IN THE HOUSE OF THE JAPANESE COLONEL

(an excerpt from Into The Westward Land, a novel-in-progress.)

HEINZ INSU FENKL

1

During the Japanese Occupation of Korea, a colonel built a house in the hilltop neighborhood of Sam Nung. Horrible stories were told about this colonel, but sensible people said he was a quiet, philosophical man who spent most of his time tending a rock garden. In those days when the town of Pupyong was no larger than a village, he could meditate for hours among the boulders and listen to the wind in the silence of the trees. He vanished like a silvan whisper with the coming of World War II. The house was bought by a wealthy Korean merchant and rearranged, altered, added-to. The rock garden was turned into an orchard, the walks were reconstructed, and new trees were planted. A whole day was spent with an exorcist witch woman chasing out the evil spirits of the Japanese. During the Korean War, the merchant: ran away to the far south, and the house became headquarters for a platoon of Korean soldiers who tried to pretend they were on a peacetime leave. They made the house a haven for refugees.

The family who bought the house after the war added a shed and another room apart from the main house. They lived in one of the five rooms and rented the others. When I was five, we moved into the house of the Japanese colonel, and with my uncle’s family of four, we occupied two of the rooms. My mother’s cousin took another, and in the one isolated room, another family of three lived their separate lives.

What had been the rock garden during the time of the Japanese Occupation was now overgrown with pine, maple, chestnut, and ginkgo. The orchard had been uprooted during the war. In the back of the house by the shed was a terraced vegetable garden which my uncle, Hyongbu, cultivated in his spare time. The walls rebuilt to a height of ten feet, were studded with slivers of multicolored glass to discourage thieves from entering the hidden half acre of property.

At night when the trees lashed in the wind, the house was a frightening place. It was hard for me to imagine that there was a town outside our walls. With the trees and the boulders left over from the rock garden, the grounds of the house seemed a mountaintop in the wilderness. I seldom went outside at night. Rather, I stayed in, behind the thief-proof, barred windows and looked out into the trees, thinking myself into an old folktale or a goblin story. Nights during the monsoon were especially scary, because then, through the sound of the wind and the spattering rain, I often heard whispers which I knew were the lamentations of the refugees who had died during the war. Going out, down the subtle slope of hill to open the gate at night, was an adventure. Sometimes when there were no men in the house, two or even three of the women would go out one of them always carried my baseball bat.

The house had its wonders, too. On spring mornings, sometimes a mist would rise from where the rock garden had been. Before the sun was high enough to make the day clear, I could catch glimpses of mist spirits dancing between the beams of light which like revelations shone through the gaps in the tree branches. One night, just before the first day of summer, I stood outside the front door of the house and listened while the Owner man told me that the sky was endless. I stared up through the branches of my favorite ginkgo tree, saw the stars, and wondered until my neck got sore, trying to imagine with my five-year-old mind, the concept of infinity. Once during the middle of the monsoon season I found a sick swallow under the largest chestnut tree. I took it in, fed it, cared for it, and begged the Owner man to teach me how to make it well again. He looked at me sadly and said that all I could do was keep it warm and dry and hope maybe that the Swallow King in the sky would bless it. Two days later, the bird died. I buried it secretly under the chestnut tree where I had found it. I wrapped it in my handkerchief and put it in a sarcophagus of roof tile, whispering to it a blessing that would take its spirit to heaven. I even tried to cry, but found that I could not. My sadness did not want to come out of me.

2

Hyongbu sat cross-legged on the heated ondol floor smoking an American cigarette he had stolen from my mother. Between puffs, he scratched his blue-black hair and hummed to himself.

“Hyongbu, why scratch your head like that?”

He looked at me and smiled. “Insu-ya, you may think these lice are all I’ve brought back with me from the country. Ha! I’ve seen some things, too, and I have a story just for you. Want to hear?”

“Unh,” I said, rather impolitely. I should have said, “Neh,” an equivalent of “Yes, sir,” but I never used honorifics with him. I was only half Korean; I was allowed mistakes of etiquette.

“Good. Of course you want to hear.” His voice changed tone and cadence. He began to rock slightly-back and forth, back and forth. With his left hand he scratched his head; in his right the precious Salem burned neglected.

“Hmmm. . . . So I am on my way to the funeral. Two mountains away from our village, you see, so there is much walking. I walk faster than anyone else, so I’m alone at least two li in front of all the others.

