Division MPs hadn’t come anywhere near.
The time now was midnight. Madame Chon, in her usual gracious style, had allowed us to eat and bathe and rest; Ernie and Jill Matthewson and I felt a lot more human. While we’d rested, I had managed to put a call through to the 8th Army CID Detachment.
“Smitty came up with the records,” Riley told me. “Beaucoup purchases out of the Camp Casey PX. Then I did what you told me. I laid it all on the desk of the 8th Army provost marshal. I told him what you said about the mafia meetings and the rape of the stripper and the systematic black-marketing at the Turkey Farm. I even told him about your suspicions concerning the death of this Private Marvin Druwood.”
“How’d he react?”
“How do you think he reacted? He went ballistic. First, you and Ernie go AWOL, you don’t leave the Division area of operations as ordered, and now you’re casting aspersions on the integrity of every ranking field-grade officer on the Division staff.”
I waited.
“They want your ass back here,” Riley said. “They want your report in person and they want it now.”
“If we do that,” I told him, “Division will have time to cover up all the evidence, threaten their MPs so they won’t testify, and nobody will be busted for anything.”
“How’s that your lookout? You’re supposed to report to the PMO. That’s it!”
“That’s not it,” I said. “As part of the Division attempt to cover up, they’ve shot at Ernie and me, trying to kill us, and they might’ve murdered Private Druwood. And maybe a ROK civilian by the name of Pak Tong-i.”
“You have no proof.”
I did what I seldom do. Instead of reasoning with the man I was having a disagreement with, I started screaming.
“How in the hell am I going to get proof if I have to return to Seoul?”
Riley waited for the sound of my voice to fade. Then he said calmly, “They didn’t buy it, Sueno. You have to come back.”
I waited, allowing the pause to grow.
He said, “Sueno? Sueno? You don’t want to do this.”
I listened to his breathing for a while. Then I hung up the phone.
A row of candles flickered in the darkness of the main worship hall. Food had already been served. Food for the kut. The seance. Rice dumplings, for the spirits supposedly, but Ernie grabbed a couple and popped them in his mouth. When glasses were poured full of soju for the pleasure of spirits from the great beyond, the neighbor women helping Madame Chon realized that Ernie wasn’t able to resist. Instead of making him suffer, they poured an extra glassful for him. He offered me some but I refused, as did Jill. His behavior, as is the case so often, was irreverent. Ernie has no time for proprieties, for ancient customs, even for respect for the dead. But I noticed that neither the local women, nor Madame Chon, nor even the smiling bronze face of Kumbokju, seemed offended. Only Jill and I were embarrassed. But when Jill leaned toward me and started to complain about Ernie, I placed my hand on her forearm and told her to be patient. I was right. As time went by, the women fed Ernie more and more dumplings and poured him more and more soju. Apparently, what Jill and I considered bad manners, they recognized as signs of possession.
Suddenly, from within the crowd, one of the women started chanting. Her voice was strained, singsong, as if she were warbling some sort of discordant tune. Madame Chon translated for me. “Her son is speaking,” she said. “He was killed in a car accident.”
“Killed?” I asked.
“Yes. Twenty years ago. She all the time come kut.”
Madame Chon’s answer was completely matter-of-fact. She and all the women in this room believed that communion with the dead was routinely achieved by mudang such as the Widow Po.
Jill Matthewson, listening to our conversation, rubbed her upper arms and bowed her head and murmured a prayer.
The Widow Po beat her drum and danced closer to the wailing woman.
“Mal hei,” the Widow Po said. Speak. “Mal hei, Wan-sok-i.”
Apparently, Wan-sok was the spirit’s name.
Wan-sok’s mother, still using a tightly pitched voice, started to speak.
“I’m cold, mother,” the voice said. “I’m cold because I’ve lost your warmth. Why, when I was alive, did you treat me so badly? Why, when I was alive, did you give me everything for which I asked? Why, when I was alive, did you purchase me a car? Why, when I was alive, did you let me go out at night? Why, when I was alive, did you let me drive so fast? Why, when I was alive, did you not keep me closer to your heart? Why, when I was alive, did you turn your back on me?”
Then the woman shrieked and collapsed into the arms of the women around her.
Ernie sipped on his soju. “Phony,” he said. Jill elbowed him.
The Widow Po banged rapidly on her drum. “Hear me, oh spirit,” she shouted. “Hear me, spirit of Wan-sok. What kind of son are you to punish your mother? What kind of son are you to blame her for your greed? What kind of son are you to torment the woman who gave you birth? Desist spirit!” She banged on the drum. “Desist in your lies!” She banged again. “Desist in your torment of your good mother!” This time she banged repeatedly, deafeningly, and the woman who had fainted groaned and started to come to.
Ernie offered his bottle of soju. It was passed to Won-sok’s mother and liquid was poured across her lips. She coughed and choked and wiped away the soju. Her eyes shot open and she sat up and placed her flattened palms in front of her nose and started to pray.
“This mudang,” Ernie said, “knows how to work the crowd.”
Like a whirlwind, the Widow Po banged rapidly on her drum and twirled through the women seated cross- legged on the floor, heading straight for Ernie. When she stopped banging, she stood directly over him, red eyes blazing, candlelight flaming behind her, voice wailing.
“Chumul-cho!” she screamed. Then she banged on her drum again. Ernie looked at me, confused. “Chumul- cho!” the Widow Po screamed, more loudly this time. Her drum became an incessant roar.
“Dance!” I told Ernie. “She wants you to stand up and dance.”
“Bull! I don’t know how to dance.”
“Its not that kind of dancing,” I said.
“Chumul-cho!” the Widow Po screamed again and this time Ernie bounced to his feet as if he were being pulled up by strings. The Widow Po let go of her drum with one hand and slapped him. Hard. The splat of flesh on flesh resounded throughout the room. “Chumul-cho!” she shouted.
Ernie began to dance.
His legs shook at the knees and his arms flailed akimbo and the Widow Po seemed pleased and grabbed Ernie’s hand and dragged him out in front of the glowing bronze Kumbokju. She wailed and drummed and swirled around him and Ernie kept up his flailing, looking for all the world like Elvis Presley gone spastic.
Jill started to laugh. So did I. And then all the women in the room were roaring and this seemed to encourage Ernie. The Widow Po drummed madly and Ernie flailed more wildly and finally, his face slathered in sweat, the Widow Po flung Ernie like a rag doll back into the arms of the women in the crowd.
Exhausted, he collapsed onto his pillow. One of the women took pity on him and, grabbing another bottle of soju, poured fiery rice liquor across his lips like a mother feeding a baby.
The drumming stopped. The Widow Po stood stock-still, her back to all of us. Perspiration on her black hair glistening in the candle glow. Her body started to quiver. Not move. Just quiver. As if something hideous was passing through her, entering through a cavity in her body and filling every pore of her being with a power that could only be expressed by the quaking of her statuesque torso.
Then she screamed.
The collapse to the floor was total. She slammed into wood. Rib cage, skull, everything crashed against the solid surface as if she’d fallen from a thirty-foot precipice. I thought she’d killed herself. I started to rise, but Madame Chon grabbed my arm with surprising strength and forced me to sit back down.
Like a butterfly, effortlessly, now the Widow Po started to rise.
She floated. Or it seemed that she floated. Probably she was standing on her tiptoes like a ballerina. But in the dark room in the flickering candlelight it seemed for a moment that she was actually levitating. And then she
