The Starlet and the Spy Read online

  Hammett introduces me to Marilyn, who flashes a golden smile. “A lovely name, Alice. Nice to meet you.” Her husky voice melts in my ears. It’s overly sweet, like in the movies, and fragile, like a cookie dunked for too long in a cup of tea.

  I stare in a daze as Marilyn shakes hands with the men crowding the doorway. It’s as if I’m in a movie myself. I feel self-conscious, but then the fact that I will never be more than a supporting character around Marilyn brings me back to earth.

  Marilyn sneezes and the men fuss, looking incredibly sad and concerned. I push through them and settle her in her seat.

  “Are you all right? Aren’t you cold?” I hand her a blanket.

  She shivers and holds it close. “It’s colder here than in Tokyo.”

  “Yes, spring comes sooner to Tokyo. Would you like coffee? You have to finish it before we take off, though.” I hand her the coffee I’ve brought.

  She’s pleased, wrapping her hands around the tin cup. “Have you been to Tokyo?”

  “Yes, I studied there. Before the war. I mean, before liberation. I mean—anyway, it was a long time ago.”

  “Oh! Joe is in Tokyo right now. My husband,” she explains, showing me her wedding ring.

  “It’s beautiful.” Making a fuss in these situations is expected in the world of women, but I can’t start doing something I’ve never done just because I’m with Marilyn Monroe. I praise the craftsmanship of the ring, but she doesn’t seem to expect a girlish, fake gesture. “It would have been nice if he came with you,” I say, not really meaning it. If he did all those soldiers would be beaten to death by baseball bat.

  “He’s so tired. The flight to Tokyo was so long! He actually wanted a small wedding. He’s probably resting at the hotel right now. It’s a wonderful place. It’s in . . . Gin—what’s the name—”

  “Oh, Ginza? The Imperial Hotel? He won’t be bored there.”

  Marilyn looks anxious somehow, and the word “wedding” seems to stick awkwardly to her mouth. It’s as alien as pronouncing “ammonite” or “Rio de Janeiro” is for me.

  “We’re going to Taegu, an important southern city. The best actresses of Korea will be waiting to welcome you at the airport.”

  Marilyn is surprised. “Actresses?”

  “Yes, Choi Eun-hee and Paek Song-hee.”

  Marilyn falls silent at the unpronounceable Korean names.

  “They’re wonderful actresses, just like you.” I flinch as I finish that sentence. I don’t recall Marilyn’s actual acting skills—I remember only her breathy voice and her curves—but I give the bald lie.

  Marilyn gives me a faint, routine smile at this insulting comparison to Korean actresses.

  To hide my embarrassment I offer her another cup of coffee, but she turns it down. A hefty nurse officer with a mustache named Betty rushes in and shouts that we need to leave. She orders the photographers off and yells at me to sit down, citing the safety rules of the aircraft. The helicopter finally lifts off, pitching and rolling, and Marilyn asks, “By the way, Alice, your English is so good. Where did you learn it?”

  I know my answer will be buried by the noise of the propeller, but I still raise my voice to shout, “From Joseph! His name was Joseph!”

  The name of the second man I loved. The propeller shreds that name and scatters it into the blue sky.

  LOOK, THEY’RE LIKE PEAS BOILING IN A POT!” MARILYN laughs as Betty points out the welcoming masses gathered at Taegu’s Tongchon Airport.

  The khaki balaclavas on the soldiers’ heads do make them resemble peas. Marilyn sniffled during our flight but seems more sprightly now.

  The roar from Tongchon Airport is similar to that of Youido Airport. I place a hand on my chest and breathe, trying to keep calm. I desperately wish that the black terror that overcomes me every time I gaze upon a mass of humanity would bypass me today. I pray I can avoid the shame of fainting flat on my back in front of Marilyn Monroe and all these people.

  I’m still trying to tame my nerves when Marilyn opens the door and enters the crowd. Her name roars up to the sky. Camera flashes tumble forward like an avalanche as Marilyn smiles confidently, smothered by sharp white shards of light. She leans forward to wave at someone far back in the crowd and sighs erupt from all over. Koreans in the crowd are jumping up and down, also excited to see Choi Eun-hee and Paek Song-hee. It’s chaos. I fight my way through and introduce the actresses to Marilyn. Marilyn greets them in a friendly way and links arms with them. She seems so alien next to the hanbok-clad actresses, but her warm, friendly demeanor instantly wins everyone over. Though she doesn’t know much about Korea, she understands people; she doesn’t need to speak the language. Her attractive physicality renders my fumbling interpretation unnecessary.

