The Island of Sea Women(30)
During our fourth dive, the water began to reverberate with deep pulses. A ship was coming. The sea creatures retreated into caves and crannies. We wouldn’t be able to harvest again until the waters had calmed, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t profit. We’d been told that Japanese soldiers couldn’t get by without a daily ration of sea urchin roe, while the Chinese wanted dried squid, fish, and octopus to carry in their knapsacks. The Soviets were indiscriminate. They’d eat anything.
The boatman picked us up, and we put on our coats to cover our near nakedness from whoever was coming. The Soviets, who weren’t participating in the Pacific War, were considered relatively harmless. If it had been a Japanese ship, then we would have needed to get back in the water and let the old man handle business, because the cloven-footed ones were known to steal young women and take them to special camps to be used by their soldiers as comfort women. This ship, however, had an American flag.
Our small boat pitched as the destroyer neared. It was long but not that tall. Dozens of sailors bunched together against the railings, staring down at us and calling out. We didn’t understand the words, but they were young men away from home with no women on board. We could guess at their loneliness and their excitement. One man, wearing a different hat than the other sailors, gestured for us to come closer. A rope ladder was thrown down, and Gu-ja grabbed it. Five men moved like spiders down the webbing until they reached us. As soon as the first one was aboard our vessel, he drew a weapon. This was not uncommon. Four of us raised our hands; Gu-ja still held on to the ladder.
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.