“I see this chasm where the trail ends, and across it-over there-I can see what is left of a rope bridge. On this side there is nothing.” He nodded. “Ah, now that the bridge has fallen, it will be all right if I don’t go to the funeral. I never spoke to that old uncle of mine anyway.

“I look over the chasm, scratching my head. I had already caught the lice from the night before, sleeping with those rugged country people around. I try to see if there is another trail at all, but I cannot find one. I think maybe I will have to leap across and fix the bridge so that the others can cross. It is only twenty meters across, you see. I can leap that easily.

“Suddenly, I feel something watching me.” He squinted, then pushed his face forward at me and snapped his neck violently around to look behind him. I jumped.

“Hyongbu, you scared me.”

He laughed for a moment. “I have very sharp senses, Insu-ya. I look, and over behind a huge boulder -- ten times bigger than the ones outside -- I see the huge, yellow, glowing eyes of a goblin.”

“How do you know it’s a goblin? Tigers have eyes like that, too.”

“Ahhh. . . .” he said, making his eyes large and round. “Tiger eyes are hungry-eyes of cats. Goblin eyes are very round and they blink very, very slowly.”

I moved away a little bit as he made his eyes even larger and imitated a goblin looking for a victim.

“So they are goblin eyes and they’re blinking very, very slowly. Now goblins are a little bit slow. They get stupid because they only eat up stupid people. Anyone who knows a little can get away from them.

“‘Ya! Goblin brat!’ I shout, ‘What do you think you’re doing, huh? Hiding behind a rock like that? Are you trying to scare me? Get up! Show yourself!’ So this goblin -- blinking his stupid eyes -- starts to get up. And up. And up. I think he is flying into the air at first, but he is still connected to his legs. He’s taller than most of the trees on the mountain! Never, while I have been alive, have I seen a goblin this tall! I’ve seen some thick ones, but I’ll tell you later about that.”

“Hyongbu, don’t the trees in the country mountains go way up almost half-way to the sky? Was the goblin that tall?”

“Not these trees, you brat. You’re interrupting my story. Remember I told you about those big trees?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Those trees that go way up into heaven-those trees are way in the south in the place Buddhist monastaries are. All the other big trees in our country got chopped down by the Japanese or blown up in the Korean War. What you see on the mountains outside are just shrubs.”

“Unh. So how tall was the goblin then?”

“So you think maybe the goblin wasn’t so tall, huh? I’ll tell you. Listen well so you can tell your children about your Hyongbu when I’m dead.” He took one last drag from the cigarette and mashed it out in a yellow aluminum ashtray. “So this goblin is getting taller and taller while he is standing up blinking those huge, stupid, yellow eyes. And I’m getting scared. Even your Hyongbu gets scared sometimes. He must be fifteen meters tall at least. For a moment I think of leaping across the chasm, but I know that this goblin can skip across. I have a better idea.”

“You killed it!”

“No, no, you brat. Listen quietly. ‘You stupid goblin, why are you here, huh? You’re much too tall for all these trees and rocks. You had to lie down on your stomach just to hide behind that boulder. Isn’t that so? What will you do when tigers and foxes and people walk all over you while you’re down like that, huh? You stupid.’

“Of course this stupid goblin is too stupid to answer me. He is having a hard time trying to think about my words. He just blinks and lets his jaw hang open.

“‘Look here, you stupid goblin brat,’ I say to him. “If you help me a little I’ll tell you where to go so you won’t have to think about what I’m trying to tell you. You’re too rockheaded to figure out these things for yourself. You must have eaten too many village idiots to be this stupid! Maybe your brain got stretched, huh? So will you help me?’ The goblin nods. What else could he do? He is up against your Hyongbu.

“So I tell this goblin that what I need is a bridge to get across the chasm. I tell him to put down his club which has an enormous spike in it and stand at the edge of the chasm. I make him raise Ilis arms to see if he will be twenty meters tall. Of course, he is. ‘Now don’t be afraid. You won’t miss or let go. You may be stupid, but you’re strong.’”

“Hyongbu, so what did you do? So when did you kill it?”

“Shut up, brat. I’ll tell you.”

“Hyongbu, you tied up his hands and beat him with his club?”

“No, no. Listen, you brat.” He scratched his head some more. “So I PUSH him and he topples down down down but just when you thought he was going to fall all the way into the chasm-he grabs the other side with his horrible hands. Ha! I bet you didn’t think I would do that, Insu.ya.” I shook my head and he laughed, then smiled and messed up my hair.

