Sad Peninsula Read online

  SAD PENINSULA

  *******************************

  MARK SAMPSON

  Dedicated to 2LT Gerald Arthur Moore

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Any rendering of actual people — living or dead — is coincidental or done strictly for the purposes of fiction. Astute readers may notice I have taken certain liberties with Korean naming conventions. Some may also know that Koreans measure their ages differently than we do here in the West; but I have transmuted those measurements into the Western standard so as not to confuse English-speaking readers.

  “When you look into a Korean woman’s eyes/ you want to stare/ at something far back/ dark,/ older even than the whole, sad peninsula.”

  — Tom Crawford, from the poem “Stones,” published in The Temple on Monday

  “A man’s sexual aim … is to convert a creature who is cool, dry, calm, articulate, independent, purposeful into a creature that is the opposite of these; to demonstrate to an animal which is pretending not to be an animal that it is an animal.”

  — Kingsley Amis, from One Fat Englishman

  Contents

  Cover

  Sad Peninsula

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  Epigraph

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part 2

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part 3

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Part 1

  Same Same, but Different

  Chapter 1

  On an afternoon in August, Meiko lay on her mat straining to hear the sound of girls being raped all around her — and when she couldn’t, convinced herself that she had finally died.

  Meiko had been waiting to die for months now, for death to burst through the thin rug that covered her stall door and rescue her with the chivalry of an older brother. Death, she imagined, would not enter this cubicle like the soldiers did, day after day. Death would be tender. It would lift her softly into the air, float her like a piece of chaff on the wind, out and over the camp, above the burning hillsides of Manchuguo, and carry her away, as if on a river, to a place of incomparable silence.

  But now, soundlessness had betrayed her. At this point in the day, the camp should have been full of the noise that she had come to refer to as The Arguments. That’s what the soldiers’ visits to the girls on the left and right of her always sounded like. Listening to them through the plywood walls of her cubicle, Meiko likened it to fierce arguing between a man and a woman. The Arguments would begin with harsh words from both parties, each trying to convince the other of something through shouting. But soon the man’s voice would win over, growing louder and more intense. The girl’s voice would try for a while to match that ferocity, to fight against whatever position the man was taking. But soon his grunts and his bellows drowned her out, growing impossibly loud in the small cubicle, crashing against its thin walls with the bluntness of a mallet. Soon Meiko could barely hear the girl’s voice at all — just a whiff of pleading lost under the soldier’s screams of aimless defiance. His hollers would build to some inevitable crescendo, rising and rising, and then at last peak with pride, a scream of triumphant conquest. And then, just as soon as it began, the noise would grind back down again, like a motor cut off. Next came silence that wasn’t quite silent. Just the sound, barely audible, of the girl weeping to herself in shame, having lost yet another Argument. Scant moments to wallow in that disgrace before the gruff flap of her curtain, another soldier entering, another Argument beginning as the last one had.

  Meiko sat up on her tatami mat. Oh, she was not dead. She could hear that familiar symphony inside her body, the wail of infection that started in her swollen genitals and burned all the way up to her sinuses. Thirsty, she reached for the jug of water sitting on the low table next to her mat, tucked its spout beneath her split lip. A mere tickle of water fell into her throat. Meiko cradled the empty vessel and stared blandly past the table to the paper box on the floor beyond it, wilted by the August heat and brimming with unopened condoms. She could see their familiar brand name gleaming in Japanese on the tinfoil — Assault No. 1. Next to the box was a ceramic dish the size of a shaving bowl full of cloudy grey water: the disinfectant that the soldiers were suppose to use after they had put on the Assault. But it had been months since the men had bothered with condoms or cleanser, and months since she had the strength to insist. Another box sat next to it, partially hidden under a blanket. It was stuffed with Gyumpo bills, the Japanese military currency, wrinkled and adorned with pictures of violent birds. Her tips from the more guilt-ridden soldiers.

  Meiko couldn’t handle the quiet any longer. She forced herself to her feet with one awkward thrust, and was nearly sucked back down by the rip tide of her fever. She picked up a faded orange shirt off her floor and put it on, pulling it down as far as it would go, to the middle of her bare thighs, which had scars and cigarette burns on them. One step and she was at her curtain; a second and she was outside of it, standing in the wooden hallway. Up one end and down the other, curtain after tattered curtain hung over cubicles exactly like hers. She spotted one of them rustle suddenly, down at the far end. A face peeped out, belonging to a girl named Hiromi. She stared at Meiko in terrified confusion. Meiko placed a finger to her split lip to keep the child silent. When she did, the girl vanished back behind her curtain, leaving Meiko to face whatever punishment awaited her for being in the hallway.

