Festival for Three Thousand Women

Festival for Three Thousand Maidens

Richard Wiley

Dzanc Books
1334 Woodbourne Street
Westland, MI 48186
www.dzancbooks.org

Copyright © 1991 Festival for Three Thousand Maidens by Richard Wiley

All rights reserved, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher.

Published 2012 by Dzanc Books
A Dzanc Books r
E
print Series Selection

eBooks ISBN-13: 978-1-938604-15-7
eBook Cover Designed by Steven Seighman

Published in the United States of America

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author
.

 

For my first family,
Kenneth, Alice,
and Tad

 

Thanks to John and Kay Duncan for answering my questions about Korea, to John Cushing, Dan Denerstein, Charles DeWolf and Joe Nowakowski for their stories, and to that preternatural group, K-3, for being what they were.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The chapter headings in this book have been selected (nearly) at random from the I
Ching
, the ancient Confucian
Book of Changes
, which is called
Yuk Kyong
in Korean. In the old days when someone wanted to consult the
I Ching
, yarrow stalks were cast, and the caster, by using the arrangement of broken and unbroken lines that he found in the stalks was able to form one of sixty-four hexagrams that could be read as an oracle. Once the hexagram was secured, one merely had to look it up in the
Book of Changes
and read what was written, taking from it bits of wisdom that might shed light on the original question, the situation at hand.

Since I didn't have yarrow stalks, I used U.S. pennies for my castings. I kept the essence of each chapter firmly in mind and then asked the following question: “What could I write at the beginning of this chapter that would shed light on the events within?” Thus my chapter headings were secured. The actual chapter titles, above the hexagrams, are merely the names of the hexagrams from the
I Ching
.

Only once did I have to cast my pennies twice, and only once did I come up with the same hexagram for two chapters. When that happened, I cheated a bit, simply choosing a hexagram that I liked, something I remembered reading when glancing through the book at my leisure.

PREFACE

The vice-headmaster's retirement party is held in a judo hall, where there are flowers at the entrance, big round displays of them, with Chinese slogans running down their ribbons, expressing good luck. The floor of the hall is covered with sheets and the windows are opened to allow a breeze.

The vice-headmaster comes in from a side door, superbly dressed and wearing a horsehair hat. His face is well shaven and the troublesome hairs of his nose and ears have been trimmed back. The vice-headmaster's family takes up the entire front of the hall, and when his other guests are settled, he kneels beneath a photograph of the founder of the judo hall, and the headmaster comes from that same side door in order to begin his speech. The headmaster does not speak of the vice-headmaster as an individual, but speaks instead of the five Confucian relationships: a man to his king, a man to his son, a man to his wife, a man to his younger brother, and a man to his friend. Outside of these five relationships, the headmaster asks, what is there left to contemplate? He says that, current trends in the society notwithstanding, there is little room for the man himself, alone and untethered to others, nor should there be an accommodation for anything unconcerned with the betterment and maintenance of these five relationships. The headmaster says that for a man to succeed in life he must remember the hierarchy of attachments. He also says that the vice-headmaster's life has been exemplary.

The headmaster speaks for an hour and all the while the vice-headmaster remains motionless, his demeanor unchanged. The back of the judo hall holds a table that is covered with food and beer, but even when the long speech is finished no one moves, and when the vice-headmaster stands, everyone looks forward to his reply.

“I would like to sing a song in honor of Mr. Bobby, our American friend who is now gone,” says the vice-headmaster. He then removes a folded fan from his belt, holding it to his lips as if it were a microphone.

“Gone are the days
When my heart was young and gay,
Gone are the friends
From the cotton fields away,
Gone from the earth
To a better land I know…

Here the lyrics desert the vice-headmaster, forcing an embarrassed silence, until Mr. Nam's voice is heard, coming from the middle of the room. Mr. Nam knows the chorus of the song well, and as he sings the vice-headmaster remembers the lyrics again and lets his voice trail after Mr. Nam's, like an echo.

“I'm coming (I'm coming), I'm coming (I'm coming),
For my head is bending low.
I hear their gentle voices calling
Old Black Joe.”

When the song ends the vice-headmaster stands, silently leaning forward. He then remembers himself and, nodding toward his eldest son, gives instructions that his guests should move toward the food and drink at the back of the room.

 

 

When the headmaster announced today that an American teacher would be joining our staff, there was, on the face of it, a good deal of happy anticipation, but there was skepticism as well. The skepticism came about, I believe, because we have always been a self-contained group, each understanding the weaknesses of the others and content to pass our days without ruffling feathers. In other words, we all have our niches, and we aren't at all sure there is an extra niche for the American.

But during the morning meeting, particularly when the headmaster was in the room, happy anticipation was the face we gave our fears. Think of it, we all gushed, an American teaching in our school! Since my job as vice-headmaster seemed to call for it, I asked, “What does the American look like,” but what I really wanted to ask was, “What in the world will we do with him, how will we relate to him except as an outsider, and how will we communicate except in Korean?”

