and Jin, riffing off each other with so much affectionate vitriol. He is a master of viciousness, of well-placed quips, but she is his equal — made more impressive by the fact that they aren’t sparring in her native tongue. I drink silently; I have lost track of how many silent drinks I’ve had.
Because there are far more women at our table than men, we soon attract some unwanted guests: a handful of GIs, toting large mugs of beer, have suddenly invaded our space. These young guys are gruffly sociable in their crewcuts and muscles, but their intentions are obvious. “Do you mind if we join you?” the leader of the pack hollers. Without waiting for an answer, they pull up chairs seemingly out of nowhere and surround our booth. Conversations recalibrate yet again. The shivering sticks ask where the boys are from. The soldiers mention American-sounding towns in American states. Rob, Justin, and I — all from the Maritimes in Canada — grow uneasy. One of us will need to pick a minor fight.
“So tell me something,” Justin wades in, “is it true what they say about American soldiers in Korea?”
“What’s that?” asks one of the marines.
“That the only reason you’re here is because you’ve had disciplinary problems in other postings? That it’s a punishment to be here.”
The leader just beams. “Hey man, we love Korea. We love the women.” The miniskirted girls cover their mouths as they laugh. I catch Jin rolling her eyes and I feel a tingle beneath my skin.
Jon Hung pipes up next, mentioning that he’s the only American in our group — born in Hawaii, raised in Seattle. “So tell me,” he asks, “are we really going to war or what?”
The marines laugh again. It’s true — their subliterate commander-in-chief will be launching an unprovoked invasion in another month or so. These boys contradict themselves by saying they’d love to get reassigned off this peninsula that hasn’t seen real conflict in fifty years. The war would be their ticket to adventure.
“But it’ll only be a three-month gig, man,” one of them says. “Get rid of Saddam, root out al-Qaeda, then back home by summer.”
“There’s no al-Qaeda in Iraq,” I point out, but assume my mumbles are smothered under the dance music.
“Yeah, man,” another marine goes on, “we’ll get in there and finish the job we started.”
Rob Cruise, conspicuously quiet for several minutes, takes a long pull on his drink and says: “I served in the first Gulf War.”
The table turns to face him. He takes another drink.
“Did you really?” Jon Hung asks.
“I did. Company C of the RCR, 1991. I took a break from university the year before and signed up. I was barely twenty.” He says this directly at the lead marine, who looks like he would’ve still been in elementary school in 1991.
Jin tilts her head at Rob. “You never told me that.” The way she says it — the gentle, almost caring tone, the slight hurt that he would keep such a thing from her — floods me with a knowledge that should’ve been obvious from the start. Oh my God, I think, she was one of the one hundred.
“So you’ve been over there?” the lead marine asks.
“Yep.”
“So what do you think? We up for a good fight?”
Rob spits laughter at him. “What do I think? I think your D.O.D. has lost its fucking mind. First of all, Michael over here is right — al-Qaeda doesn’t have any connections to Iraq. Second of all, you guys have no idea what kind of hornets’ nest you’re about to stir up.”
The marine shrugs. “That’s all part of the job, man. Army life’s full of excitement and danger — you’d know that.” He sips his own drink. “Of course, teaching ABCs to Korean kids must have its challenges, too.”
Jin’s laughter bounces off the table. Rob and the other guys need to say something to keep the balance in check, but they’re struggling. I search for words that would get Jin’s attention back, to return the ball to our court, or at least relieve this sudden tension.
I give up hope once the conversation becomes blatantly about sex. How could it not, with this kind of dynamic? The youngest-looking marine — maybe eighteen — kicks things off by lobbing a stereotype about Korean girls in bed, something about their aversion to oral sex. He meant for it to sound flirty and hilarious, but his joke sinks like a stone. It does, however, lead us to discuss other stereotypes — French lovers, American lovers, Canadian lovers. Jin, still in her coat, takes up the charge when we start imagining what kind of lovers certain people around the table would be. She deliberately skips over Rob as she does the rounds, but has a blast taking the piss out of Jon Hung (“You’d be such a businessman — you probably use a spreadsheet to keep track of your conquests”) and Justin (“You would have silent orgasms”) and one of the beefier marines (“Selfish brute — you have ‘closet rapist’ written all over you!”) Then her gaze, for the first time, falls on me.
“And you?” she says, eyeing me up. It’s only then that I become painfully aware that I had put on a cardigan before leaving the apartment. “You’d probably make love like an intellectual.”
I catch the reference right away but allow the boys their laugh — after all, I do look like someone who’d make love like an intellectual.
“Kundera,” I say as she attempts to move on.
She snaps back to look at me, her face sharp with surprise. “Excuse me?”
“Milan Kundera,” I yell over the music. “That line about making love like an intellectual — you stole it from his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.”
She blinks at me. “You’ve read Kundera?” It doesn’t come out as a question so much as a statement of intrigue.
“What the hell are they talking about?” asks one of the marines.
“Milan Kundera,” I say simply.
“Who is she?” Rob Cruise asks.
“It’s a he, idiot,” Jin snips without looking at him. “He’s only one of my favourite writers.” She holds my gaze as if goading me to go on.
“I haven’t read everything of his,” I continue with a sigh. “ The Unbearable Lightness of Being, of course.”
“Of course.”
“And The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Oh, and his new one, Ignorance, was one of the books I read on the flight over here. I didn’t like it.”
For the first time tonight, she stammers. “Well — well I’ve read Kundera in English, French, Chinese, and Korean.”
Deliberately, I shrug with indifference. I turn to the lead marine and say: “Kundera knows a thing or two about unprovoked invasions. You should read him.”
Rob Cruise is glowing at me; this is where I hold up my end of the mutual envy. It’s as if he’s passing me a torch, giving me permission to fan the flames of my sudden stardom. He also seems mildly stunned that I’ve trumped him and the other men at the table, that I’ve touched Jin in a way that they couldn’t. “This is all too heady for
