Sad Peninsula by Mark Sampson

Author:Mark Sampson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2014-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

She fell from the anonymous role of a cleaning girl and into the anonymous role of a cook in a greasy Pusan diner. The proprietor took one look at the scar on Eun-young’s face and refused to let her serve customers — the ROKA and UN soldiers and the few Pusan civilians allowed to mingle with them. “You’ll scare them off with that wound,” the madam said. She sensed something unwholesome in this girl who came begging for a job, something that would need to been hidden away from Korean eyes. So she put Eun-young in the kitchen to work in perfect anonymity over the long row of cast-iron stoves, chopping vegetables, cooking rice, setting stews to boil. The only contact Eun-young had with the dining public was when she set completed dishes on the window counter for the madam to carry off to customers. Each time she did, Eun-young would steal a glance over the tables of soldiers, trying to spot a single face that had been in the diner before. There never seemed to be any. These soldiers ate and then moved northward to join the fray. It made her think of the men in the rape camps, enjoying a moment of peaceful pleasure before disappearing, and most likely dying, in the throes of battle.

When the South took back Seoul for the final time, Eun-young resumed her letter-writing to Ji-young. Even if the mail service between their two cities was working, she had no faith that her notes would get through. For the longest time no response came, and Eun-young feared the worst. But eventually a letter did arrive at the rooming house where she was living, the address written in Ji-young’s florid scrawl. The war had changed very little about her sister’s obsessions. She was eighteen now — and finally engaged. “His name is Chung Hee and he’s an army mechanic,” she wrote. “He’s got flat feet so he can’t be a soldier proper. But he’s a genius when it comes to the modern engine and he’s very good with his hands.” She underlined this part with a teenager’s glee. “He promises to marry me as soon as this war is over. I hope he survives!” Eun-young frowned at the note. All out civil war, death, and destruction, Seoul being blown to bits, and she’s still fixated on finding a husband.

In her next letter, Ji-young raised the inevitable question: “And what about you, dear sister? You are still a marriageable age. Please write and tell me you’ve found your own man to love and take care of you.” Eun-young tore this letter into little pieces. You know nothing, she wanted to write back. Haven’t you figured out yet what I was, Ji-young? You have no clue how lucky you are, to have been born five years after me and not have this disgrace written all over you.

Her anger carried itself over to her work in the diner. She often looked out from the kitchen to the bowed heads of soldiers eating, who never once looked up at her or smiled or asked her name.

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