  And that punishment could come at any moment, now that she was drifting up the mud-caked planks toward the common room. It would come as a scream from the camp manager. Or a soldier rushing over, followed by the quick flare of pain as the butt of a rifle cracked her in the jaw. But Meiko staggered into the common room to find it empty. Empty. In the months since the Japanese had moved them here from the last camp, she had never seen this room without people in it. The manager’s podium stood like an abandoned sentry guarding the hallway. Resting behind its tall lip was the metal box of red tickets that the manager gave the soldiers after they coughed up their Gyumpo for the privilege of going into the hall and choosing a cubicle. Meiko moved deeper into the wide common room. On the dining tables in the middle, she found plates caked with half-finished rice balls, limp miso noodles, and jaundiced bits of cooked radish — remnants of a meal interrupted. She strolled over, brazen as a newcomer, and helped herself to the food, stuffing the stale, soggy chunks into her mouth with thrusts of her hand.

  And that’s when the unnatural heat of the room hit her. Despite the August temperatures, someone had lit the camp’s charcoal furnace on the far side of the room for the first time since late spring; she looked over to see a shimmer of orange pulsing out of its iron cage. Meiko weaved over on unsteady legs to take a closer look, the heat intensifying the nearer she got. She stooped and looked through the grate, then grabbed the wrought-iron handle and pulled the door open. The thick cardboard-covered books had been stuffed in there haphazardly and were now curdling under the flames’ snap and spittle. The ledgers. The manager’s ledgers. The camp’s history, the transactions that occurred and what the girls were owed, were vanishing into smoke.

  A noise wafted over her then from the
front entry beyond the stove. No mistaking it: the grind and rumble of army trucks. Meiko shuffled toward the opened doors. One stiff step after another and she was through the threshold and descending the stone blocks that led to the muddied ground. There in the courtyard, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the August sunshine. When they did, she saw dozens of Japanese soldiers, the anonymous faces that had visited her over and over in her stall, piling into army trucks at a pace that left her baffled. These men were not hopping into the back or onto the rails with the haste of warriors going into battle. They were instead climbing into the trucks languidly, their faces sunken and bodies limp with sadness. When each truck was full, it pulled away from the camp with no urgency beneath its wheels and joined the slow line of other trucks heading toward the Manchurian hills on the horizon. Men drifted past her with their packs and their helmets, but no one paid her any attention. It was like she had finally become the ghost that she had longed to be.

  She turned to her left. There were two soldiers down at the far end of the building, sitting with their backs against the wall. Nestled in the muddy grass between them was a portable radio, its antenna angled at the sky. Fearless now, Meiko sauntered toward them so she could hear what they were listening to. These hardened men, in their filthy fatigues and broken boots, were weeping like little boys, their eyes marinating in hot, uninhibited tears. There was Japanese crackling loudly out of the radio, a staccato voice speaking with authority. Meiko listened closely, muscled her way through the grammar, hunting for context, wanting to know who the speaker was. Her breath was yanked from her lungs when she finally figured it out.

  Emperor Hirohito.

  His Majesty spoke quickly, faster than she could entirely follow. But there was one word that he repeated, one word that hung like an ornament on this speech. And Meiko, much to her surprise, found herself translating that word into her native tongue, a language she had not dared to even dream in for so long. That Korean word was soft and playful compared to its Japanese equivalent. She let it bounce through her mind like a ball. Pok’tan … pok’tan …

  A bomb. These men were weeping about a bomb. A big one.

  She burst into laughter. She couldn’t help it. And when she did the men startled, saw her standing over them, and blinked at her as if jarred from sleep. In that moment, Meiko knew her death was imminent, that one of them would yank out his side pistol and cut her down where she stood. But neither did. They just looked up at her, and, not caring who she was or what she was, pleaded with their wet frowns for an emotion that she could not fathom. These men, who had urinated on her, who had burned her legs with hot pokers, who had smeared their semen in her eyes, were begging Meiko for a small shred of sympathy.

  She couldn’t help it. She laughed all the harder.

  Chapter 2

  The pound and rush of alien traffic, long shiny streams of Hyundai Hyundai Hyundai racing through the blink and blare of this February Friday, and it took coming to Korea for me to realize that enduring friendships are built on a foundation of mutual envy. I am friends with Rob Cruise because part of me wants to be him. Let’s get that straight, right off the bat. He and Justin Ford, my roommate, have been in this country for two years. Their existence here in Seoul seems like a neverending epilogue to tales already climaxed, lives back in Canada full of shut doors and embarrassing tragedies. I can relate to that.

  The three of us stand upon the two words that will ensure I find my way home tonight — Daechi Sa Guh Rhee. “Commit to memory,” they’ve told me, “in case we get separated. It means Daechi Intersection. Say it to a cabbie just like that — Daechi Sa Guh Rhee — and he’ll take you right back here.” This first week in, I’ve been thinking these men have adopted me, looking out for my safety in this city of 11 million people, but now I’m wondering if they’re having fun at my expense. It’s clear they’ve misled me about tonight’s activities. They said “bar” and I heard “pub” ( hof they call them here, just like in Germany) but these guys are obviously dolled up for something else and I’m dressed like a frump by comparison. We’re not going to a pub, I’ve now learned. We’re going to a club, a dance club. Thumping techno and bright spinning lights and boys with boners in their cargo pants — some of my least favourite things. Rob Cruise, who is wearing cargo pants below his winter jacket, has begun dancing already, standing at the Sa Guh Rhee with knees pumping like he needs to pee, cigarette making hurried trips to his lips. We’ll hop in a cab as soon as Jon Hung shows up. Oh wait, there he is, descending the grimy stairs of a PC Room on the other side of the street.

