The following passage is a rough-draft excerpt from my upcoming novel, Gyeosunim, the sequel to Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary. Be warned that there are spoilers and you may be missing some context. Passages are in no particular order and are subject to change.
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| Photo credit: lanaclassic.com |
No words were spoken. All I could hear were the high revs of the small engine, the squealing of tires as we negotiated streets, and the occasional horn as the driver warned pedestrians and other cars to get out of our way.
I remained still, focusing on my breathing and maintaining my balance as I fought to remain still around corners. I took stock of what I had on me: a wallet with 50 West German marks and 10 from East Germany. At Checkpoint Charlie, when I had crossed into the east, I was required to convert some cash into East German currency. An admission fee, I told myself. I had a Canadian credit card, driver’s license, and passport, none of which was in my real name. Over my shoulder, I had a Minolta X-700 camera, but that had been confiscated as I was grabbed.
All told, I looked like a tourist. Why would a tourist run?
Charles was in charge. My instructions were clear: maintain a distance from the other men who were similarly dressed but be sure that I was always between them and the road. If any vehicle pulled up, if anyone got out, take a picture of them, make eye contact, and then run.
Gunther was supposed to be about my size, dressed nearly identically to me, even down to the camera. It was going to be a case of mistaken identity. What would I tell the authorities who grabbed me why I had run? I was to say that I had realized that I had photographed someone who wasn't supposed to be photographed and feared that I had broken some law. It was stupid and I knew I should not have run, but I was scared and was not thinking straight.
That was my story. Just focus on that, breathe steady, and everything would be all right.
***
“Gah!” the young man in the glasses barked at the driver as he closed the rear door. Go!
“Eo-di gaya?” Go where?
“I don’t care, just drive,” my abductor ordered, in Hangul.
The driver, dressed for nightclubbing, in a dark suit, put the car into gear and sped out of the alley. We made a right turn, heading away from the Gaeksa and toward the river. The passenger in the front remained silent and still, her head still bowed downward, her hair blocking me from seeing her face. She wasn’t reading anything. It was clear that she didn’t want to be a party to this abduction.
I looked at the young men on each side of me. Neither was bigger than me. With only one of them, I would likely have a chance at fighting, even in my inebriated state. But to fight both of them, from opposing sides, would be a foolhardy gesture. Instead, I took a good look at them, making a mental note.
As we reached the river, the driver took another right turn on the road that ran along the north bank of the river. We were heading west, passing cars as room allowed. The driver, clearly agitated, argued with his partners in crime. Though they spoke quickly and in high-pitched whines, I caught the gist of what they were discussing.
Now that they had me, what were they going to do with me?
I chuckled, softly, to myself: nothing in Korea is organized, I told myself. Least of all, crime.
The abductor to my left saw me smiling and muttering to myself, and raised a hand to me. “Haji-ma!” he exclaimed: Cut it out! He slapped me on my left cheek, but with such little force that I wasn’t sure if he was enacting violence upon me or simply, aggressively, stroking my face.
I laughed harder. “Is that your worst?” I chuckled at him.
Using his right leg, he jabbed at my leg, which felt little more than a nudge. His knee hit my pant leg, making contact with the side pocket of my cargo pants, which held my wallet. “Unh? Geu-gae mwoya? Boyeo-jewuh.” What’s that? Show me.
I stopped laughing.
“Geugyus-eul juh-wae-gae chuseyo.” Give it to me.
Slowly, and with obvious reluctance, I reached into my pocket and retrieved my wallet. My assailant snapped it from me and opened it. I had about 50,000 won, to which he helped himself. When he started thumbing through the rest of the contents—my drivers license, immigration card, and credit card, I started to worry. No Korean would have any use for this ID. An Ontario license with my photo and Canadian address; a Canadian credit card with an English name and a bank that did no consumer business in Korea; and an immigration card with my name and image. At best, he would hand it back to me: at worst, he would take it and throw it away, or keep it as some twisted souvenir of this abduction.