“So now I have a bridge. I walk back and forth over the goblin to make .sure he is sturdy. I tell him not to move or make any noise and make sure his backside is up so he won’t think to eat up the people who are going to walk on him in a minute.

“Now the others catch up to me. ‘Ah,’ they say. ‘You walked so fast and now you’re either tired or you have blisters.’ So I say to them, ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, but I was just waiting because you’re all so slow. In fact, I’m going to wait just a while longer after you leave. Then I’ll follow along behind so you don’t get lost.’ Of course they think I am bragging and all walk across the goblin bridge. And they don’t even know it’s a goblin! Those stupids!

“Now when they are all gone, I go across myself and then help the goblin up. He’s very heavy, but you know how strong your Hyongbu is. Even if I don’t eat so much meat like you Yankees, I’m a strong man. Why, I was the village wrestling champion when I was young. I even won a cow.

“And now I tell the goblin to go down south to where the Buddhist monastaries are and the trees grow up into heaven. I tell him to be kind and not eat any monks, but only nasty little brats who go outside after night. The goblin wants to thank me now. He makes scary noises and blinks his big eyes even more. ‘Ya, goblin. If you want to thank me you can fix this bridge here for the villagers. There’s plenty of wood all over the mountains.’ So the goblin helps me fix the bridge, and now that village has the best bridge in the whole mountains.

“So I show the goblin how to get to the south country, and he leaps into the sky and disappears. He was a good goblin, uh? Like the story?”

“Uhn,” I said.

“Then get me one of your mother’s American cigarettes.”

I got Hyongbu two cigarettes and made him a cup of Maxwell House coffee; too. After this story, I was never very afraid of goblins any more. Broom ghosts and egg ghosts arid red hands in the toilet-there were many other things to be afraid of.

3

Cholsu was one of my few friends. He played with me because not many kids liked him. He was a bully. He constantly picked on me until I fought back one day and beat him till he couldn’t talk. After that, he fought with me only in play, and taunted me with the fact that he went to school.

“Insu-ya,” he said. “You might be bigger than me, but I’m older and smarter. You may be a big Yankee, but you’re stupid. You can’t even read.” With a stick, he drew a character on the ground. “See, this is ‘shit.’” He drew another. “This is ‘dog.’ It’s you -- ‘shit-dog.’ Understand?”

Cholsu was calling me a mongrel dog-the kind that ran ownerless through the villages, eating garbage and even their own shit because food was scarce. I erased the characters with my foot. “I can do American.talk.”

“So what? You don’t even know how to talk respectably to adults. My mother thinks you’re a moron. You can’t even say, ‘sir.’” He picked a ladybug off a branch and smashed it between his fingers. “See this,” he said, showing me the yellow mess. “Smell it.”

I was upset, but still curious. It smelled like intense human body odor. I made a face.

“This is yellow-smell. Yankees smell like this.” He wiped the mess on my shirt and ran away before I could hit him. I was chubby and slow. I knew I could never catch him, but I ran after him, chased him all over the neighborhood while he laughed at me, waited, and darted off just before I could reach him. Finally, tired, breathless and angry, I stopped and caught my breath while Cholsu taunted me. I went back home, and he followed just far enough away so that I couldn’t catch him. I closed our gate on him. “Shit-dog,” he said through the wood.

I trudged up to where the rock garden had been. There, under the trees, I sat with my back to a boulder and quieted myself.

A few minutes, a few hours later, I went outside, stood on the pathway above the rice paddies, and watched the farmers dig new irrigation ditches. In the flooded paddies, children were catching frogs and sailing tiny boats.

Cholsu saw me. He came up the trail with a large pregnant frog dangling in his grip. “I’m going to smash it till it’s stretchdead,” he said. He lifted the long, limp frog and gripped it more tightly by its rubbery hind legs. It twitched weakly. “Where’s a rock?”

I pointed to a large, half-buried rock. “Why don’t you have any frogs?” “I didn’t catch any.”

“Stupid.” He stood a little to the left and swung the frog upward. I did not look. I heard a wet, thick splat. When I opened my eyes, Cholsu held in his hands two hind legs attached to shredded hips and little bits of en trail. The rest was a gore splattered all over the rock. The only things I could recognize were the black eggs, the gelatinous eggs. “It’s stretchdead. Come on, let’s go catch frogs:”

“I don’t want to.”

“Son of a bitch.” He impaled the legs onto a loop of wire he wore on his hip and went back down to the rice paddy, leaving me to wonder why he had come up in the first place.

Flies droned around the rock.

