Princess Bari

by Sok-yong Hwang

  “Do you kids even know what a treat these are?” Uncle Salamander said. “They come from the South. Grandmother, you should try one, too.”

  Grandmother removed the plastic wrapper and took a bite out of the round, dark cake with soft marshmallow filling in the middle. Her eyes widened. “Where’d you say you got this from?”

  “South Korea, madam. Isn’t it tasty, kids?”

  We were too busy eating to answer. The flavour sent a jolt through me, from the tip of my tongue down to the bottom of my stomach. For days and weeks before Uncle Salamander appeared, we’d had nothing to eat but corn. At school, most of the students went without lunch, and rations for mine workers had already begun to be cut off for a couple of months at a time. Grain trucks would cross the river and head straight for Chongjin. They said there were a large number of remote mountain villages and backwoods towns by then with no one living in them. But since shipments of food passed through Musan, everyone was able to get by somehow, even if they had to miss a meal here and there.

  Uncle Salamander lowered his voice and leaned closer to Father. “The Republic will soon be better off,” he said.

  “I don’t know about that. The farms have been in turmoil for the last several years; the climate is changing. The Ryanggang Province highlands, for instance, used to be too cold to grow vegetables, but now I hear they have lettuce.”

  “How are people supposed to live on lettuce? They should be growing potatoes. The problem is that the summer monsoons dump so much rain that all the crops – corn, potatoes, everything – gets washed away.”

  “That’s why the government keeps calling for the ‘great battle’ to replace the topsoil, but no one actually cares enough to try. The earth is too thin for anything to grow.”

  “Well, the government likes to throw around that bullshit about ‘self-reliance’ and talk up the virtues of traditional farming, but all that really means is that they can’t afford to modernize. You would need mountains of fertilizer over several years before you could coax anything out of that soil. But hey, at least on the outside, all the companies are hoping things will improve soon.”

  “Why? Is something happening?”

  “South and North …” Uncle Salamander held his thumbs up next to each other. “Face to face.”

  “That is even less likely than Heaven being a real place.”

  “No, it’s true. I saw it on Chinese TV.”

  “As if those Big Nose Yankees will ever let us be.”

  “If North and South worked together instead of fighting each other, then everyone would be better off, and even we Korean-Chinese would be able to live free and proud.”

  “You spin a good story.”

  Then Uncle Salamander switched to Chinese, and Father asked him things and answered questions in Chinese as well, so we weren’t able to follow their conversation.

  A few days after Uncle Salamander left, Musan was turned inside out. Soldiers armed with rifles stood guard in every street, and the People’s Committee building was turned into a funeral parlour. They told us the Great Leader had passed away suddenly. Schoolchildren were sent out in droves to the fields to pick all the wildflowers and make bouquets. We stood in line to enter the Committee building and offer up silent tribute before a photograph of the Great Leader. Every woman we ran across in the street, from teenagers to mothers to grandmothers, was weeping.

  “Great Leader!” they cried. “How can we go on without you …?”

  The city reverberated with the keening of mothers who sat in groups on cement steps, their faces haggard. The little ones followed suit, even though they had no idea what was going on, crowding together in courtyards and in the middle of the street to weep, their tears mixed with sweat.

  That summer was said to be one of the hottest in decades. Not a drop of rain fell all season, but when autumn began it rained hard for several weeks in a row until the fields and mountains had practically changed places. The grown-ups were used to fretting over poor crop yields, but that year a truly fearsome famine began. By winter, rations had been cut off in cities and provinces alike. That was also around the time that our mother’s brother, who’d been working in Chongjin the whole time, showed up at our place looking gaunt. We heard him whispering in a low voice to our parents in the opposite room when he burst into tears suddenly.

  “Just how badly did you mess up, that now there’s a deficit?!” Father yelled, his voice so angry that it nearly covered up the sound of our uncle’s bawling.

  “Let me guess,” Mother said sharply. “You’ve been gambling again?”

