The Eternal Wonder (24 page)

Months passed and yet Rann could not learn enough of Korea, and while he wrote something each night, in the form of a diary, he still felt he had not exhausted the wealth of knowledge he gathered. Then a strange phenomenon began to take place in Rann’s fertile imagination—at least, strange for him as it had never happened to him before. From all of the Koreans he knew, a man well known to him, a composite, came to Rann in his imagination. He was no one person, actually, and yet he was all Koreans and all of Korea was his background. He began to speak to Rann and he told Rann the story of his life. He was a very old man, his life beginning in the late 1800s and continuing through the Japanese occupation of Korea, World War II, and the Korean War. He told of the four sons he had, two of them killed in the war, one of them now in the government, and the other, the youngest one, deeply involved in the black market.

Soon after the old man began to speak in his imagination, Rann carefully wrote down everything he said. He reported every conversation exactly as he heard it, each detail in the long life of the old Korean. Page after page he wrote, night after night, until he saw in his imagination the old man as he lay dying, his two sons standing by his bed, and Rann wrote what he saw and heard. After this night the old man never came upon his imagination again, and Rann felt somehow satisfied in his knowledge of Korea, his thirst quenched for the first time in his life that he could remember. He bundled the pages carefully and mailed them to his mother, thinking that in this way she could share some of his life here. He had not written to her often while he was writing these pages, and perhaps she would be less concerned when she saw all he had learned.

His mother’s letter surprised him. “Darling,” she wrote, “you didn’t tell me what to do with your book when you sent it to me, and I didn’t know what to do. The first thing I did was read it and, darling, it is very, very good. It is so good, in fact, that I knew I was not truly capable of doing anything with it, so, and I do hope you won’t mind, darling, I took it to your old professor, Donald Sharpe. He was so excited when he read it that he called a friend of his in the publishing business in New York and took a plane to the city the next day with the manuscript. Well, darling, you have begun, at last. The publisher has called me three times in two days. He feels the book is very timely and they want to rush it into print right away.

“They are offering you a twenty-five-thousand-dollar advance, and Donald Sharpe thinks that’s very good for a new author, and they also want the rights to your next book. Anyway, darling, congratulations! Your father would be so very proud of you, as, of course, I am. I gave the publisher your address and they will send the contract on to you.”

Indeed, the contract was in the same mail as the letter from his mother. Mingled with his surprise, Rann could not suppress a feeling of deep pleasure pervading his being. He had considered revising the papers he had written at some future time and possibly for publication, but that his writings were considered publishable as they were pleased him greatly. He signed the contract and mailed it back to the publisher with instructions to deposit his earnings to his New York account and then he wrote to his mother.

“You did the right thing under the circumstances, you may be sure. I do not know why I wrote those many pages except that my character, the old Korean man, haunted my imagination and writing down what he had to say seemed the only way to rid myself of him. I am free of him now that it is done. That the pages can be published as they are pleases me, of course, though I did not write them with publication in mind. It is just that the story is true, though the characters are mine, and the Korean people have no one to tell the story for them. Somehow I had to tell someone.”

Rann had no close friends in Korea and so he told no one of his book. The publisher consulted him about the title and Rann could think of none better than
Choi
, the family name of the old man of his imagination.

In the weeks that followed he read and returned the galley proofs. It wasn’t long before a neat package arrived for him containing a copy of the book itself:
Choi
, by Rann Colfax.

Rann sat down and read it through and then he placed the book on the shelf containing his other books about Korea.

It is a good job, he thought to himself. Indeed, he had said what he had to say, and there was no more. He wondered if Americans would read what he had written and if they did, would they understand it?

A few days later Jason Cox, another supply sergeant and one of the men who worked with Rann, came running into the office waving a copy of the military newspaper frantically over his head.

“Rann, you old son of a gun, when did you do it?” he shouted.

“What?”

“This!” The man banged a copy of the newspaper down on Rann’s desk and pointed at the front page.

Rann stared at the headline,
COLFAX WRITES EXPOSÉ
. The article continued. “Rann Colfax, a supply sergeant now stationed at Ascom supply base in South Korea, and a surprisingly young newcomer to the literary scene, has, in spite of his youth, produced what will undoubtedly prove to be one of the most beautifully written novels of this century. His characters have been drawn straight from life and are presented with such tender understanding that long before the last page has been finished one feels one knows the Korean people as human beings rather than ‘gooks.’ He traces the life of a Korean man of the upper classes from the late 1800s through the Japanese occupation, the Second World War, the Korean War, and up to our present military involvement in South Korea. Aye, and therein lies the rub—Sergeant Colfax has written of the military entanglement with the black market and prostitution rings in South Korea with such realism it is obvious he must have had firsthand knowledge of his subject. It remains only for Sergeant Colfax to give the true names of his characters for the arrests to be made. He has left a lot of questions as yet unanswered, and I will not be surprised if they must be answered to the proper authorities in the future. If I were in authority, I would certainly want to know where and how he gets his information, for he seems to be doing a better job than any of our so-called intelligence agencies. It will be interesting to see what follows.

“In the meantime, all thinking Americans should go out and get this book and read it and then reread it, for it is probably the greatest book about a people that has ever been or ever will be written. Definitely recommended!”

“Come on, Colfax,” Jason urged. “Give! I’ve already ordered your book along with dozens of other people down at the bookstore this morning and we are supposed to have it in about ten days, but meanwhile, ole buddy, you can tell me. Who are all of these people you’ve written about and not named?” An exaggerated shrewd look came on his face. “You’ll be going home soon and maybe I could put the info to good use.”