  “Look at the white boys standing on the corner!” he shouts as he crosses the intersection.

  “Whatever you say, chink!” Rob smiles as he flicks his cigarette to the gutter.

  Jon Hung is not a chink. He is a kyopo — dad’s Korean, mom’s American — and he possesses the Hawaiian good looks and designer clothes that scream to the world I have half an MBA and will go get the other half just as soon as I’m done with this ridiculous antisabbatical. Despite his heritage, he speaks less Korean than I do, and I’ve been in this country exactly eight days.

  “You’re going to have fun, so relax,” he says to me, spotting my body language. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Rob Cruise tells me. “The club we’re going to, most girls won’t care what you’re wearing.”

  Justin, who says nothing, steps off the curb to hail us a taxi. One pulls up within seconds, winking out its dome light. The four of us pile in, Rob Cruise presuming shotgun, and then we’re off, joining the long, shiny streams of Hyundai Hyundai Hyundai.

  You don’t so much see Seoul’s neon as you taste it, like bright hard Christmas candy, reds and greens sprayed out across the city as if fired from a cannon. As our cab races northward toward the lugubrious Han River, I figure I’ll never get used to this nonstop showcase of luminance. A landscape choked with discos and Starbucks outlets and soju tents on the sidewalks, with street-side barbecues and 7-Elevens that will let you drink beer on plastic furniture set up out front. As we settle in for the ride, Rob Cruise begins his complaining. He’s been a flame thrower at the urinal for several weeks now. The nurses at the clinic near our school have started recognizing him when he walks in; the pharmacist doesn’t even need to see the slip anymore to fetch him the right antibiotics.

  “Dude, why don’t you wear a fucking condom?” Jon Hung asks.

  Rob laughs at this. “A lot of Korean girls don’t like them. They got the whole rhythm method going on.” Voguing his hands to show rhythm.

  When I find it funny that he finds it funny, I don’t recognize myself. I should be ashamed that his insouciance ignites a profound ache in me. Deflated, I lean back and try to look out the cab’s window, but Justin’s head blocks my view as he stares into the night.

  Rob Cruise catches my sinking mood in the cabbie’s mirror and twists around to face the backseat. This is where the envy is supposed to kick in, where he imbues the air of the cab with his raunchy wisdom. Is he really thirty-three years old? The guys have heard all this stuff before, but it doesn’t matter because I’m the target. Rob begins telling me about life as a successful player, about how the best moments come when the serial seducer becomes the seduced. On those special nights, the girl he’s with will seize the lead with needs that nearly scare him. He loses control of the situation, and that’s his favourite part. Rob makes even the worries afterward, the insipient burn at the urinal that comes later, sound like an adventure unto itself. He details the inner rawness, the unwelcome discharge, the swelling that weighs on him like guilt.

  “It sounds like the clap,” I sniff.

  “It’s more than the clap,” he replies, adjusting his groin. “It’s like a fucking standing ovation!”

  And we roar, loud enough to startle the Korean cabbie. Even Justin joins in, forsaking his stare out the window, laughing his deep bell-like laugh, perhaps forgetting for an instant that he once had a kid in Nova Scotia
who died.

  Our cab flies over a bridge crossing the Han, makes the turnoff, and then grinds to a near halt as we join the constipated line of other cabs oozing into Itaewon. Finally we make it to the strip, pay the cabbie, and get out. The street is an open-air party, a festival of boozy expat teachers, of Korean beauties, of U.S. army guys on the hunt for love and war. This is Itaewon, the foreign quarter, adjacent to Yongsan Garrison, the largest U.S. army base in the country. I will come to know this place as a hive of sexual hysteria with a neon glint of violence.

  “It’s this way,” Rob says.

  On the hike up the hill and through bewildering side streets I spot at least three hofs and nearly beg us to stop. But these men are on a mission — even Justin seems keen. We finally land in a lineup outside a two-storey club called Jokers Red, its sign a splay of cards and an evil clown face. The Korean girls lined up to get in are not dressed for February. They are shivering sticks in miniskirts and tube tops, more concerned with looking hot than being warm. Rob is nearly bursting. At the door, I’m burglarized for a cover charge, follow the men inside, and then get smacked with the thumpthumpthump and the epilepsy of strobe lights. It’s then that I realize how far I have fallen: to be nearly thirty and spending Friday night in the sort of club I had zero interest in when I was nineteen. I need to be drunk.

  So off we go to the bar. We take drinks up some stairs to a booth with expansive benches that overlook the rail surrounding the dance floor like a cattle pen. Despite the crowd and its accumulated body heat, this club is as chilly as a meat locker: drafts waft in from poorly insulated walls and windows. Rob and Jon rendezvous with some familiar faces just coming off the dance floor. A shivering stick hugs Jon Hung as he slinks out of his coat and tosses it into the booth. She must be one of his girlfriends. She’s wearing knee-high bitch boots and a miniskirt that barely reaches her groin.