  While Marilyn gives interviews, I rush to the camp with a USO staff member. We careen down the new road, kicking up dust, weaving around Quonset huts lined up below a pine forest. Soldiers gather for the performance with cameras hanging around their necks, as innocent and excited as if they were going home to see their mothers.

  Who knows who wrote the sign hanging on the hospital entrance—WELCOME, MARILYN—but you can tell how excited they were, judging by the energy in the letters. Patients who would normally be lying in bed are pomading their hair eagerly, the wards enflamed with joyous excitement.

  “If you tell them Marilyn isn’t coming, they’ll start rioting,” a Korean nurse officer says, shaking her head.

  The other Korean nurses giggle and ask me if I’ve seen Marilyn Monroe and whether she is as pretty as she is in pictures.

  “Did you choose a soldier to talk to her and take a picture?” I ask.

  “Does it really have to be the most handsome one?” asks the nurse officer disapprovingly.

  The nurses giggle again and let me peek around the curtain to see the soldier they have selected. He’s not just handsome; he’s the spitting image of Clark Gable.

  “What’s the point of being handsome?” grouses the nurse officer. “Look what happened to him. It happened while he was shoveling shit.”

  The Clark Gable look-alike was using gasoline to clean frozen pipes in the bathroom when he caused an explosion, giving him burns on the lower half of his body. Although he looks like a movie star, he can’t talk about that experience in front of a reporter.

  “What about the soldier who cries every day? His twin brother died at Pork Chop Hill and his mother is very ill back home.”

  The young soldier from Oregon isn’t as handsome as Clark Gable, but he has a sob story that would inspire patriotism. He’s selected as the lucky fellow who will receive a kiss and a gift from Marilyn.

  She arrives as I examine the makeshift stage improvised by the shabby hospital. I can tell from the roar. I peer out the window to see the jeep carrying Marilyn barreling toward the hospital. Soldiers chase after it, waving. I wonder if they ran that excitedly when Commander MacArthur came for a visit. Marilyn is standing in the jeep, waving back, and the gloomy barracks now look like a movie set.

  A bright halo surrounds her as she walks into the dark hospital; a patient on the brink of death might think an angel has come to take him. Of course, that’s because of the flashes from the cameras that follow her around. She banishes the ominous smell of rubbing alcohol that floats around the hospital with her bright blond hair, pale forehead, and red lips. The hospital soon descends into mayhem, crowded as it is with patients, army surgeons, nurses, and workers from the base. Marilyn makes her rounds from bed to bed, hugging the patients and wishing for their quick recovery. “God bless you,” she says in a kind, serious voice.

  A weepy Italian American soldier from the First Marine Division clings to Marilyn, rubbing his lips against her cheek, and her touch is gentle, not even betraying what I assume would be displeasure. He was supposed to be transferred to a hospital in Tokyo yesterday, but he had waited to meet her. The most sensual saint in the history of humanity smooths the soldier’s white sheet. The war is over but the soldiers are still
here, country boys who came all the way from America, not knowing what war really is.

  Marilyn speaks with the soldier who lost his twin and suffered a leg injury in a battle near the 38th Parallel. The cameras flash in a frenzy as Marilyn holds his hand. As they exchange pleasantries, the soldier looks around furtively and whispers something in her ear. His eyes dart before he fixes his gaze on the ceiling. Marilyn seems a little surprised, then kisses him on the cheek. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll be back home soon.” She gives him the chocolates she brought as a present and the soldier says goodbye, looking pale.

  We decide we need to start the show immediately when we see that the soldiers with casts on their legs are struggling and grunting like Frankenstein’s monster to gather around her. We quickly head to the plywood stage near the barracks. After a quick chat with the band, which has already warmed up, Marilyn acknowledges the applause and sings George Gershwin and Buddy DeSylva’s “Do It Again.”

