Beasts of a Little Land(39)
At the same time, Ito ordered, “Fire!”
The troops hesitated, then started loading their guns again when Ito repeated his order. The courtesans still stood unflinchingly, only tightening their grip on one another. With their tear-stained, powder-streaked faces, hoarse voices, and bloated lips, they looked nothing like seductresses or even exactly like women. And yet, the very fact they were so undone made them feel so female to Yamada.
Guns were pointed at their chests when, farther along the avenue in front of number 10, a deafening cheer was heard.
“America! America! America!”
The cries filled the frosty white sky, and beneath it the sea of flags quivered.
“Hold!” Yamada shouted again, and the troops slowly lowered their guns, sensing an important shift in the situation. The gates of the American Consulate had just opened.
The crowd continued to chant as the consul-general walked out the gates, flanked by a red-haired deputy and a translator. A male student stepped forward and recited the Korean Declaration of Independence in English. “Help us. Please tell President Wilson what is happening here. Help us get justice,” he said at the end, looking straight at the consul-general.
Yamada held his breath to see what the consul-general would do. If he closed the door of the consulate now, that would mean there would be no consequences from America—as well as the rest of the West.
“Yes, I will help you. I will tell President Wilson what I’ve seen,” the consul-general said loudly in English, and the translator repeated it in Korean. “The world will hear your cries. America will not forsake you! I promise you that.”
There rose a deafening cheer from the crowd. The red-haired young deputy sponged off his eyes with one hand and clasped the translator on the back with the other. With the shift in the crowd’s energy, Yamada looked in the direction of Ito, who met his eyes and curled his lips in anger. They stood momentarily frozen, both knowing they could not attack in front of the consulate and risk American involvement. A silence enveloped them like volcanic ash. In the quiet, Yamada heard his arteries pulsing with no soldierly wrath, only a shameful hope that the carnage was over.
But after bowing and waving to the crowd several times, the consul-general stepped back inside the gates with his entourage.
As soon as they disappeared, Ito regained his composure. He was no longer sanguine, however—the unrest was far larger in scope than he’d first thought, and the Josenjings’ unarmed resilience was unexpectedly draining. His troops still stood in awe of the courtesans with locked arms. Ito sighed, swinging his body around to dismount from his horse in one swift motion. It was not his habit to kill women, but he’d always been accepting of the fact that this may need to change. Holding his rifle, he walked toward the leader of the courtesans.
“Do you know who I am? I’m the consort of Judge ___,” the woman screamed in Japanese. Her lead-white face was distorted in fear, and Ito felt only repulsion.
“Whore!” Ito whacked her head with the back of his rifle and she fell forward, slamming her knees into the dirt. A soldier rushed to tie her hands together behind her back and take her into custody, and at this signal, a breathtaking chaos broke out all around. Ito stepped back to watch the protesters flee amid screams and gunshots. The Americans’ doors remained closed. Their show of solidarity seemed to have been just that—a show.
An hour passed, or perhaps two—Ito could no longer be sure. He was accustomed to being in control of his situation, including and most of all his mind, but it had run out from underneath him like a wayward horse. When he regained his full senses, he saw that the troops were walking around, impaling anyone who still squirmed underneath their boots. Ito also looked down and saw a mangled heap of a man, more body parts than a whole human, whose only sign of life was blood-sputtering breath. Both arms were gone from his shoulders, making him look like a fish—and Ito realized that this was the same white-robed man he’d cut down earlier. In the nearly dead man’s bloodshot eyes, there was still a pianissimo hope that he would somehow survive. It was like taking off a bee’s wings and watching it crawl around—in Ito’s experience, every single being did the exact same thing. Always clung, always chose suffering over death. Ito finished the man off with a thrust of his sword and then passed the hilt to his left hand. His right hand was cramping painfully; otherwise, he felt nothing.
The sun sank behind heavy black clouds, which looked as though they had been burned. In the semidarkness, Ito saw a flash of red some fifty yards away and recognized the flame-headed young deputy from earlier in the day. He was hunched over a corpse; there was another, shorter white man next to him, also bent over at the waist and holding something small and rectangular in his hand. When Ito started walking toward them with a drawn pistol, they raised their hands above their heads and shouted in Japanese, “Don’t shoot! Americans!”
Closer up, Ito saw that the small rectangle in the shorter man’s hand was a vest pocket camera. “Associated Press. Don’t shoot,” the man repeated slowly. It was amusing how, even until the moment a bullet entered their skin, people refused to believe that they could die—despite the fact that death was the only thing everyone could be certain of getting, sooner or later. That was what life amounted to—an absurd disbelief, Ito sighed to himself. He raised his pistol, aimed at the photographer’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.