Yin Yang Tattoo (28 page)

‘Cheers, stück dreck.' The German toasted the Frenchman.

‘Santé.' The cheerful Frenchman was oblivious to being called a piece of shit. They hectored Rose into picking up her glass and, while they threw the liquor back with theatrical gusto, she took a token sip. The lady wasn't having much fun, but her boyish suitors were too far gone to notice.

My food arrived. I scooped sticky red chili paste, or
kochujang
from a plastic dish into the middle of the ball of white rice that lay almost obscured by long thin slivers of translucent raw fish and finely-chopped raw vegetables.

One autumn weekend on the east coast years before, I was the attentive pupil as Jung-hwa taught me the joys of raw fish, Korean style. The trick with
hwae top-bap
, I learned, was to get the chili paste mixed uniformly through, to soak its spicy garlic-heavy flavour into the entire dish. Fresh, unseasoned raw fish falls apart, invading the mouth with the taste of the ocean. Soak the fish in
kochujang
and its effect enters a whole new dimension. Surround it with crunchy fresh vegetables and a hint of sesame oil, and you get a meal you will never forget, and that no fast-food afficionado will ever come close to understanding.

I spooned the first mouthful home just as the
ajimah
pointed a remote control at the television suspended over the kitchen doorway. The screen came to life at the top of a news bulletin, and it was all I could do to resist the temptation to run for cover.

I was demoted down the news order, but only as far as third story, after a pitched battle between opposing factions of Seoul pacifist monks and striking shipyard workers in Ulsan. Next, the manhunt story led with a full-screen shot of
that
photograph. The one with the confident gaze and the curly blond hair. I leaned back in my chair and feigned casual interest. The bulletin went on forever while citizens were assured that everything possible was being done to bring an evil foreigner to justice. My stomach lurched with fear as I watched interviews with an extravagantly uniformed police chief and detectives in ill-fitting suits, and at one point Detective Kwok hurried away from a chasing camera, palm outwards signalling ‘no comment'. More uniformed cops knocked on doors and handed out two-colour flyers bearing my photograph. There were reports from Immigration counters at Incheon airport, and footage of passengers queuing for the daily ferry from Pusan to Japan. After an age I peeled my gaze from the screen, and only when I was rescued by the latest action from the big baseball match did it occur to me: not one person in the room had paid me so much as a glance. The new hairstyle had done its job. I picked up the empty beer bottle and waved it to the
ajimah
.

Half of my meal had disappeared unnoticed. The television picture dissolved leaving a silence broken only by the quiet murmur of conversation and the odd explosion of drunken laughter from the two Europeans. Their companion looked increasingly uncomfortable. She tried to get up and leave, only to be loudly persuaded, almost bullied, to stay ‘for just one more drink'. I pulled a dog-eared Robert B. Parker novel from my pocket and read it one-handed while spooning the last of red-tinged rice and raw fish with the other. It stretched my multi-tasking skills to their limits.

I was struggling to maintain concentration on a show-down between the Boston private eye and two knife-wielding Chicanos when the Frenchman got to his feet, let a couple of banknotes flutter to the table and staggered out into the street. I almost felt sorry for him. I knew all about that deathly moment of realisation when the hitherto limitless joy of inebriation was snuffed out by the raging power of the drink.

A few minutes later, I closed my book and walked to the counter beside the door to settle my tab.

Rose was hemmed in by the German. She signalled to the
ajimah
, calling in Korean for the bill. The German gave her some money and disappeared towards the toilet as I shouldered the door wide and headed out into the cool night air.

I made it about half way to the
yogwan
when the sound of hurried footsteps made me turn. The American woman held the middle of the trail as if frightened by its shadowy flanks. She looked up from the path and straight at me.

‘Hi.'

‘Where's the fire?'

‘Pardon me?'

‘You look like you're in a hurry.'

‘Just heading back to my room
.
' She pointed up the hill
.
‘We came in on the same bus.'

‘I remember.' I was hoping she hadn't remembered the blond curls hiding under the baseball cap.

She fell into step beside me.

‘Where are you from?'

‘Ireland.' I had anticipated the question coming up at some point, and a lot of people, Americans and Koreans included, can't usually tell Scottish from Irish.

‘I thought I heard an accent.'

‘You mean an un-American accent?'

‘I'm Canadian, but I suppose that's exactly what I meant.'

‘Where's your friend?'

‘Stefan? I don't really know him. I just met him and Jean-Marc on the way to the restaurant.'

‘And got roped into more than you bargained for?'

‘They are new to
soju
, and wouldn't listen when I said they had to be careful with the stuff. After a while, the macho posturing wore a bit thin.'

Rounding a corner in the steep trail, we stopped to catch our breath and take in the unbroken view over the village and beyond, to a horizon ablaze with fishing boats. Powerful floodlights shone downwards to attract schools of fish and squid, and sent rippling rays like outstretched glowing fingers that fanned across inky black sea to the rocky shoreline.

‘It's beautiful,' she said.

‘One of my favourite places on the planet.'

‘You've been here before?'

‘A long time ago.'

‘And now?'

‘On holiday. You?'

‘The same. I live in Seoul.'

I had not enjoyed an innocent conversation in a very long time. Before I could respond, Stefan appeared from around the corner and stopped abruptly, chest heaving. He swayed like bamboo in a typhoon. Very thickset bamboo.

‘Ach sooo, now I find you.'

He wasn't talking to me.

‘Why did you run away?'

Rose looked tired. ‘I wanted to get back.'

‘We were going to walk together, you said so.' As if picking up on my presence for the first time, he switched his wavering look to me. ‘And who are you?'