  “Oh, do it again . . . waiting for you . . .”

  Her voice is sickly sweet and damp and overtly seductive. It makes your knees buckle. I look at her in surprise. Her first show in Korea is incredibly shabby, but she herself isn’t. I was doubtful she could do anything worthwhile on that piece of plywood without any spotlights, but she’s proving me wrong. She’s a well-trained actress, and though her voice isn’t that powerful, she’s embodying her appeal with every gesture. You can’t do that if you’re not smart. Does she hide her sensibilities behind the face of a dumb blonde? Her breathy tone is certainly exaggerated, but she’s not your average actress. Her brilliance is unconstrained as she kisses and signs the cast of a soldier who is agog in her presence.

  As soon as this small but moving performance is over, we move on by helicopter. Marilyn seems to have just noticed that she was singing in the cold on the opposite side of the earth. Her face is flushed. “Alice, aren’t we going to see any cities or towns in Korea?”

  I can’t bear to tell her that the cities and towns have pretty much all burned down. “No, that’s what these shows are. You go from base to base. You must be tired. How is your cold? You should take something for it.”

  “No, I’m all right. I smelled a lot of medicine at the hospital, so I’m feeling fine,” she jokes, smiling.

  I tell her about the Clark Gable look-alike. “When the toilet exploded it shot into the air. Like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz. It spun in the sky.”

  Marilyn laughs. “Oh my! Why didn’t I meet him? You know, Clark Gable is my idol. He’s my favorite!”

  “Well, if the toilet is gone with the wind, how would Clark Gable feel?”

  Marilyn laughs politely at my lame joke.

  I ask her what the soldier whispered in her ear.

  “Actually he said something odd. He said his dead brother keeps appearing in his dreams. And other dead comrades. I don’t know what he was talking about. He was a signal corpsman, I think.” She squints. “He told me that his dead superior’s voice once cut in during a communication, and he saw himself dead. For a while an Oriental man wearing a black hat was following him around. Could that be real?”

  “I’m not sure. In the West, Death holds a scythe, right? I wonder if he was talking about our Death, who wears a black hat.”

  “I wished him luck, and he did for me, too.”

  I have nothing to say to that. For a soldier going mad, trying to avoid death, luck is valuable, but I don’t know that Marilyn needs it.

  WE GET OFF THE HELICOPTER AND GET ON A TRUCK TO head to the Forty-Fifth Division, and we are stunned by the parade of military trucks zooming up from below the slope, kicking up dust.

  An MP hurries us along, laughing. “Everyone in the surrounding villages is terrified, thinking war has broken out again. Ten thousand American navy men are on their way here, so the civilians are packing to flee!”

  I can’t breathe. I can already smell their sweat, which reeks of Lucky Strikes and the ground beef that comes in one-gallon cans. The reason for this disturbance has her arms around the drivers’ shoulders, taking countless pictures with them. The overcast sky settles lower and lower, and the wind is shifting gloomily. It looks like rain or maybe even snow.

  In contrast to the first stage, on which the band members were afraid to step backward in case they fell off, this large stage is outdoors. Singers and dancers have gotten ready to perform in the makeshift dressing room hastily created with black velour curtains. On the stage, an MC who looks like Fred Astaire is cracking jokes as the soldiers hoot and applaud. The audience’s voices billow louder. Their hollering dampens the band’s music.

  As the makeup artist seats Marilyn at a small vanity, Captain Walker, who is in charge of the shows, enters, looking flustered. “That song wasn’t on the set list,” he says to me in a low voice. “‘Do It Again.’”

  “Miss Monroe decides what she sings,” I tell him.

  Marilyn asks what’s going on.

  “We need to change the repertoire,” Captain Walker says seriously. “It’s a little provocative to sing ‘Do It Again’ in front of the boys, don’t you think? How about something more classic?”

  I manage to swallow my laughter. Doesn’t he know that even “Ave Maria” is seductive when Marilyn sings it?

  “It is a classic. It’s George Gershwin,” Marilyn says calmly.

  “We’re going to have to change it,” the captain insists.

  Marilyn’s smile falls off her face as she turns away. She would be no different from anyone else if sensuality were erased from her voice. But the captain is being rude. You can’t ever be honest when you praise or criticize a woman. Women know whether they are beautiful or whether they are wise. We know this instinctively. I can see from Marilyn’s expression that she knows her own decadent, lewd appeal.

