Read Festival for Three Thousand Women for Free Online

The man fell down hard, cracking his head on the ground. Mr. Lee looked at the other two soldiers, but they had stopped short, wiping their feet like young bulls, deciding what to do.
    â€œMr. Lee is an expert in judo,” Mr. Nam told the soldiers. “You better go now.”
    Mr. Lee handed Bobby his coat and then bent down to help the third soldier to his feet, brushing the dirt from him just as he had done from the coat. “No harm done,” he told the man. “We are all Koreans and must make a good impression on the outside world.” Then he smiled so nicely that the three soldiers smiled back and soon everyone was shaking hands. The Goma came out from his hiding place and Mr. Lee told the owner to charge everyone’s makkoli to him.
    Before Bobby had really recovered his wits again, it was midnight and he and the Goma were hurrying along the dark street, trying to get back to the inn before the curfew. Judo Lee and the soldiers lived too far from the bar, so they decided to sleep there, all happily moving around the back room in their long underwear. Mr. Soh and Mr. Nam had left a few minutes earlier, and Miss Kim walked with the Goma and Bobby until they got to a certain passageway. Then she too was gone, without so much as a farewell.
    Bobby’s room was one of the smallest in the inn and the Goma slept in the inn’s kitchen, on the dirt floor beside one of the charcoal fires.
    â€œI want to sleep,” Bobby said. “I have work tomorrow.”
    Whenever he spoke to the Goma he used horrible Korean, but the Goma smiled anyway and walked around the inner courtyard with him to the sliding-door entrance of his room.
    â€œGood night, Goma,” Bobby said. He pushed the boy back so that he could close his door, but even after the paper partition was between them, the Goma did not move. His shadow swayed on the paper like a burglar’s.
    Bobby turned on the overhead light and looked about his room. His Peace Corps trunk was closed as he’d left it, a few paperbacks stacked on top. He picked up his little short-wave radio and tried to find the Voice of America, but it was too late for anything but static. When the Goma, still outside the door, cleared his throat, Bobby said, “Go away.”
    â€œI will,” said the Goma, “but first I have a question.” As usual, the Goma was speaking the most rudimentary form of pidgin Korean, the kind he had decided early on was the best way to get through to Bobby.
    Bobby opened the door again and looked out into the darkness. “What?” he asked.
    â€œMy father is dead and I must return to the countryside for a while,” the Goma said.
    Bobby understood, but made him repeat it so that he was sure. “Your father’s dead?” he asked. “When did you hear? How old was he? How did you find out?”
    The Goma smirked in the shadows, but then said that his father had been very old, over eighty. “I don’t have any money to go home with,” he continued, “nothing with which to buy a bus ticket, nothing to take as a gift.”
    He was asking for a loan, Bobby realized, but his own salary was a mere thirty-five dollars a month.
    â€œHow much do you want?” he asked. “I’m an American, but I’m not rich.”
    â€œI need fifteen hundred won,” said the Goma.
    â€œFifteen hundred,” Bobby said out loud. About five dollars. “I’ll give you a thousand but you have to pay me back.”
    â€œOf course,” the Goma said.
    Bobby took a thousand-won note from his pocket. That left him with three thousand more until the end of the month. But though the Goma had the money, he didn’t leave. Something else was on his mind.
    â€œMy father was over eighty and I am now eighteen,” he said. “I should have a real job by now. I’ve been working in this inn ever since I was nine.”
    Bobby looked at the Goma. He had thought that he was no