Silver Stallion (26 page)

“He did? That's very strange. I didn't fight with anyone. In fact, I never left my house after dinner. I wonder why he said that. Why would I have fought him?”

“You really didn't fight with Mansik?” said Ollye, wondering if there was any chance that this boy might be telling the truth. No, she thought, not a chance. “Mansik is badly hurt.” Then she added, “His hand was injured when he shot you. He lost two fingers.”

“But I haven't even talked to Mansik for three months, ever since that night when
bengkos
came to your house and, you know. …”

Now Ollye was appalled, a cold chill streaking through her spine; she was convinced that Chandol was deliberately lying with a well-planned scheme in mind. She suspected the boy was shrewdly leading this conversation. There was absolutely no reason for Mansik to lie to her. But this boy was so brazen that Ollye was intimidated.

While she was disconcerted, Chandol said matter-of-factly: “Well, if his hand got really busted, as you told me, Mansik might have fought with somebody. But not with me. Why don't you go ask him again?”

“This is impossible,” she said, shaking her head. “I just can't believe that you're doing this. How can a boy like you be so wicked? It seems lying is easier for you than eating rice.”

“This is not fair. You drag me out of bed in the middle of the night and accuse me of being the biggest liar in the world,” the boy said impatiently. “You don't have any right to accuse me. It's Mansik who is telling a lie, if anybody is. Ask my mother, if you don't believe me. Ask her if she saw me leaving my room at any time tonight. How could I fight Mansik while I was asleep in my room?”

“Why on earth do you think Mansik would lie?”

“How do I know? Maybe he fought some other boy and got hurt but decided to tell everybody that he was fighting me.”

“Why? Why should he he?”

“Don't you see? He must have felt ashamed when he was beaten by someone who is considered one of the weaker boys in the village. That's the reason he named me. I'm always the scapegoat because I'm the strongest boy around. Nobody laughs if a boy says he was beaten by me in a fight. Kids kind of respect a boy who has enough guts to challenge
me
even if I beat him up. It's an honor rather than a shame for them to be beaten by me, see?”

“Stop it. I've had enough. I find you're perfect in inventing lies, perfect down to the tiniest details. Maybe what we need now is—”

“If you don't believe me, that's still okay with me. I told you the truth.”

“/know what is the real truth. I know what you two—you and Jun—were doing at… over there. Mansik told me everything. He also told me why he shot you. He even told me that he once had permitted you to come and watch the room.”

“Watch the room?” Chandol asked innocently. “Watch what room? I don't want to hear any more. I'm going back to sleep.”

“No, Chandol boy, you're not going home until I'm finished. I won't let you go home until you tell me the whole truth.”

“You won't
let
me go? Who do you think you are, anyway, to stop me? I can go any time I want to.”

“Come here,” Ollye said, gripping Chandol's arm.

“Take your hands off me, you dirty slut,” the boy said viciously. “I don't like to have a whore touch me.”

Stunned, she let his arm go. The boy turned to go home. Then she clutched his arm again.

“All right, you said it,” she screeched. “Sure, I am a dirty whore. And what are you? What kind of a boy crawls to a whore's room in the dark of night to peep in?”

“You let me go,” the boy growled, trying to wrench his arm free of her angry grip.

“Come! I want to show everybody what a horrible little monster you are.”

“I'm not going anywhere with a whore!”

“Oh, yes, you will,” she said, pulling him with both her hands.

“Where the hell are you taking me?”

“We will go to Jun's house. That boy certainly has something to tell the villagers about you.”

“Let me go!”

They struggled, pulling and twisting and tugging.

“We will see who really is the dirty one,” she said. “It's no use for you to try to play innocent. Kijun will tell us everything and we will hear what he has got to say about you in the presence of the whole village.”

“You won't get anything out of Toad,” Chandol spat hysterically. “You're a stupid fool if you expect him to tell you what you want to hear.”