  “How about this?” she offers. “I’ll change it from ‘do it again’ to ‘kiss me again.’”

  The captain frowns but acquiesces. “Please don’t make it too provocative.”

  “Captain, it’s just a kiss.”

  As they come to a meaningless agreement, an officer rushes in. “We need to get you onstage right now. We can’t keep them waiting. They’re throwing rocks out there!”

  It’s true; the tenor of the shouting outside has turned into something more sinister. We have to raise our voices to hear ourselves talk. I take a peek. It’s really something. The MC is flustered. At the sight of the men, Marilyn flushes and looks uncertain. Though she receives five thousand letters a week from soldiers, she must not have imagined what it would be like on the ground.

  “Here’s your dress,” I say, finding her costume from her trunk. I don’t want to be pelted by rocks. I take out a blue silk dress that sparkles beautifully like the night ocean reflecting stars. I furtively hold it up to myself as I bring it to her. If I put it on I would look both tragic and farcical. When she puts on the dress, the change is dramatic, with her pale skin, generous bosom, and curves on full display, and I find myself wanting to know more about her.

  “Will you be okay? It looks like it will snow.” I’m suddenly worried.

  The dress, with its plunging neckline, is so thin that it can’t hide the blue goose bumps on her translucent skin. She has thick makeup on, but feverish heat seeps from her forehead and from under her nose. I worry she might collapse onstage.

  “It’s fine. The show must go on.” She slides her feet into strappy sandals.

  At this point, even tanks would be unable to control the soldiers. Finally the MC calls out her name and the place erupts in cheers. The earth shakes.

  Snow flutters like white flower petals as Marilyn stands in the middle of the stage. Her blond hair renders all other women meaningless—the brunettes and the redheads and the raven-haired. She pouts, sticks her chest out, and shimmies. I’m deafened by the roar. I realize I was worried for no reason. She has to stand onstage, no matter how feverish and ill she is; she has to be in front of an audience no matter how lonely, misunderstood, and rejecte
d she might feel. Her fate might be to love all men while not receiving a single man’s love. I can’t criticize her; after all, I wasn’t able to love even one man.

  The chorus members in red jackets stand next to her as she gets into the groove. How does it feel to be up there? I’m terrified just seeing all these people in uniform. Not because they’re testosterone-filled American soldiers but because they’re people. Marilyn is singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” from the movie. I wonder who her best friend is—a man who buys her diamonds? Except the man would leave and the diamonds themselves would probably be fake. A beautiful woman doesn’t have any friends, as neither men nor women want to be friends with her. Men want to fall in love and women want to judge, and everyone wants to blame the beautiful woman for being the seductress. She shouldn’t be sad that she doesn’t have any friends; if she had some, she’d eventually figure out that they’re actually her enemies.

  THE DAY’S EXCITEMENT HAS SETTLED A BIT, BUT IT’S STILL festive in the cafeteria, where Marilyn is serving soldiers. She’s thrilled when a round cake with her name written in pink icing is brought out. The Korean cooks who baked it are introduced, and she hugs them and takes a picture with them. Marilyn hasn’t changed out of her dress yet. I see that she’s perspiring. We’re all worried she is going to collapse, but she keeps telling us she is fine.

  “Alice!” she calls. “Come, meet the captain who speaks Japanese! Alice lived in Japan, too. When was it again?”

  The captain who was chatting with Marilyn looks at me. “Konbanwa,” he says. He tells me in Japanese that he was a Japanese interpreter during World War II. During the early days of the war, when interpreters were scarce, he helped Koreans communicate with the UN troops. He also speaks Spanish and had been stationed with the mostly Puerto Rican Sixty-Fifth Regiment. He raises his glass. “Salud!”

  “Both of you speak Japanese so well!” exclaims Marilyn.

  I don’t want to cause dismay when she finds out that Korea was a colony, so I don’t tell her that. She asks the captain about Tokyo. Her mind is on Tokyo. Of course, a wife’s heart is with her husband, but she looks so happy and free right now. It’s easy to forget she’s feeling unwell.