floor wearing shoes that have picked up filth from the street.
When I hesitated, Ernie said, “We might have to leave in a hurry.” To further make his point, he pulled his. 45 out of his shoulder holster.
I didn’t like it but I couldn’t argue. If there’d already been trouble here, there could be a lot more trouble when Ernie and I barged in and started asking questions. Reluctantly, I stepped onto the immaculately varnished wooden floor still wearing my highly-polished, army-issue low quarters.
The clunk of our shoes down the long hallway sounded to me like the tolling of the bell of death.
The Korean businessmen thought we were mad; they were just as outraged as the group we’d encountered last night at the Koryo Forest Inn. How could we possibly have the temerity to defile their expensive sanctuary? But through all the shoving and shouting and red faces blasting whiskey-soaked breath, Ernie and I held our ground. Even during the outraged shouts about our shoes and how we’d spread dirt throughout the palatial grounds and how we had no business upsetting honest customers and hard-working kisaeng, nobody threw any punches. But finally, the elderly woman who managed the place pulled us aside.
She wore the most elaborate chima-chogori I’d ever seen. The silk of her vest and skirt was hand- embroidered with tortoises, phoenixes, and dragons-lucky creatures all. She stood on her tiptoes and hissed in my ear. “Tone,” she said. Money. She’d give us money if we’d just leave.
I told her that we didn’t want money. We only wanted information. Then, I showed her the locket containing the photo of Kim Yong-ai. I also showed her the military personnel jacket photo of Corporal Jill Matthewson. She stared at both photos long and hard, and then nodded her head in surrender and said she’d tell me the entire story. But the quid pro quo was that Ernie and I had to return to the entranceway and take off our shoes.
We did so.
Immediately, silk-clad kisaeng, heavily made-up and reeking of expensive perfume, grabbed moist towels and, folding them neatly, began to scrub the floor. From the spot where Ernie and I had entered these hallowed precincts all the way to where we’d encountered the irate businessman, they cleaned as if their lives depended on it. As if this was their last chance to eradicate the influence of filthy foreigners. Somehow, I think they knew that the floor would never again be as clean as it once had been.
We sat with the aging kisaeng on a wooden bench in an inner garden. She told me that her name was Blue Orchid and she’d been sold by her parents to a kisaeng house near the outskirts of Pyongyang when she was twelve years old. Her training had been rigorous and traditional. When the Korean War broke out and General MacArthur’s United Nations Command bulled its way through Pyongyang, heading north toward the Yalu River, she and some of her fellow kisaeng had become refugees. After months of hardship, they made their way to Seoul. Since then, she’d held many positions but she’d been at the Forest of Seven Clouds for almost twelve years now.
“Never before,” she told me in Korean, “did we have as much trouble as we did this week.”
A young woman, just a girl really, brought a tray with folding legs and set it on the bench next to us. Ceremoniously, she poured handle-less cups full of green tea. Ernie and I sipped the warm fluid. Blue Orchid watched and cooed in approval as the young girl left.
Blue Orchid straightened her skirt before she started to talk. “Jill was very popular here,” she said. “We called her Beik-jo.” White Swan. “She was so gracious. Friendly with all the women and charming to the customers. You should be proud of your compatriot,” she told me. “We’ve never had a woman before-not even Jade Beauty- who’s been so popular with the powerful men from Seoul.”
I wanted to ask who Jade Beauty was but we didn’t have time. Jill Matthewson was in danger. Not to mention the time pressure on us to return to 8th Army as soon as we could. Reluctantly, I prodded Blue Orchid to return to the main story. She did.
Jill Matthewson started working at the Forest of Seven Clouds a little more than three weeks ago. That jibed with when she’d gone AWOL. The position was procured for her, and for her friend, Kim Yong-ai, by a friend of a friend of the owner who happened to be a business associate of the entertainment agent, Pak Tong-i.
I didn’t tell Blue Orchid that Pak Tong-i was dead.
Jill had to be taught many things, Blue Orchid told us. She had to be taught how to kneel on a hardwood floor, how to offer everything to a guest-whether it was a warm hand towel, or a plate of quail eggs, or a shot glass full of imported Scotch-with two hands. Never use one hand; that would be insulting. She had to be taught when to bow, when to giggle politely, when to light a man’s cigarette, and when to open her eyes wide in astonishment when he explained his business triumphs-even when she didn’t understand a word he was saying. And she had to be taught how to never turn her back on a guest, to back out of the room bowing and facing the guest in a respectful manner. And she had to be taught how to dress and how to wear her hair and even how to apply her makeup. And after all these lessons were learned, she still made mistakes. But the Korean men were indulgent. They were impressed that an American was getting even a few of their customs right. And they were flattered when she turned her full radiant attention on them, what with her big, round blue eyes and her intent way of staring at a man, a boldness that a Korean woman would never be allowed.
“Everybody like,” Blue Orchid said, switching to English. “Many men come from Seoul. Want to see Miguk kisaeng.”
The Miguk kisaeng. The American woman of skill.
Ernie was becoming antsy. Still, I didn’t rush Blue Orchid. She’d stopped using Korean now and had switched almost exclusively to English. This told me that during those years of hardship during and after the Korean War, before she’d landed this gig at the Forest of Seven Clouds, she’d made her living not as a kisaeng but as a business girl-for GIs. As I hoped, Blue Orchid finally reached the point in her narrative where something went wrong.
“Two days ago, man come.” Blue Orchid’s face crinkled in disgust. “American man. GI. He drive up in jeep, have another GI with him. They both wear uniform. Everything dirty. Clothes dirty, boots dirty, even GI teeth dirty.”
“What did he look like?” I asked.
“Tall. Almost like you. But skinny, like him.” She pointed at Ernie. “But more skinny than him.”
“An MP?” Ernie asked.
“Yes. He wear black helmet with “MP” on front.”
Warrant Officer Fred Bufford. Had to be.
“And the driver?”
“Black man. Small guy. Skinny, too. He don’t say much.”
Maybe Staff Sergeant Weatherwax.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“He walk in wearing boots. Same like you.” The cardinal sin. “Then he find Beik-jo.”
“She sit in room with customers. Important customers. They drink much whiskey. Buy taaksan anju.”
Anju means “snacks.” Taaksan is Japanese for “much.” English, Japanese, and Korean all in one sentence: Buy taaksan anju. Blue Orchid was slipping back into GI slang.
“Tall GI find Jill, he pull his gun.” Blue Orchid mimicked a man pointing a. 45 automatic pistol. “He tell Jill she gotta go back compound. She say, hell no! He try to grab her. Then Jill knuckle-sandwich with him.” Blue Orchid waved a small fist through the air. “Tall, skinny GI go down, drop gun, Jill pick it up. Point it at GI, take him back outside, make him and black GI karra chogi.” Go away.
“And she kept the pistol?” Ernie asked.
Blue Orchid nodded vigorously.
“Bold,” Ernie said, once again impressed with the exploits of Corporal Jill Matthewson.
“What’d she do next?” I asked.
“She… how you say?”
Blue Orchid mimicked grabbing things and placing them in a container.
“She packed her bags?” I said.
“Right. Pack bags. She and Kim Yong-ai. Right away, they go.”
“Kim Yong-ai was working here, too?”
Blue Orchid nodded. “Not taaksan popular like Jill. But she good woman.”
“Where’d they go?”
Blue Orchid shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Moolah me.” I don’t know. “They cry, they thank everybody for helping them, they so sorry they gotta go but, anyway, they gotta go.”
“They left that same night?”