Afterwards, when I caught frogs, enticing them with the caterpillar tips of wild wheat stalks, I played with them and let them go. When I caught tadpoles, I spared the ones with legs.

4

My father, who was stationed near the 38th parallel in Camp Casey (or Dong Du Chon as the villagers called the town) would come down to Pupyong on weekends to see us. I had turned six in January, and I wouldn’t be going to the American school until September. In May, my father decided that it would be a good idea for me to go to what he thought was Sunday school.

With my mother, he took me to the Catholic church about a mile from our house. He enrolled me with other children my size even though the nuns thought it would be bad to put me in a class with children two years older than me. My mother bought me school slippers and a pencil box. She gave me her blessing in a wistful way and walked me to school the next Sunday.

The first day was mere confusion. I entered the classroom, changed into my slippers, and sharpened my pencils clumsily with a straight razor. I was early. When the other children came, they were puzzled. They stared but did not talk to me. They, too, were confused. It wasn’t until after the class started-when they found that I didn’t know any songs, that I was holding my prayer book upside down- that their confusion resolved itself into something understandable. They assumed that since I could not read Korean, I must not be able to speak it either. They talked about me.

“He must be stupid.”

“He’s holding his book backwards.”

“He must be a moron.”

“His father’s an American soldier. I saw him. He looks big and scary like a yellow goblin. His hair’s all yellow.”

During recess, no one wanted to play with me. I went down to the rice paddies and sailed twig-boats until I saw everyone leaving the school. Then I went home.

On the next Saturday, Cholsu told me that he had a friend who went to the Catholic Church school.

“Suni told me there was a stupid half breed boy in her class last Sunday. It’s you, uh?”

“Unh.”

“Well, you stupid, you missed a whole week of school. The Catholic Church school plays on Saturday. On every other day you have to go. Suni said you were so stupid you must have quit”

“I’m not stupid. Those kids are all older than me.”

“Then why did your father put you in there? He’s stupid too.”

“That’s not true!”

“I’m going to play with Suni. Don’t follow me. I don’t want a moron with me.”

Cholsu walked away, chanting a tune:

Chimpanzee’s asshole is red

Red like an apple

Apple tastes good

Good like a banana

Banana is long

Long like a train

Train is fast

Fast like an airplane

Airplane is high

High like Pakedu Mountain!

Then he started it again, this time changing the first line to, “Insu’s asshole is red.”

I never told my mother about missing a whole week of school. I never told my father, either. There was no reason to shame them.

On Sunday, I despaired. I thought of feigning sickness or throwing up on purpose, but my mother was going to walk me to school again. “Insu.ya,” she said. “Is school fun?”

“No.”

“You’ll make friends in a little time.”

I went quietly most of the way, swinging my slipper bag and kicking pebbles with my black canvas shoes.

“Daddy says you should learn something because you’ll be behind the American kids when you go to the American school this autumn. You’ll be older than the other children. You should know more.”

“Is that true?”

“Of course.”

I held her hand until we got to the gate of the church, then I ran inside without looking back. In class that day, I held my book the right way. Still, no one spoke to me. After the first few songs, during a break, two boys started slapping each other with their books. Then they looked at me and one of them slapped me across the face.

“Ya, why hit me?”

He slapped me again. “Yankee,” he said.

My hand trembled on the prayer book. I started to feel very hot where he had hit me in the face. I tried to think of something to say, some way to insult him, but I couldn’t deny that I was a Yankee. I couldn’t think of anything offensive to say to him. My voice didn’t seem to work. The heat in my face moved down, and something sizzled in my throat.

“Yankee,” he said again.

“Yankee,” said someone else. “Yankee. Yankee.”

Suddenly, the whole room was filled with laughing faces. Open mouths I had never seen before. Yankee. Yankee. Yankee. . . I felt a distance begin. The voices. The faces. The words were all around. Incredibly far away. The mouths moved slowly. They said two meaningless syllables. The boy who had hit me, in a syrupy motion, was pulling his book back to hit me again. As I watched, my trembling hand snapped out with amazing speed. My prayer book hit him squarely across the face. For a second, the boy looked confused, then he noticed the blood that gushed from his nose. He screamed. The faces in the room stopped laughing and became grim, shocked. A girl began to cry. Then the sister came in, and she, too, screamed when she saw the blood on the wooden floor. Everyone pointed at me. I tried to explain, but I only blurted unintelligible sounds. The sister did not listen to me-she did not hear. I looked behind me to see if everyone was pointing to someone else. When the blood was all cleaned up and the boy sobbed, holding the little cones of tissue that were stuffed up his nose, the sister’s face descended upon me. The distance was complete. I tried to say that I hadn’t meant to hit him, that I myself had been hit in the nose several times, but I couldn’t speak. The face of the sister told me to go home, to feel bad, to suffer great guilt. No one even looked in my direction any more. I was no longer there.

