The man with the special hat barked orders in English to his men and pointed to different spots on our boat that they should search. They found no weapons. Once they understood that we were just an old man and four haenyeo, the man with the special hat shouted up to his ship, and in moments another man came scrambling down the net. He wore a grease-stained apron. The cook yelled at us, as if that would help us comprehend him. When it didn’t work, he bunched his fingers and thumb together and tapped them on his lips. Food. Then he tapped his chest followed by his open palm. I’ll pay.
Gu-sun, Mi-ja, and I opened our nets. We showed him our sea urchins. He shook his head. Mi-ja held up the octopus she’d caught. The cook drew a hand across his throat. No! I motioned him over to another net that had already been sorted and held sea snails. I took one, brought the opening to my lips, and sucked out the meaty morsel. I grinned at the cook, trying to convey how delicious it was. Then I scooped up two handfuls of the snails and offered them to him. Take, take. “Good price,” I said in my dialect. The cook pointed a finger at the snails, then the men, and finally down his throat as if forcing himself to throw up. He didn’t have to be that insulting.
The cook put his palms together and wove his hands from side to side. He looked at me questioningly. Do you have fish?
“I have fish!” the old boatman said, not that the cook could understand the words. “Come. Come.”
The American cook bought four of the old man’s fish. Great. He’d been sitting on his boat idling away his time, while we were in the water. And now we’d wasted a half hour of diving.
After the Americans climbed back up their webbed ladder, our two vessels drifted apart, leaving us heaving and yawing in the ship’s wake as it churned away from us.
It was time for lunch. The boatman gave us kimchee. The hotness from the chilies warmed us from the inside out, but a bit of fermented cabbage was not enough to replace the energy we’d expended or minimize our disappointment.
“My sister and I are still hungry,” Gu-ja complained loudly.
“Too bad,” the boatman said.
“Why not let us cook the fish you didn’t sell?” Gu-ja asked. “My sister and I can make a pot of cutlass fish soup—”
The old man laughed. “I’m not wasting it on the four of you. I’m taking it home to my wife.”
Mi-ja and I exchanged glances. We didn’t hate the old man. He was responsible in many ways. He made sure our day did not last longer than eight hours, which included the travel time back and forth from the harbor. He was vigilant about the weather, probably caring more for his vessel than for our safety. But Mi-ja and I had already decided we wouldn’t sign up for another season with him. There were other boats and other boatmen, and we deserved to be fed properly.
* * *
We lived in a boardinghouse for Korean haenyeo tucked in an alley down by the docks. On Sunday, our one day off, the landlady made us porridge for breakfast. The servings were small, but once again, we were warmed by the chilies. As soon as our bowls were empty, the Kang sisters disappeared behind the curtain that gave us privacy in our room. They’d sleep away the rest of the day.
“Can you imagine doing that?” Mi-ja asked. “I’d never waste the hours of light in the darkness of slumber.”
Plenty of times I would have wanted to stay on my sleeping mat all day, especially when I was bleeding and my stomach and back ached, but Mi-ja wouldn’t allow that, just as she never allowed homesickness to overtake me. She always organized our excursions. After five years of traveling to different countries, electric lights (not that our boardinghouse had them), automobiles (not that I’d been in one yet), or trolleys (too expensive!) didn’t impress me any longer. It’s funny how quickly you can get used to new things, though. Mi-ja remembered “sightseeing” with her father, and now we had our own adventures. We liked to walk along the wide boulevards, lined with multistoried buildings—old, ornate, and unlike any we had on Jeju. We hiked up Vladivostok’s hill to reach the fortress, which had been built decades ago to defend the city from Japanese raids. We commemorated each experience not by writing in diaries or sending letters back home—neither of which we could do—but by making rubbings of the things we saw: the solid base of a filigreed candelabra that stood just inside the entrance of a hotel, the raised brand names of automobiles on fenders or trunks, a decorative iron plaque embedded in a wall.
On that morning, we weren’t in a hurry. We dressed in the better sets of the two pairs of clothes we’d brought with us, I stuffed my underwear with cotton rags, we put on our mufflers, coats, and boots, and we went out into the streets. The morning was crisp and the sky clear. Steaming air escaped from our mouths with each breath. We saw a few men staggering back to their ships or rented rooms. A couple of them had women with painted faces hanging on their arms. Ours was not a good part of town. It could be rough, and the smell—from men who relieved themselves on walls or vomited their alcohol in the alleys after the wild release of a Saturday night, combined with the pervasive odors of fish, oil, and kimchee—made for a foul stew. The alleys grew into lanes, then into streets, and finally into boulevards. Families walked past us, the fathers pushing babies in strollers, the mothers holding hands with older children, many of whom wore matching coats, hats, and mittens. Of course, many of them stared at us. We were foreign in our skin coloring, eyes, and clothing.
We didn’t want to waste a page of Mi-ja’s father’s book, so we looked for something unique. We entered a park, strolling the pathways until we came to a statue of a woman who looked like a goddess. Her white marble gown flowed about her, the expression on her face was serene, and she carried a flower in her hand. Her other hand was open, the palm reaching out to us. The lines across her palm were so real that they seemed to match those on my own flesh-and-blood hand.
“She’s too beautiful to be Halmang Juseung,” I whispered to Mi-ja. This was the goddess who, when she touches the flower of demolition upon the forehead of a baby or child, causes its death.
“Perhaps she is Halmang Samseung,” Mi-ja said, also keeping her voice low.
“But if she’s the goddess of fertility, childbirth, and young children, then why is she carrying the flower?” I asked tentatively.
Mi-ja chewed on her bottom lip as she thought about this. Finally, she said, “Either way, when we come here after we’re married, we’ll bring offerings, just to be safe.”
With that settled, I spread a piece of paper over the goddess’s palm, and Mi-ja rubbed coal over the paper. We were both concentrating so hard, watching the lines of the goddess’s palm limn pathways across and over the words, that we didn’t register the sound of footsteps coming near until it was too late.
“Koreans! You!” When the policeman began to yell other things we couldn’t understand, Mi-ja grabbed my arm and we ran as fast as we could out of the park. We dashed through the families that crowded the sidewalks and down a side street. Our legs and lungs were strong. No one could catch us. After three blocks, we stopped, hands on our knees, panting, laughing.