large gate shut. I stepped up to the latticework door and knocked. The wooden frame rattled.
“Weyworth,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”
When there was no answer, I said, “I’m Agent Sueno from Seoul. You won’t be able to hide from us, might as well talk now.”
Words were mumbled inside and clothes rustled.
Ernie returned at a trot.
“No way out the back,” he whispered. “The only exit is through the front here and that side door off the kitchen.”
We could keep an eye on both exits from where we stood.
I stepped closer to the door. “Last chance,” I said, “or we’re kicking the door in.”
More frantic mumbling, something being dropped, a heavy object of some sort, and then a shadow appeared in front of the oil paper. I backed up, keeping my hand on my hip where my. 45 would’ve been if I’d been armed. That’s one thing that Ernie and I hadn’t thought of: to check out weapons from the Pusan MP station. Suddenly it seemed like a tremendous oversight.
Ernie stepped to his right, into the darkness. I stepped to my left.
The oil-paper door slid open.
Yellow light flooded into the courtyard. Ernie and I tensed. A face peeked out, the same woman who’d peeked out earlier. This time, I caught a good look at her. She was cute, young, maybe in her early twenties, with a bemused expression and braided pigtails hanging down from either side of her round head.
Ernie stepped forward, grabbed the edge of the door, slipped off his shoes and stepped into the hooch. The woman screeched. Ernie shoved her aside.
I followed him into the hooch.
Ernie searched the kitchen and the tiny storeroom out back.
“Nobody here,” he said, returning to the main room.
Nobody except a little girl who was squatting next to an inlaid mother-of-pearl armoire. She had a face and hairstyle just like her mother’s, except for her coloration. She was very light-skinned and her hair was dirty blonde.
“This must be Jeannie,” I said.
The little girl’s eyes widened. Blue fading to green. Her mother stepped away from us and clutched her arms in front of her ample breasts. She wore only a set of PX thermal long johns, no bra underneath. The woman reached into the armoire, pulled out a winter coat, and wrapped it around herself. She squatted down next to Jeannie and placed a protective arm around her.
“Weyworth not here,” she said.
“Weyworth?” Ernie said. “Don’t you call him Nick?”
The woman didn’t answer.
“Where’d he go?” I asked.
“He go someplace,” she said, waving her free arm. “I don’t know. All the time big deal, he gotta do. Business, he say. Where, I don’t know.”
“You moolah?” Ernie asked. Moolah is the Korean word for “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand.”
“Yeah,” she replied. “I moolah.”
“What time does he come back?” I asked.
“Now?” she replied. “Maybe don’t come back until morning time. After curfew.”
“He catchy girlfriend?” Ernie asked.
The woman knotted her slender fist. “He catchy girlfriend, then most tick he catchy knuckle sandwich.”
“So he’s doing business?” I said, more gently.
She nodded warily, worried now that she might have revealed too much.
Ernie knelt to the warm ondol floor; I did the same. He smiled at the woman and then he smiled at Jeannie. Both of them were still nervous. I guessed from the age of the girl-about four-that Weyworth wasn’t the father. G.I. s pull a one-year tour in Korea. There hadn’t been time for him to sire this beautiful four-year-old child.
“Who’s Jeannie’s daddy?” Ernie asked.
The woman didn’t get angry. “Long time ago,” she said, “’nother G.I.”
“Picture isso?”
I knew what Ernie was doing. He was trying, in his own way, to relax Jeannie and her mother. And showing pictures was something few Korean business girls could resist. Especially pictures of old boyfriends, and especially if those boyfriends had left them with a child.
She rummaged beneath silk-covered comforters in the bottom of the armoire and pulled out a thick photo album. She set it on the floor and flipped quickly through the pictures. Jeannie slid closer to her mother. Finally, Jeannie’s mother found a photo of Jeannie on Beikil, her Hundredth Day celebration. In ancient times, so many infants succumbed to childhood diseases that it was thought wise to wait a hundred days, until their chances of survival looked somewhat promising, before welcoming them into the human family.
Jeannie’s mother turned the photograph toward Ernie and then me. The infant Jeannie was dressed in a brightly colored silk suit, surrounded by ripe fruit and fat dumplings. Ernie and I oohed and aahed and told Jeannie what a beautiful baby she’d been. Jeannie buried her face beneath her mother’s armpit, embarrassed by the attention. Then Jeannie’s mother flipped the pages to a photo of herself, a few years younger, wearing a colorful chima-chogori, the traditional Korean dress with a high-waisted skirt and a short vest. She looked beautiful, and I told her so.
“Ipuh-da,” I said. She beamed with happiness.
Some Koreans are trained to hide their emotions, but not all. By now, Jeannie’s mother was delighted, and all thought of Weyworth had been banished from her mind. Ernie and I studied the photograph, paying particular attention to the G.I. standing next to her. He wore a dress green uniform with three yellow stripes sewn on a well- pressed sleeve. A buck sergeant. His nameplate said Bermann.
“Did you get married?” Ernie asked.
She shook her head. “Supposed to. But he change mind. Go back States.”
An old story.
Jeannie’s mother filled the silence by saying, “The only thing he teach me is how to smoke, how to drink… ” Then she hugged Jeannie, adding, “And how to make baby. Tambei isso?” she asked. Do you have a cigarette?
Ernie and I both shook our heads.
“Next time I’ll buy some,” Ernie said.