‘No-one.'

‘OK, so fuck off Mr No-one, and give me and my friend peace.'

He waved his big right hand directly at my face. The last thing he wanted me to do was leave while he put on a show in front of his dinner companion. He prodded at my chest with a fat finger, catching me square on the nipple. It hurt like hell. He did it again. I didn't move.

‘You maybe have some problems to understand English?'

I knew exactly where this was going. I also knew I should walk away right now, but I had taken more than enough shit for one day. I gently slid my left foot back and stood, weight evenly distributed, hands clear of my body.

‘You're drunk.'

‘You think you are good enough, Mr No-one? Something special, eh?' His whole body off-synch from the
soju
, he wavered forward to stare me down. He reeked of alcohol and garlic. I edged back slightly and made one last weak attempt to side-step an inevitability, the prospect of which I was beginning to relish.

‘We were only talking while we walked up the hill.'

I was still speaking when he swung a looping right hook at my chin. If nothing else, he was predictable.

I dipped back, and as his fist whistled past my face, I hammered it along its wayward track with a forearm block and made for a low kick with my left that instantly drew broad forearms crossed over his groin, but my kick was a feint. I planted the foot, spun, and drove my right heel deep into his solar plexus.

Movie heroes prefer the more cinematic spinning back kick to the head, but in the real world, a shorter strike at a bigger target is the only way to go. His lungs emptied with a
whoosh
and he went down like he was there to stay. Face purple, he fought for oxygen and when it came he threw up, spasms shaking his entire frame.

Rose looked shocked.

‘You didn't need to do that for me.'

‘I didn't. It was me he was trying to knock me into next week.'

‘So you just
had to
put him down?' She shook her head, and her expression changed. This was getting us nowhere, and she knew it. ‘I could do with a drink.'

‘What about him?' I pointed a toe. Stefan flinched reflexively, and I pointed the toe again, prompting another flinch. I could get to enjoy this.

‘He and the other guy are sharing a room at the
yogwan.
'

‘I hope they have the sense to sleep with a window open.'

At last her look softened, and she turned towards the village lights.

‘Come on.' I followed in her footsteps, wondering why a woman so wary of one set of drunks was apparently without fear of spending time with a guy who, for all she knew was another one; and wasn't I supposed to be keeping a low profile? I followed her along the track towards the village.

In a narrow back street, she knocked on the sliding doors of a corner shop, spoke to an old man in Korean, and came away with two soft plastic bottles of milky
makkali
, a beery, unrefined rice wine.

‘Home-made.'

‘Fine by me.' I loved the stuff. ‘Where will we go to drink it?'

‘Back to the
yogwan
, I guess. So long as you behave.' She wasn't joking.

At the front entrance to the inn, she pulled up.

‘Your place or mine?' There was a hint of humour in her tone, but nothing else, I was sure.

‘Yours. Mine is a mess.' Blond hair all over the bathroom.

Her room had a traditional
ondol
heated floor, brightly-coloured fold-up bedding piled neatly against one wall. While she rinsed two plastic toothbrush mugs I peeled the top from a
makkali
bottle.

Shoes off, we sat cross-legged on the warm floor and clinked mugs.

‘Cheers, Rose.'

The look she drew me was dusted with suspicion. ‘I'm at a disadvantage here.'

‘Sorry, it's John.' My brother's name.

So much for keeping a low profile I thought again, as we worked our way through both bottles of the beery wine. I shouldn't even be here but, right then, the draw of innocent chit-chat, totally divorced from all the shit in my real world, was impossible to resist.

We stuck to small talk. My brother John ran a bar in Hong Kong, and since I know a thing or two about bars, I told her that was what I did. She had never been to Hong Kong, so I ran off a few ten-year-old impressions and vague generalisations before changing the topic.

‘What about you. Where did you learn to speak Korean so well?'

‘I grew up here.' It came out in a way that flagged the subject as a no-go area, so I left it.

I was alone with an attractive woman in her bedroom, yet the air remained flat and uncharged, completely devoid of sexual intrigue. She sat tugging distractedly at her pony tail, clearly pre-occupied. I remembered the unlikely group she made with the two Europeans at the restaurant. Perhaps she chose my company for the same reasons she opted to sit with them – an unwillingness to be alone. Innocent escapist companionship, strings neither attached nor desired. Maybe we had more in common than I would have guessed.

I drew back the sleeve of my sweatshirt to look at my watch, then quickly pulled it down again. Even if sex had been in the air, I thought, unless it took place in pitch darkness I was off-limits, arms and chest covered as they were in downy fair hair.

‘What are you smiling at?'

‘Nothing. Just thinking. I better go. I've had a long couple of days.'

Of course she didn't object. At the doorway, while I struggled with my shoes, I said:

‘I might take a walk along the coast in the morning. Not too early. Want to come?'

‘I don't know. Maybe I'll see you around.'

Then I did something I hadn't done with a woman in years.
I
shook her hand
.

The eastern sky signalled the emergent dawn, a dark blue horizon tinged with gold and smudged by the distant rolling of powerful currents.

When the ringing tone came, it brought with it the comforting familiarity of a number called a thousand times before. I held my breath.

‘Hello – '

‘Naz! It's me. I'm – '

‘You know what to do. Wait for the l-o-n-g beep, then leave a message.'

I waited. She was right. The bloody beep went on forever.

‘Naz, it's me, are you there? Pick up the phone, this is important. Naz? Come on, talk to me Naz, talk to me.'

Nothing. I stood shivering until the machine cut the connection.