Ollye was struck by a suspicion that it would not help her a bit if she took Chandol to Jun. The two boys must have got together, she thought, and conspired against her while she was in town with Mansik. Chandol turned silent, realizing his tongue had slipped, but something irrevocable was already in progress. Now neither of them could turn back.

“You will come with me, anyway,” she said resolutely, pulling him forward. “You will come with me and tell the village what has been going on.”

The boy resisted. “Let me go, I said!” Chandol wrested his arm out of her grip but she deftly clutched his left wrist and collar at the same moment. He writhed, jerking his head this way and that, but she clung to him desperately.

“Come!”

“I'll kick you if you don't let me go.”

“Go on,” she rasped. “Kick, if you want to.”

Chandol tried to butt her nose, shaking his head violently in all directions. Holding him from behind, she knew he was too wild for her to hang onto for long. But she kept on grappling, with him, thinking of the two missing fingers on Mansik's hand, thinking of all the shame she had suffered while this little monster had been peeping at her through the window night after night, thinking she would rather die than let him go unpunished.

“Let me go!”

“Not until you tell the villagers what you have done,” she said, dragging the boy out to the open road.

Chandol kept trying to butt her in the face. Her lower lip began to bleed. When she realized she was losing her strength and could no longer hold him down, she started to scream at the top of her voice so that everybody in the village could hear her.

“Listen, villagers! Wake up!”

The boy stopped fighting, astonished by her unexpected shriek. “What the hell are you doing?” he said. “Quiet. You're going to wake up the whole village.”

“That is the idea,” she said. “Wake up, villagers!”

“You're going to raise hell, you crazy bitch.”

“Sure. You just watch. I'm going to show the whole world what kind of a bitch I am and what an ugly monster you are. Come on out! Come on out, everybody of Kumsan!”

The boy, frightened, looked around the houses where windows glowed as people turned on their lamps.

“Come on out and take a look at me! A whore is calling you! A crazy bitch is calling you all! I've got something here to show you. Come on out! Come on out!”

The first one who appeared outside was Chandol's mother, immediately followed by her husband. One after another the rest of the villagers trickled out of the huts and hovels.

“Come over here, villagers, over here! I have a cute little animal here with me to show you! Come, come this way.”

Chandol's parents, surprised to see their child drooping guiltily from Ollye's hand like a chicken thief, rushed to Ollye to find out what was going on before any one else got there.

“What is this fuss all about?” Chandol's mother asked. “What are you doing to my son, Mansik's mother?”

“Step back,” Ollye told her. “That's right. You stay away from us. You stay there until the other villagers come to hear what I've got to tell them.”

“She's gone crazy, Mom. She's gone crazy and you must not believe what she is raving about.”

“Raving?” Ollye said. “I am raving? All right, raving or not, listen to what I've got to tell you, villagers.”

More farmers, some of them carrying kerosene lamps with tall glass chimneys, joined the spectators and formed a circle around the howling woman and the captive boy, asking one another in whispers and mutters what had caused this commotion.

“Everybody in Kumsan village knows that I am a whore. I became a whore a couple of months ago as you all know. Everybody despised me because I am a dirty woman and I found many scribblings on the walls describing me as a Yankee whore. I was too ashamed even to use the same boat with other decent West County people. I've become a shameless woman. And now I will behave like one. I've undergone all sorts of insults and humiliations, but were
you
all really so estimable that you could treat me that way?”

Old Click Beetle, stooping, drew his lamp to the boy's face, covering the top of the lamp chimney with his hand to keep the flame from flickering. The boy turned away, covering his forehead with his arm. The old man stepped back, nodding his head. “Yes, you were right,” he said to the wizened farmer next to him. “It is Chandol.”

“Of course it is Chandol,” Ollye said, perspiring, her voice choking with fury. “And you want to know what this boy did to deserve this treatment? Do you know what this boy and Kijun … Is Kijun here by any chance? He and this boy have been prowling around the Club night after night peeping through the window at me while I was in bed with the soldiers. That's what Chandol and Kijun were up to.”