“I really don’t know what you are talking about, any more than I know what this newspaper is talking about. No one in my book is taken from life, and I couldn’t name one of the characters in it if I had to. The people are real enough to me, but it stops there. They came out of my imagination.”

“That’s a good story for the higher-ups,” Jason said, winking his eye and turning up the corner of his mouth. “But you don’t have to keep it up with me. After all, we’ve worked together all these months and we’re buddies. You can tell me anything. It won’t go any further.”

Rann was grateful when the phone on his desk rang and he waved good-bye to Jason as he answered, “Good morning, Ascom supply depot.”

“Sergeant Colfax, please,” the voice on the other end of the line purred.

“This is he.”

“Yes, Sergeant Colfax. General Appleby would like you to be in his office tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. He says he would like to read what you have written and asks that you bring a copy along. We will see you at ten a.m., Sergeant Colfax.”

A metallic click ended the conversation before Rann could ask any questions.

The rest of the day was taken up with the telephone and with people stopping by the office to discuss the article with him. Rann could not understand all of the excitement since no one here had read his book anyway. Everyone seemed slyly “in” on the information about which he had written. He was invited to several parties during the afternoon but Rann declined, preferring to get to bed early to be fresh for the interview with the general the next morning.

The general’s office looked different when he entered the reception room. He must have appeared surprised as he wondered if he had made a mistake, for the girl at the desk explained, “Go in. You are in the right place. The requisition finally came through last week for our new carpet. We waited two years for it. The red looks nice, but it makes me nervous.”

Rann looked at the room. Yes, it was the same except for the bright-red carpet in stark contrast with the black teakwood desk and black leather couches.

The same carpet was in the general’s office and gave a rose cast to the beige grass paper on the walls.

“I didn’t actually write the book for publication, sir,” Rann explained to the general. “I wrote it more or less as a personal record of the Korea I’ve come to know since I’ve been here.”

“I’ll have to read this and talk to you again,” the general said. “I suspect with all this publicity that the pressure will be on me to look into this black-market business and come up with some answers. Where did you get your information?”

“That’s just it,” Rann explained. “I don’t have any information. All I did was look at all that was going on, and what I have written is the only logical way it could be done.”

“Well, I’ll read this and get back to you. In the meantime, don’t talk to anyone about any of this. The whole damned country is buzzing as it is. Why don’t you take a few days off and go down to Pusan and lie in the sun for a while. It will give me a chance to boil this whole thing over and I’ll call you down there. There are some reporters from the local papers in the outer office now and I think the best thing to say is that you have no comment until they have had a chance to read the book. That should stall things for a while.”

IN PUSAN, THE BEACHES WERE WIDE
, the sky clear above a sparkling blue sea, the soft green hills blending into the gray, rugged mountains in the background. Rann had been there for three days when the general called him.

“Well, Colfax, you’ve written quite a book. The only thing is, from the looks of it, you had to be mixed in the black market to have written it. Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think you were, it just looks bad. We have to think of how to explain it.” The general waited.

“All I can do, sir,
is to tell the truth,” Rann told him.

“Of course, of course,” the general agreed. “It’s a question of how and where that must be decided. Meanwhile, you had better get back up here. There is a meeting in my office tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock. Most of the more important officers concerned will be here and I’d like you here for that. Maybe we can clear everything up then. By the way, Colfax, Mrs. Appleby is having a little cocktail party get-together for the officers’ wives’ club at our house tomorrow afternoon and she would like for you to come. I thought we could go directly from my office if that’s all right with you?”

“Your wife, sir?” Rann knew he could not refuse, but he felt his face flush as the memory of his anger came back to him.

“Yes, certainly, fine woman, my boy, never holds anything against anyone. You will come, of course?”

“Yes sir, of course.” Rann took the next train back to Seoul.

The general started the meeting the next day. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I don’t believe Colfax has had anything to do with all of this. I think he is just young and has a fertile imagination. However, in what he calls his logical way he just may have hit on a few things that can help us. I think we should ask him all the questions we can think of and then start a full-scale investigation before his book hits Korea. I am giving Colfax an early discharge, and I’m sending him back to the United States now. He can wait there. I don’t want the wrong people to get hold of him while he is here.”

For nearly three hours Rann answered questions as carefully and as completely as he could, being careful also each time to state that his answers were his own opinions.

“You don’t think we should keep Sergeant Colfax here, General, until this whole mess is cleared up?” one of the officers inquired.

“No, I don’t think that will be necessary at all,” the general replied, his expression thoughtful. “I think the sergeant has told us everything he actually knows, and his suppositions are repeated in his book. I’m convinced he had no involvement in it himself, so I see no need to hold him up. It’s his first book and probably won’t be very widely read and I feel sure we can clear all of this up in a few weeks anyway. Perhaps it’s best to have him out of the way so no one can get to him. No one else knows as yet exactly what his book says, and we can hold up release for a while here until we finish our work. He should be on his way back to the States as quickly as possible. Now, gentlemen, if there are no more questions I think the ladies are waiting for us.”

The general’s bungalow had been recently repainted also and the stucco was now soft yellow, causing it to stand out from the other houses all painted apple green in the American sector called Little Scarsdale. The split-level interior was the same, however, all in rose pink. “Mrs. Appleby’s favorite color,” he had heard guests told on his former visit here.

“Well, Sergeant Colfax.” Mrs. Appleby moved across the room toward him, both hands outstretched to greet him.

She seemed to have lost some weight since Rann had last seen her, though she was still a plump woman. She wore a deep-rose hostess gown of crushed velvet that brushed the carpet, the toes of her gold slippers kicking up the front hem as she walked. She still wore too much makeup and her bleached hair was styled in tight, stiff waves that reminded Rann of a corrugated tin roof.