I know that by admitting such concerns I am unmasking myself as one of the skeptics. And though I am sure Headmaster Kim knows what he is doing, the announcement made me nervous and oddly sad, as if the end of our natural order of things were at hand.

Ah well, the headmaster said that the American will be staying for two years, a period of time that extends beyond my own retirement and
hwangap
, so when the American leaves, I'll be gone too—he back to his own place, me off to grow my beard.

When the American arrives, however, I have resolved to look into his face in the hope that I will see some inroad there, some path. If I do, one of these days I shall speak to him. If I do not, I shall not. If I were a younger man I might look upon this arrival with a feeling more akin to pleasure, but since I am not young, my further resolution is this: I shall comport myself like a
yangban
when this American is about. After all, if I have lived my life in a dignified manner until now, what other choice do I have?

Written at my desk, long after the other teachers have left for the day.

Six in the second place means: The wanderer comes to an inn, he has his property with him. He wins the steadfastness of a young servant
.

 

 

B
obby Comstock had spent most of the days of his life going from hungry to stuffed, and when he and Mr. Soh, an English teacher who'd been sent to Seoul to bring him down the coast, stepped onto the platform at Taechon village, he was not only hungry, but nervous as well. Would they like him? Would they be offended by how fat he was? He was met by a line of dignitaries, neatly dressed men, all bowing down. Bobby had studied Korean during his training course, but it had been far easier to feel sure of himself in a classroom in America than on the cold station platform of this dark little town. Still, he was about to speak first, about to introduce himself, when Mr. Soh shouted in his ear, frightening his nervousness away. “This is Mr. Bobby from America!”

Mr. Soh then turned Bobby in the direction of the tallest man in the group. “Mr. Bobby, this is Headmaster Kim!”

“Hello there,” Bobby said,
“Anyanghashimnika.”

Bobby and Mr. Soh were the only people to get off in Taechon, and when the train pulled away, the dignitaries ushered them out onto a dark, poorly lit street. There was a cart man nearby, and Mr. Soh told him to get Bobby's trunk from the platform and follow along.

Headmaster Kim said something and Mr. Soh translated.

“You must be tired,” he said.

It was only nine o'clock but Bobby's greatest desire, quite suddenly, was to be alone, so he said slowly in Korean, “I am tired, yes. Tired from my long trip. Tired from all those weeks of study in America.”

Headmaster Kim nodded, but he had something else on his mind. They had been walking up the dim street—the town seemed completely closed though Bobby did notice the sign for a tearoom or two—and had come to a shabby building at the edge of town. “I do not yet have a home for you,” said the headmaster. “No one who will take you in. I will soon find someone, but in the meantime I must put you up at this inn.”

The headmaster was anxious; the agreement had been that all Peace Corps volunteers would live with Korean families, but Bobby was relieved. This would give him time to himself, time to get used to his teaching load and to begin his further study of Korean, before having to worry about a family.

The inn they had chosen for him was one of two in the village and after he agreed to stay in it, Headmaster Kim and the others bid him good night. Mr. Soh stayed until Bobby was shown to his room, a rectangle so small that he would have to sleep diagonally on the floor, but then Mr. Soh hurried away too, leaving Bobby in the hands of a boy who worked at the inn. This boy had a dirty face and cold sores so crowded his upper lip that from a distance he looked like Charlie Chaplin. The boy was called ‘Goma,' a word that means midget in Korean, and after Mr. Soh left he brought Bobby a bowl of cold rice and sat in the corner of the room.

“I'm not hungry,” said Bobby, looking at the rice.

“I'll take it,” said the boy. “Hand it over.”

The single bulb that lit the room was no more than forty watts strong, but the Goma's scabby lip was highlighted in it. Bobby tried to speak to the boy while he polished off the rice.

“How many people live in this town?” he asked. His Korean was halting, but he was sure the sentence was correct.

“Search me,” said the Goma.

“Where's the toilet? How many rooms are there in this inn?”

He had used a high-class word for toilet and the Goma laughed. “No such room,” he said. “Only a stinking hole in the floor.”

Bobby hadn't understood the boy's responses but he smiled anyway, and just then his Peace Corps trunk was delivered by the cart man.

“What's that?” asked the Goma.

Bobby opened the trunk and looked at his clothing folded there. Underneath the top layer were a few gifts he had bought, little things to give to people he happened to meet, and he pulled out a fingernail clipper, handing it to the boy.

“This is something small I brought you from America,” he said.

The Goma took the fingernail clipper in his filthy hands, and while he examined it Bobby took out a photograph of his grandmother, the woman who had raised him since the early death of his parents, and a sack of chocolate-chip cookies. He had told the Goma he wasn't hungry, but when he saw the cookies his hunger came back. He ate ten of them and then handed one to the Goma, carefully tucking the remaining thirteen back into his trunk. The Goma put the cookie and the fingernail clipper in the left front pocket of his awful pants.