by Sungju Lee
This man, though, was colder than the police officers at the Gyeong-seong train station earlier that day.
“We have papers,” he continued, “papers that say we bought this house legally.”
I shook my head slowly. “But th-th-there’s been a mistake,” I said, stuttering again. My head throbbed. I felt both hot and cold at the same time.
The younger man started pushing me toward the door. “Get out,” he spat. “Don’t make us call the Shangmoo and have you thrown in prison.”
“How … ,” I began, my voice quivering. “How will my parents find me if I’m not here?” I tried to push back, but I didn’t have the strength.
The man grabbed the collar of my shirt with one hand, and with the other my waist, and heaved me out the open door. I landed on my stomach on the hard ground. He then slammed the door shut, locking it behind him.
I could feel the yu-ryeong, who I knew thrived in lonely places, including those parts inside us, breathing down hard on me, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, as I walked up the road toward the forest where my father and I had hunted chipmunks and snakes.
I turned onto the dirt path leading into the woods. It was dark under the canopy of evergreen boughs and leaves, almost pitch-black the farther I went into the forest, in part because of the moonless night and the clouds rolling in. My feet sank into the mud of a shallow swamp, letting me know I had taken a turn off the path. Branches of evergreen trees ensnarled me, and burrs dug their way into my clothes and scratched my skin.
My body felt heavy. My head spun. I eventually collapsed beside a large oak tree and fell asleep.
I was awakened sometime in the middle of the night by the throaty call of a wood owl. I started to tremble from the chill of the mist moving up from the river and the dampness that seeped up from the ground. I also tingled all over from the feeling that I was not alone.
My father had told me once that owls guarded the realm where the spirits of our ancestors now lived. I curled my body into a tight ball, my back flush against the knots of the tree trunk, and listened to the night walk of beetles and bugs.
Then I saw it. Tiny, floating soft blue and warm white lights hovering in front of me. I strained my eyes, at first thinking these were fireflies. But then I saw they weren’t. They seemed to be attached to the trunk of a decaying tree that stood near me. I felt wind brushing my cheek, and the lights moved with the breeze, like a feather on top of a calm river.
“Is that you, shan-shin-ryong-nim?” I whispered.
My body stiffened as the sounds of the forest faded, replaced by an almost celestial silence and then the sound of distant bells.
I was dead. I had died. There was no other explanation, I thought to myself.
I exhaled and relaxed, knowing that if I were dead, there would be nothing to worry about anymore.
I tilted my head up toward the top of the tree and prayed to Chilseong.
“Please watch over eomeoni and abeoji. I know they’re alive,” I said out loud. “If I do manage to survive this place of the dead, have my family look for me, reunite me with them. Let us be one again. Guide me.”
When I opened my eyes, I saw shadows around me. Day was beginning to win its battle against night.
¤ ¤ ¤
A light drizzle soon patted my face. Ignoring my sore joints and aching back, and with an energy I certainly didn’t have the night before, I hopped up and ran back through the ferns, swamp, and thornbushes to the road and then to Young-bum’s house.
I barged through the front door, huffing and excited, just as he was preparing to get an early start at the market.
“I … I … ,” I spluttered. I wanted to tell him about the lights, about shan-shin-ryong-nim. But as I stood in front of him, I changed my mind.
“Spit it out,” Young-bum said. He sounded annoyed. “I thought you were meeting us at the train station, not coming here first.”
“I changed my mind,” I told him. “I changed my mind about everything. I want to live,” I exclaimed, throwing my arms into the air.
Young-bum tilted his head to the side and eyed me suspiciously. “Have you been drinking sool with the men?”
“Nahhh … Just forget it,” I chortled, waving him off. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Young-bum’s grandmother shuffled up beside me and handed me a piece of candy. “I understand,” she whispered. I looked into her eyes, which had a blue-gray smoky coat over the irises. Young-bum said she was suffering from an eye disease that a lot of old people in the countryside had. As a result of the eye disease, she couldn’t see that well. I took the candy from her and bowed.
