Yin Yang Tattoo (11 page)

‘That looks fine.' At this point, if there was time, I usually showed the Polaroid to the subjects, but today I was in a hurry.

‘Let me see.' It was Martinmass again. Schwartz was already looking at his watch. I passed the Polaroid to Chang, who looked at it, nodded, and handed it on as I peeled the backing from the second preview shot. Martinmass waved at me like I was a waiter who had brought him the wrong order.

‘Give me that magnifying thing.'

Since you asked so nicely
.

‘What's that?' He poked a chewed fingernail at his head in the Polaroid.

He meant a faint shadow on the calligraphy frame behind him, and that I had already spotted.

‘I'll take that out by lengthening the exposure. The Polaroid camera doesn't let me do that,' I lied. I had set it wrongly, but it was an easy mistake to rectify.

‘I'm not sure that I like the look of it.'

Schwartz turned to me, pointing at his watch. ‘You have to get a move on. The meeting – '

‘The meeting will not start without them. Now, to real film.' They sat up in their chairs. ‘I'm going to take a couple of rolls of film, so we'll be here for a few more minutes. That way we get a selection of good shots where nobody is blinking, and the second roll is in case anything happens to the first one at the lab.' This was standard spiel, designed to let me feel for the limits of my subjects' patience.

‘Do you
really
need two rolls?'

No surprise that it was Martinmass, the limits on his patience there for all to see.

I spoke to Chang:

‘The sooner we get started, the sooner you can be off to your meeting.'

‘This shouldn't take long Geoff.' Geoff scowled, and I fired the camera. He looked at me angrily. I fired again. Two-nil.

‘That's the way. Nice and cheery.' Bobby Purves was right, he was an arsehole, but on top of that, unless I was wrong, something more than an aversion to cameras was making him very uptight, and whatever it was involved me.

As soon as I finished the second roll of film, Martinmass made a show of stomping from the room. Chang beckoned to Lee. Young Koreans, when under pressure to give maximum face to a senior of far superior standing, sometimes adopt a strange gait, a flat-footed scuttle with arms locked at the sides, palms facing downwards. It always makes me think of stray penguins desperately trying to catch up with the colony. Lee did that now, crossing the room in an ungainly flash, and Chang spoke quietly to him. Lee looked over at me, nodding as he spoke, acknowledging an instruction. At the door, Chang turned back:

‘Mr Lee will bring you to my office.' He left the room without waiting for a response. People like Chang get to speak when they want and listen to the rest of us only when they feel like it.

Twenty-five minutes later Lee left me with a trim, middle-aged secretary who hovered like an insect beside a strategically placed desk that controlled access to an executive suite. After giving me an unashamed look of appraisal, she pulled a freeze-dried expression that might have been a smile.

‘This way, please.' Prim efficiency, not a hint of an accent. I walked in the wash of an expensive scent that failed to override the foul undertones of Marlboro Red. She led me along a broad carpeted corridor hung with original oil paintings until we stopped at a heavy wooden door. Placing herself between me and a wall-mounted security pad, she dialled a six-figure entry code, waited for a low buzzing followed by the clunk of powerful dead-bolts, and palmed the perfectly balanced door inwards.

‘Mr Chang will be with you in a moment.' The big doors closed quietly, leaving me alone in an ante room slightly smaller than the Centre Court at Wimbledon. There were ornate Asian rugs, dozens of examples of Korean celadon pottery, several huge pieces of overstuffed furniture, and along the far wall, floor-to-ceiling windows that looked down over Youido Plaza.

The Plaza was speckled with walkers and joggers and weaving, wobbling bicycles from hire stalls that lined one edge of the giant square. A long time ago I saw it loosely filled with a several hundred thousand-strong rent-a-crowd, bussed in from the suburbs to cheer for a Presidential candidate. He did the politician's JFK waving routine, posed arms aloft for the phalanx of scuffling photographers and dutifully promised his delirious supporters a prosperous Korea free of poverty and corruption. The same man went on to win the election and rule the nation for a term marred by precisely the same kind of corruption that cursed all his ex-military predecessors. Astonishing degrees of change had arrived in Korea over the last quarter-century but some things, tragically, were too deeply engrained in the cultural fabric to disappear overnight.

I had enjoyed my photography back then. Jostling for position with the Korean Press Pack might have been brutal at times, but it was good clean honest work, far removed from the shitfest I found myself in now.

‘It is a wonderful view.'

Chang looked amused to have startled me. He had come through a set of doors that led to a private office. Right on cue came a soft knock at the corridor entrance and in came a short woman in company uniform, who somehow managed to bow repeatedly while porting a full tray. Chang pointed dismissively at a low table with soft chairs on two sides. She quickly poured two steaming cups of coffee, gestured theatrically at the dishes of sugar and powdered cream, and retreated backwards through the doors, still bowing.

‘Sit down, Brodie.'

Any hint of warmth in Chang's manner was gone.

Chang fingered his coffee cup as the door from the corridor opened and Schwartz slipped into the room as if he belonged. He let the door close behind him, and stood leaning against the wall. Chang's eyes flitted towards him before coming back to stare into mine.

‘You have an idea how important the Global Depository Receipt is to my company?'

‘I think I do.'

‘Its success depends very much on the quality of its marketing and presentation. Which is where you come in.'