After I put on my regular shoes and ran outside the church gate, I began to cry. The boy had turned away from my apology. The sister had looked at me with hate.

I took my slipper bag and slammed it against a telephone pole until the pencil box inside was smashed. I kicked stones until my toes hurt and my black canvas shoe-tops were scuffed white. By the time I was at the top of the path overlooking the rice paddies, my crying had turned to sniffles. I wiped my nose on the length of my forearm. .

In my throat, the sizzling came back and did not go away until I had flung my slipper bag far out into a flooded paddy.

“Insu-ya,” my mother said that evening. “You don’t have to go to the Catholic Church school ever again.”

“Was it because I was a badguy, Mahmi?”

“No. No. You have to start learning American writing. You have to rest and play before you go to the American school this autumn.”

That night after my father had gone back UP to Camp Casey, when we were all asleep on the floor on our sleeping mats, I woke for a moment feeling afraid. I reached across the mat and touched my mother’s warm hand. She closed her fingers around my sweaty palm, and I slept.

5

Insu-ya, play!”

I went out to the gate and let Cholsu in.

“What do you want to do today?” he asked.

“Don’t know.”

We stood under a chestnut tree whose roots were tangled above ground. Cholsu unbuttoned his pants and turned towards the roots. “A worm,” he said. There was a large worm just in front of him. “My mother told me if you pee on a worm your chaji gets all swollen.”

“How so?”

“Don’t know. Maybe the worm spirit gets you.”

“I don’t think so.”

He looked down at the worm for a moment. “I won’t pee on the worm.”

“Cholsu’s afraid. Cholsu’s afraid.”

“Not true.”

“Ha. Ha. Hahaha.”

“You’re afraid to pee on the worm, too, Insu.”

“No.”

“You are.”

“Not true.”

“Then you pee on the worm.”

“If you, too.” I unzipped my pants and we both pissed on the worm. It writhed as our hot urine spattered all over it. We made sure we both pissed thoroughly, making a sound like a tiny yellow monsoon shower.

“It’s funny,” said Cholsu. “It’s stretchdead.”

I shook myself dry and pulled my pants back on. “See, your chaji isn’t all swollen.”

“I was lying. My mother never told me that.”

I looked at the dead worm in our little puddle of urine. My penis felt very warm. “The worm spirit will get you.”

“Not true.”

“Scared?”

“No!”

“You look scared. You didn’t put your pants on.”

He quickly buttoned his pants back up. “Let’s go to the upper village, Insu-ya. Play war.”

I ran to the back of the house and got two of my best rifle sticks. We went to the upper village.

“Cholsu-ya, maybe they make me a general today? Unh?”

“No. You’re a Yankee. We don’t need Yankee generals. They can’t fight.”

·

When Cholsu saw me the next day, the first thing he said was, “Son of a bitch.”

“Why so?”

“The worm spirit got me. I looked when I woke up and my chaji was all swollen and stiff.”

I remembered, ominously, the heat I had felt in my own penis just after we had urinated on the worm. “Still swollen?”

“No. It went away, I was scared.”

I knew it had been no worm spirit. “It was nothing, Cholsu-ya.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“I should kill you.”

“Try.”

Cholsu opened his clenched fists. He was three years older than me, but I was bigger and stronger. “What do I do if the worm spirit comes again? I don’t want my chaji to be all swollen like that.”

“If you’re a bad guy, the worm spirit gets you bad. My Aunt told me that once you pee on a worm the spirit stays with you till you die.”

Cholsu’s lip tightened and his eyes looked wet. “So what can I do?” He started to cry. “You’re a Yankee so the worm spirit doesn’t get you.”

“All right,” I said. “It’s all right. Aunt said when your chaji gets hard like that, you just have to pray to the worm spirit and say you’re sorry. Do that and it will be all right.”

“Really?”

“It’s true.”

Afterwards, I had no respect for Cholsu. I knew then that I wasn’t as dumb as he said I was. He, too, was stupid-maybe even more than I was if he didn’t know that chajis got hard all by themselves sometimes.