“My grandmother is going to stay with Aunt in Shang-gi-ryeong,” Young-bum said as he slipped the pouch containing his razor blade into the front pocket of his bag. He then poured fresh well water into a dented tin bottle that he and I would drink from throughout the day.
“Have a good trip,” I said to Young-bum’s grandmother, who wouldn’t stop looking at me. “Are you okay?” I finally asked her. Her intense gaze was making me feel uncomfortable.
She smiled. “I’m perfect,” she said, her voice raspy, still heavy with fluid.
She then turned her stare to Young-bum. “I have something for you.” She shuffled up beside him.
She passed him a package, what looked like an envelope, which he slipped into his back pocket. Then she whispered into his ear. Young-bum’s eyelids drooped, and his lips trembled the way I’d seen them do when he was scared.
“Go,” his grandmother said to both of us, grinning and gesturing for us to leave. “See you in Shang-gi-ryeong,” she called out from the doorway as she pushed us out.
For a while, Young-bum was silent. He walked with his head down, his shoulders slumped, breathing heavily, as if he were carrying a great weight. I whistled “Dondolari,” my mother’s favorite folk song, as I watched some black kites swoop over the harvested fields.
“What is it?” I finally asked. I was annoyed at his moroseness when I was so happy.
“I don’t think my grandmother is coming back,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Maybe it will be better for her at your aunt’s house. We can visit her, and you can stay there, too, I’m sure.”
“No,” he said, stopping and pulling me to the side of the road. He sat down cross-legged on the ground and had me do the same. He then laid out the items from the envelope his grandmother had given him: photographs of people who I assumed were his mother, father, grandmother, and aunt.
“My grandmother said that if she and I didn’t see each other again, she wanted me to have these,” Young-bum said, floating a hand over the pictures. “She said she wanted me to be strong and look at these when I felt weak.”
I had been sailing that day, but now I was sinking again. All I could think about as Young-bum droned on was that I wished I had photographs of my family, too.
I persuaded Young-bum to turn around and go to Shang-gi-ryeong with his grandmother. “She’s not going to die,” I repeated several times, and while Young-bum seemed reassured, by the time we parted ways he was eager to be with her.
“You’re going to be the srikoon today,” he said with a laugh, handing me the leather pouch with the razor in the front pocket.
“A srikoon?”
“Yeah, a kotjebi who steals by cutting open someone else’s bag. Didn’t you know that’s what I was?” Young-bum chortled.
“I think all these words are make-believe. Srikoon, kotjebi, nightflower … ,” I said, ruffling his hair.
He winked. “On the street, we have names for everything. Good luck,” he called over his shoulder. “I don’t want to return to find I have to break you out of the guhoso.”
¤ ¤ ¤
I went to the train station to see the boys, and when I rounded the bend in the road, I found them all sitting on the chipped concrete stairs leading up to the platform. As I neared, I saw that their hair was tousled, like their clothes, and their eyes were gloss
y and red, as if they’d just woken up. Mingook was stretching his legs, while Unsik and Sangchul brushed off dirt and sand from each other’s shirts.
“It’s always darkest under the lamp,” Myeongchul announced when he saw me.
I cocked an eyebrow. “What?”
“Old Korean proverb meaning it always looks brighter somewhere else.”
“And how does that pertain to me?” I quipped.
“I bet you thought we had a great life,” he replied with a laugh. “But see … things aren’t so great.” He held up one of his legs to reveal a big tear in the side seam of his pants. “I got this being chased by a Shangmoo who thought I was homeless.”
“You are homeless.” I laughed. “And you like proverbs!”
“And folk stories and myths, too,” he replied with a wide smile. “They say a lot about a culture.”
“And what do Korean proverbs say about us?”
“Hmm,” he said, scratching his chin. “That we’re not airy-fairy whimsical. We’re very practical. And we’re very hard workers.”
“Okay,” I replied. “Maybe. Hey, I meant to ask you yesterday. Why do you all sleep in the train station? Why don’t you go to your homes?” I asked no one in particular as I sat down on the steps.
“Because other people live in our houses now,” Sangchul answered. “Brokers sold our places to other people.”
“Mine, too,” I whispered, shaking my head and biting my lip as it started to quiver. I was thinking of eomeoni returning to find someone else in her house.