‘Normally I would have no problem with that.' Emphasis on
normally
.

‘But?'

‘The fake factory shoot.'

‘Ben said that troubled you.'

‘It involves me in something that could put me in jail, and I want no part of it.'

There, I had said it. Chang shook his head and looked to Schwartz, who remained mute. Chang turned back to me.

‘We have a business arrangement – '

‘To take photographs. Nothing more.'

‘At a day-rate far in excess of what you usually command in London.'

Fuck, was there anything he didn't know?

‘Rates vary from one project to the next.' I sounded lame and I knew it.

‘Yesterday in Cholla province was a very small part of the assignment, one forced upon us by political realities. A
representation
of factories that exist already but which we have no way to photograph due to political sensitivities in the North. My company requires those photographs to make the GDR launch a success.'

He made it sound almost plausible. Maybe the factories were in place on the other side of the border, and maybe I was making a big deal out of something that might, for all I knew, be a level of subterfuge common in such big share market deals.

I stood up. ‘I'll think about it.'

‘You should also think about whether you need to be paid for this job.'

The condescending smile on his face said he knew he had me.

‘Needing money is one thing, Chang,' I said, the insult implicit in addressing him by his surname. ‘But agreeing to this is another thing altogether.'

Chang shook his head and turned to Schwartz, who looked back at him, eyebrows raised in question. Chang nodded sharply. An unspoken instruction. Schwartz opened the door and left the room. I shivered involuntarily and headed for the same door. As I reached for it, Chang spoke again.

‘John Lee will pick you up in the morning, as usual.'

He sounded very sure of himself.

Long and thin and laced to a single main street like a rural village set amidst an urban sprawl of ten million, Seoul's inner suburb of Itaewon always did have a split personality. By day it was an innocent shopping magnet, by night a seedy pit of after-dark entertainment.

Nightfall had already drawn the curtain down on a day's shopping, but I didn't want to buy jeans or sneakers or a ski suit.

I was after the darker side of the Ville and my priorities were plain. I was going to get hammered, and if even a hint of Itaewon's seedier side remained, I might go there too. For it is in his cups that the reckless male finds his focus, making perfect sense of even the most casual back alley flophouse jump.

First I had to eat, and for that I wanted to go truly local. Yong San Kalbi has traded from an Itaewon side alley since long before I first set foot in the country. Nearly every Korean neighbourhood has a
kalbi jib
, or ‘rib house', a dining delight evolved from the village with refreshingly few concessions to the big city. Abject poverty sits vivid in the memories of Koreans who can recall the period immediately after the war, three years that tore the peninsula in two. In the first decades following the 1953 armistice – a ‘temporary' peace agreement remains in place, more than fifty years later – millions of Koreans lived with poverty and hunger while farmlands were brought back to pre-war outputs, and from a flattened nation grew the beginnings of an export-driven economy. In a country where meat on the table was once a luxury, it is no surprise that restaurants overloaded with meat options are so popular today.

The typical
kalbi jib
has basic sturdy furnishings and glowing charcoal fires in mini braziers that are wedged into holes in the middle of scarred and scorched tables. On offer is a selection of raw, marinated meats roasted above the coals to carbonized perfection and surrounded by spicy side dishes of chopped and pickled vegetables, sticky white rice in shiny stainless-steel bowls and tall bottles of chilled beer on demand.

The squeal of an ill-fitting aluminium door drew an automatic staff chorus of welcomes. The restaurant was one large room with an uneven concrete floor and maybe fifteen heavy tables, six of which were busy with locals, mostly men doing the after-office male bonding thing, drinking hard and loud and unabashed in their enjoyment. I made my way to a corner table next to an open window, not that it would make much difference. Going home smelling like a barbecued garlic clove was fundamental to the
kalbi jib
experience.

A short waitress in her thirties with chunky legs, flat shoes and a glaring squint plonked a heavy glass of barley tea in front of me and waved at a menu framed on a concrete pillar.

A few seconds later she scurried off to deal with an order for a double portion of pork ribs, one bowl of steamed rice, the full array of side dishes and the coldest tall beer she could find.

I picked at the side dishes while a charcoal brazier was summoned and carried in at arm's length by a wiry young man in sooty t-shirt and blackened jeans.

The waitress returned carrying an alloy platter draped with pork ribs beautifully filleted to leave a long tress of transparent marinated meat clinging to each short bone. Using metal chopsticks she painstakingly arranged ribs on a silver grille that sat above the glowing coals. As the meat readied I got the standard demonstration of how best to enjoy it. She palmed a lettuce leaf, smeared spicy bean paste across it with the back of a spoon, swept a piece of sizzling meat through the mix of coarse salt and sesame oil, and added it to the leaf with some diced spring onion. Next, she carefully folded the leaf until it was a tightly-packed bite size and placed it, loose ends down, on my rice. I picked up the package in my chopsticks, popped it in my mouth, and met her enquiring look with enthusiastic nods. It had my approval, and she was visibly pleased.

When she got over the initial surprise that I could converse in Korean she chatted incessantly, telling me she was single and that all her free time was spent at a nearby church where the minister was a very great man. She loved her church which was like a second family to her. She repeated this several times in slightly different language, as if unsure that I could grasp its importance.