Chandol, keeping his head low, stole a furtive glance at the crowd, some twenty of them by now, and then decided to act like an innocent child.

“What are these tears for, Chandol?” Ollye said with an almost bemused sarcasm. “Do you think you can buy me and these people with a few drops of water? Tell them the truth.” She turned to Kangho's family. “They came to the riverside house again tonight to watch me and my friend play with the foreign soldiers. My son Mansik found them peeping in the rooms and tried to stop them. A fight started and Mansik had to fire his pistol at them.”

The farmers began to murmur.

“What is she talking about?”

“Does she mean that the village boys went to watch her whoring with the
bengkos
every night?”

“What is this village becoming?”

“She said foul things to Rich Hwang last time, remember? And now she is after a young boy.”

“She said Mansik shot Chandol with a pistol.”

“Heavens! A village boy shooting another village boy!”

“You can expect anything when you have whores in your village. You just wait and see what will happen to us next. When the Communists come back, they'll kill everybody in West County because we didn't do anything to stop these women from offering themselves to the Yankees.”

Ollye heard what they said about her and knew that nobody was on her side but she found herself unable to stop. She had to continue. She was not sure of the exact reason why she had to, but she had to. “Oh, you're wondering what I am talking about? I will tell you what I'm talking about if you want to know,” she said. “Yes, the boys came to peep into our bedrooms every night. Whether you
want
to believe it or not, that is what has been happening.” She kept screaming but she was not sure any more what the point was. “All right, some of you are wondering what this village is turning into. You really don't know what this village is turning into, do you? Well,
I
know. I've known all along what this village has been turning into. Do you want to know what I think about your village? I would tell you, but there are no words for what I would say.” She was unable to use logic now. In fact she did not do much rational thinking as she talked; something other than consciousness, a more basic and instinctive voice in her mind compelled her to spit out her accumulated anger and resentment. She screamed on and on, hysterical, shedding torrential tears, not from her eyes, but from her heart. “And do you know what he, what that boy told me? He said he had never done such a thing. This liar not only denied his own lie, but tried to make a liar out of me, too!”

Chandol was crying harder.

“This boy was confident that I would find it impossible to prove to you or anybody what he had done. And he called me a crazy woman. He said no one would believe me if I accused him. He said I should keep my hands off him. He called me a bitch, a whore, and a crazy woman!”

“He seems to have said all the right things,” said Chandol's mother. “What else can you call a whore but a whore?”

She stepped out and jerked Chandol toward her by the wrist. Ollye did not try to keep Chandol beside her. Chandol, hugging his mother by the waist, burst into the loudest cry he could give.

“Is it true?” Chandol's mother asked, her voice trembling with indignation. “Did you really go to the Imugi House every night to watch the whores?”

Chandol wept, stalling.

“What this woman is telling the villagers—is it true, my boy?” the mother said.

Chandol wept, thinking.

“It is not true, is it?” the mother said.

Ollye turned speechless at this woman's blatant prompting of her son to deny the truth. The villagers looked on curiously to see how Ollye would react to the question, rather than to find out the answer.

Chandol's mother repeated, “Tell me, Chandol, it is not true that you went to the Imugi House to watch the whores, is it? I don't believe you or Kijun did such a thing.”

Chandol stopped crying.

“Tell these neighbors that Mansik's mother has been lying about you,” Chandol's mother said.

Chandol said finally, “I've never gone near that house ever since
bengkos
started coming there. We used to go there often before the war to watch the snakes, but I've never been there since.”

Ollye felt her knees might give way any moment. You cannot trap a liar with truth, she thought.

“Did you hear that, Mansik's mother? Did you hear what my son said?” Chandol's mother repeated. “My son says he's never been near that house, much less peeped in the rooms. What were you trying to do to my family? Why did you wake up the whole village and accuse my innocent child in front of them? What terrible wrong did anybody in my family do to you to deserve this public humiliation?”