I couldn’t take the chance that the worst-case scenario would occur. Just as he had first snapped the wallet from my fingertips, I snapped it back. The look on my face said “try to take it from me again.”
With my cash firmly in his possession, he didn’t take issue with my action.
The car followed the river as it curved northward and met with Paltal-ro, on the far-west end of the city, where the industrial sector and rice fields separated the main part of the city with Dongsan-dong and other satellite neighbourhoods to the west. Once again, we turned right and headed back toward the downtown core.
Everyone had fallen silent, content in letting the driver cruise the darkened streets. Traffic was light and many traffic lights were on a flash cycle, telling the drivers to slow before proceeding through the intersections. I was reminded of my first night in Chŏnju, when the taxi took Linda Bryce and me from the bus station to the apartment in Dongsan-dong. That night, as the taxi driver sped through the intersections, I was terrified that I wouldn’t survive the drive. Tonight, I was confident that I’d be okay but I was feeling perturbed by this inconvenience.
What were my friends at Pappy’s thinking? Were they looking for me? Were they worried?
***
The room in which I was placed had no windows. A single, fourty-watt bulb hung from a wire in the centre of the four-by-four-metre space. Only two simple, wooden chairs occupied the otherwise empty room, and I had been thrust in one of them before they removed the bag from my head, pulling on my hair with the violent yank. The concrete walls were blank, save for the metal door through which we had entered. It had a slim slit of a peephole, at eye level, that could only be opened from the outside.
I was still handcuffed, my arms uncomfortably behind me, the back of the chair digging into my shoulder blades and armpits. Though I still had my jacket on, I was cold in this holding cell. Or was I shivering out of fear?
The men who had sat me in the chair and removed the sack walked out of the room, and I heard a heavy latch lock the door behind them. I was facing the door, on the opposite end of the room, and the vacant chair faced me, about one-and-a-half metres away, waiting for my interrogator.
Stick to the script, I told myself. Everything will be fine if you stick to the script.
***
The Hyundai Elantra weaved its way through the largely empty streets, circling the neighbourhood around city hall. I recognized the building that was once home to the hagwon where the Englishman, Simon, had taught last year. The doors were gated shut and the sign was gone. Like my old hagwon, this language institute had also fallen to the economic downturn.
We turned another corner and I recognized the pink-light district, where Brad and I once walked when leaving Simon’s apartment—also in the building with his hagwon—after a night of poker. As we passed some of the small buildings with the glass display cases, in which young women sat, the man to the left of me spoke to the driver. “Joong-ji,” he said. Stop.
Once at rest, my abductor, clearly the leader of this group, got out of the car and pulled me with him. He pushed me away from the car and spoke, for the first time, in English. “Pappy,” he said, with a warning tone, “don’t go.” With that, he got back into the car and the four drove off.
As they rolled into a darkened part of the street, I looked at the license plate, but because the bulb for the plate was burned out, I could only make out the first part of the plate before the vehicle was consumed in darkness.
“Shit,” I exhaled. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to two. Pappy’s would be closed and no doubt my friends would be nowhere around the club. On the other hand, I was about a ten-minute walk from the Gaeksa, and would have to go that way to make my way back to the apartment. On the odd chance that anyone was hanging around, looking for me, I should go back.
“Hello,” a faint, female voice said. I looked across the street and saw a young woman, in her mid-twenties, standing in the doorway to the pink-lit shack. She wore a white, tight-fitting blouse that was buttoned only half-way up, her bright-red push-up bra visible through the thin material. Black, shiny short-shorts also tightly held her slim figure. Black high-heeled shoes completed the wardrobe. Her makeup made her face pale, the bright-red lipstick, which seemed to match her bra, the only colour. She beckoned me, using her hands to try to draw me to her. She wasn’t shy, nor repulsed, as some of the women who saw Brad and me, almost a year ago.
“Not tonight, my dear,” I said, my hands opening in apology. “Maybe another time.” I started walking toward city hall, almost wishing someone would be waiting for me at Pappy’s but also hoping that someone wasn’t standing alone in the night.
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