6

All the animals I had in the house of the Japanese colonel were fated, somehow, to die. I had a bored and lonely goldfish. To give it company, I caught spotted eelfish at the sewer creek and put them in the aquarium. They ate the goldfish after a few moments of hesitation. They also made the water stink, so I had to give them to the Owner lady who fed them to her son. The eel fish cured his drooling.

One day, Hyongbu brought a duck.

“A pet,” I said. “Hyongbu brought me a pet!”

“This duck is only a visitor,” said Hyongbu, but I took good care of it anyway. Every day I went out to the rice paddies and caught dozens of tadpoles for the duck. Every day I took it for walks around the house. I was fascinated by the way it waddled and quacked. When I learned that ducks were like water chickens, I let it swim in a large basin. I would have taken it out to the rice paddy, but Hyongbu wouldn’t let me. Under my care, the duck became fat and good-natured. It made good noises in the morning, which sometimes, to my ears, seemed to be the barking of a hoarse dog.

One morning, because I was going far away to play, I forgot to check on the duck. When I came back in the evening, it was missing. .

I searched everywhere-all around the house, all over the village. I asked strangers if they had seen my duck. I made Cholsu go looking with me even though he had gotten a blister that day. I went home only after my mother came out to call me in.

“Mahmi, where did my duck go?”

“Hyongbu took it back.”

“How come he didn’t tell me?”

“You weren’t home. Come in, Insu-ya. You have to eat now. Look at you-you’re dirty and your eyes are all sunken. You must be hungry.”

For dinner, Aunt had cooked a funny-tasting chicken. I tried to eat some of it, but something was wrong. I excused myself and went out by the kitchen to look in the trash box. It was full of duck feathers. For a while I gritted my teeth. My throat crackled. I felt hot, full of a squirming fury. I ran inside and heard Hyongbu’s voice as I stood in front of the ricepaper door.

“It’s good duck meat. Good thing Insu doesn’t know.”

I flung the door open, ran up behind my uncle, and started pounding him with my fists. “Hyongbu! Dog!” I screamed. “Ate my duck! Ate my duck!”

He let me hit him a few times before he grabbed my arms and tightly held me while I cried. “Insu-ya, Insu-ya, the duck was sick. I had to kill it before it was in pain.”

“Then why did Mahmi say you took it back? Why?”

“She didn’t want you to be sad.” He cradled me and rocked back and forth.

“It didn’t look sick.” I sniffled a few times. The crying had made me feel light as if a fresh monsoon rain had just ended.

Hyongbu took out his handkerchief and let me blow my nose. “It had a duck disease.

Only a duck doctor or somebody who has raised ducks can know.”

“Did you grow ducks, Hyongbu?”

“Yes, when I was a child.”

“Mahmi,” I said, “can I stop eating the duck meat and just eat some rice and kimchee?”

“Sure, sure.” She didn’t look directly at me. She said something to Aunt, and Aunt nodded. “How would you like some steamed cakes?”

“Now?” I scrambled up from Hyongbu’s lap. “Can I, really?”

My mother smiled.

·

On the way to buy steamed cakes, I asked my cousin Yunhwa why they had cooked the duck if it was sick.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Tasted good.”

I didn’t talk to him the rest of the way, and since he was older than me, I made him carry all the steamed cakes back.

For the next week, the house seemed empty and silent without the duck’s quacking. I buried some of its feathers next to the swallow’s grave, but I did not say a blessing because I had eaten its meat.

7

Late in the summer, Cholsu was run over by a taxi. My mother told me this when I asked her why Cholsu’s mother was crying every night. For the rest of the summer, I was afraid of walking in front of Cholsu’s house because I had not been sad at the news of his death. At night I stayed inside and didn’t even look out the window any more because I thought I would see Cholsu’s spirit looking for me. Sometimes the silence under the chestnut tree became ominous.

Towards the end of August, my father went to Vietnam. The day after he left, we moved out of the house of the Japanese colonel.

“Are we going to Vietnam, too, Mahmi?”

“No, Insu-ya. We’re moving to a smaller house on the other side of town.”

“Will it be scary there at night?”

“No. No. There won’t be any big trees in the yard, so no spirits will be able to hide in them. It will be quiet. You’ll go to the American school and make friends.”

I left all my secret things under the trees and the boulders where the rock garden used to be. Before we left, I stood in front of Cholsu’s house for a while. I visited the place where he had smashed the frog on the rock. I found no traces of the frog. I felt no traces of grief.

from BRIDGE: Asian American Perspectives, (Vol. 8, No. 4) Winter, 1983.