Myeongchul stood up and spread out his arms as if hugging the sun. “People are waiting for my acting, followed by Sangchul’s fantabulouso singing,” he announced in a deep, manlike character voice, like Cheokcheok-hal-abeoji, who narrated the stories of Kim Il-sung’s childhood on TV. Sangchul stood up, slipped off his dusty loafers, and banged them against one of the concrete steps to remove some sand and small pebbles.
“Make way for the greatest singer. He’s nearly ready!” Mingook shouted.
People started handing Mingook and Unsik money as Myeongchul and Sangchul walked toward the grassy knoll by the platform. “People pay,” Unsik leaned over and whispered, “just to be in the front row to watch them. You know, both Sangchul and Myeongchul were invited to perform at the Mangyeongdae Children’s Palace in Pyongyang.”
“Did they go?”
“No. They both had to stay here to make won for their families.” Then he added, “Dreams are only for Pyongyang people.”
Overhearing, Myeongchul snapped: “You only dream when you sleep. We must reap what we’ve sewn in daylight. You watch!”
As he stepped into the middle of a circle that was forming around him, he called out, “I’m tilling the land right now for great things to happen!” He did a few steps of the shoulder dance. “The greatest art is born from adversity.”
“He certainly is happy,” I mused.
“He’s just a fool with all his sayings,” Unsik said with a sigh. “One day he’ll take those blinders off his eyes and see the truth of his life.”
“I think, when we stop dreaming, we’re just as good as dead,” I said in such a hushed voice Unsik didn’t hear, which was fine by me.
Myeongchul’s skit that day was about the brothers Heungbu and Nolbu. Next, Sangchul sang “We Are Kid Scouts” followed by “Let’s Make Impregnable Village.” When the applause for their performances had died down, but the audience remained clapping for an encore, Sangchul dragged me into the center of the circle.
“Here is the best tae kwon do performer in the country,” he announced, pointing to me. “If you want to see him do very difficult kicks, donate five won to us.”
“No,” I protested. I hadn’t done any tae kwon do patterns since I left Pyongyang. “I’m not prepared,” I said, trying to move back into the crowd. But Sangchul grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
Mingook waved a fistful of five-won notes that the audience had given him to watch me perform.
I took a deep breath.
I settled my scattered thoughts by focusing on the spot in between, but directly behind, my eyes. I then did the jump front kick, followed by the back side kick, then the jump side kick, and finally the jump turn kick. For a few seconds, I actually forgot where I was. I felt I was in a place where time didn’t exist. When I neared the end of my patterns, I heard the swoosh, swoosh of my hands and legs slicing through the air.
When done, I bowed to such a huge applause that my ears pounded. I blushed at the attention but was also pleased, for I had found something else I could do to earn won other than be a srikoon.
“Join us,” Sangchul said as we sauntered to the market to buy some food with the won we’d all just earned.
“Well, I … I … I … actually … hmm,” I hemmed and hawed.
“Why not?” Myeongchul asked. “And Young-bum can join us, too, if that’s what you’re worried about. We’d never leave him behind.”
“Actually, Young-bum and I were going to ask all of you if you wanted to join us,” I said with a chuckle. “You know, form a gang together.”
“There are no original ideas,” Myeongchul said, patting me on the back. “At least two people somewhere in the world are thinking the same thing at the same time.”
“So it’s a done deal!” Unsik exclaimed.
I nodded. I then explained to them that Young-bum was caring for his sick grandmother and that he and I had to buy medicines and steal food for her, too. I also told them that Young-bum and I would sleep at his house, not at the train station. “Young-bum needs to be near his grandmother when she comes home from Shang-gi-ryeong,” I said. “Her lungs sound like a forest stream, and she coughs up blood.”
“I know this disease, tuberculosis. We all know someone who has died from it,” Myeongchul said with a groan.
“It is the sickness of the poor and weak,” Sangchul added.
We grew quiet after that, eventually spreading out when we reached the market to buy fried bread sticks and candies.
After we ate, we returned to the train station and performed three more times that day. At the end of the day, as we watched the sun set, I counted my share. I had earned more won than on my best days stealing with Young-bum. I decided to walk to Shang-gi-ryeong to tell Young-bum about our new gang.
It was nearing midnight when I reached the outskirts of Shang-gi-ryeong. I could tell by the position of the moon and Ursa Major, or Chilseong.
Shang-gi-ryeong was a strange town. A slate film, visible even in the night, coated everything. Young-bum had told me Shang-gi-ryeong was a coal town, which explained the thick, dark cloud that it seemed to sit in. When I turned onto the main street, I stopped and looked up at a large mural of Kim Il-sung, which like the one in Gyeong-seong, was clean, like a lily floating in a bog. Lit by the moon, I could read some of the red lettering underneath: OUR GREAT LEADER IS ALWAYS WITH US.
“Indeed, he is,” I whispered out loud.
There was no sign of life; no bike against the side of a house, no rake, no broom, not even a candle set in the windowsill of one of the houses.
Young-bum’s aunt lived in a brick house off the third road to the right past the mural. I counted my steps out loud because I wanted to hear my own voice, to remind me I was still in the world of the living.
Young-bum’s aunt’s place wasn’t difficult to find; it was the only building that had a light coming from inside.
I knocked on the door, and it creaked open. Young-bum was sitting on the floor, hunched over, rocking back and forth and gripping the gray scarf his grandmother had worn around her neck when she was sick. I started to move toward him to take it, in case it contained her disease and made Young-bum sick, too. I then stopped.
Young-bum didn’t look up, and he didn’t need to tell me. His grandmother had died.
I bent down and pulled him into my arms, the way my eomeoni had done when I scraped a knee or bruised an elbow. He buried his head in my shoulder, and we both cried like newbor
n babies.
I fought hard not to feel my own pain, but I couldn’t. I missed eomeoni and abeoji. I couldn’t avoid that ache inside me that was harder to bear than even hunger. We were alone now. Our loved ones had left, taking a big hole out of us with them when they departed. At twelve years old, I now had to look after myself. I had no one to rely on to guide me to make the best decisions for my life. I had no one to come home to who would hold me and make me feel the world was safe.
“It was her heart,” Young-bum coughed out. “My grandmother’s heart just stopped.”
“When?” I asked.
“Within a few hours of her arriving here. She just collapsed on the ground, and Aunt and I couldn’t wake her.”
For the next three days I stayed close to Young-bum while Sangchul, Mingook, Unsik, and Myeongchul worked harder than ever, performing twice as much as they usually did, to earn won to give Young-bum’s grandmother a proper funeral. This included greeting all mourners with dishes of food such as fried tofu with vegetable side dishes and sool.
Young-bum’s aunt, Mi Shun, and I set up the funeral table in the center of the main room. On top of it, Mi Shun placed a photograph of Young-bum’s grandmother, her wedding picture, in which she wore a traditional dress with Strobilanthes oligantha made from white tissue paper in her hair. Her cheeks, I could tell even in the black-and-white photo, had been powdered until they were white like snow. She looked beautiful.
Not many mourners came. Mi Shun told me Shang-gi-ryeong had recently had a coal-mining accident in which many workers had died. Lots of families were left without fathers, she said, and the widows moved to other towns in search of work and food. Those few who remained were mostly the old and too frail to travel. They now dug the earth for coal, which they sold at the markets.
The few mourners who did come placed below Young-bum’s grandmother’s picture a small white envelope containing a few won, which Mi Shun used to pay the neighbors to make a wooden coffin.
On the morning of the third day, we boys, a neighbor, and Mi Shun placed Young-bum’s grandmother in the casket and then the casket in a wheelbarrow, which we pushed to the foot of a nearby mountain. We found some land overlooking the Gyeong-seong River that hadn’t been used as a grave yet and dug a hole in the earth, using metal spades. Mi Shun burned the few belongings Young-bum’s grandmother had, including her clothes and wedding chest. As I placed rice and kimchi around the grave so that Young-bum’s grandmother would have food in the afterlife, I remembered something else about Pyongyang. I had asked my mother after we visited Mansudae Hill after Kim Il-sung’s death where we went when we died.