  “No, I swear. A company in China wanted octopus and promised to pay us back later with soybeans and cornmeal. I told the fishery co-op to send it, but it’s been three months and the company hasn’t paid us back. So now the co-op is demanding that I pay for it out of my own pocket. I’ve tried calling, but no one answers. Maybe the company went under. Damn it all.”

  “You better go talk to Xiaolong,” Mother said.

  Our uncle blew his nose.

  “He’s got enough problems of his own. We need to have people working in order to have something to sell.”

  Father sighed. “That’s true … We were also unable to fill our orders last time. We need to extract more iron ore and sell that to buy some corn.”

  As rations were cut and wages came to a stop, miners began to quit and wander around in search of food instead. Countless factories all over the country, both big and small, shut their doors. That night our uncle snuck across the Tumen River. Neither Mother nor Father could stop him. He told them he would go to Yanji himself to find out what had happened to the company. If he couldn’t pay back the fishery cooperative, he would be punished severely and sent to prison. As times had grown tough, anyone who hurt the country’s prosperity was subject to even harsher punishment.

  Our mother’s brother never came back after crossing the river that day. That was probably the winter of 1994, so I would have been eleven years old.

  Three

  My family and I had no idea what was happening in the outside world, but we were able to guess what shape other parts of the country were in from looking at the changes around us. At school, the classrooms weren’t even half-full. Our homeroom teacher was nowhere to be seen, and the number of teachers who did stick around dropped to just four or five within a few months.

  One day, I was at the Tumen River with Mi when we saw something drifting downstream. It was the body of a woman floating face-down, with a baby on her back. Mother and child had died together. Had this been ordinary times, my sister and I would have shrieked in shock and run to get someone, but instead we held our breath and watched in silence. The long ties that held the baby sling in place had come undone and were trailing behind the bodies, swaying limply in the current. Later, many more bodies would float past. When they touched the opposite shore, villagers on the Chinese side would push them away with long poles, and on our side soldiers and other strong young men would stand watch and shove the bodies into the middle of the river.

  One evening, my sisters and I heard our company-housing neighbours chattering loudly outside. Soldiers were dragging a handcart down the main street. The cart was covered in burlap grain sacks, so we couldn’t tell at first what was in it – but when we saw several pairs of feet poking out, we knew they were bodies. Usually, if someone died in the night, the neighbours would report it and take care of the body, but after that summer the bodies were left in place. Whenever you passed an empty house, the rotting smell, as if someone was brewing soy sauce, was overwhelming.

  Our family managed to get by. Father must have been wise enough to see what was coming. During his deals with Uncle Salamander, he would keep some of the sea cucumber or dried octopus that was delivered to the port and trade it for grain, which he’d been stockpiling. He’d lined his own pockets, as it were. One night, I was awakened by the sound of low voices and the front door opening and closing. Our parents were up to something – they kept walki
ng in and out and grumbling like they were carrying something heavy. I tiptoed quietly to the bedroom door and peeked out. Mother and Father were holding each end of a large sack of grain and carrying it somewhere. Later my sisters and I figured out that they’d been using a shed behind the house, where we stored farm tools and other odds and ends, as a hiding place. They’d cleared out the shed, pulled up the wooden floorboards and dug a hole in the earth, which they lined with vinyl, to hide the grain. The shed was my mother’s first stop every morning – she would head out there with a cooking pot in hand before she started preparing food. When we had all caught on, Mother and Grandmother sat us down and lectured us at length.

  “Now pay attention, all of you,” Grandmother said. “The Republic can’t look after every single one of its subjects anymore. Why do you think they’re calling it the ‘Arduous March’? The only thing in this world you can rely on is your own family. Don’t forget that.”

  “Listen to your grandmother. Don’t mention to anyone that we have food to eat. They say half of the houses in the village down the way are empty.”

  As we couldn’t have others seeing smoke from a cooking fire several times a day, Mother only made rice in the mornings when she lit the stove to heat the house, and we would eat half and save the rest for later. Fortunately, as our father was vice chairman in charge of customs and trade in the city, we had some coal briquettes left in storage and were able to heat the stove even in the middle of the rainy season. The chairman’s family, who lived across from us, had also been able to stockpile food, thanks to our father’s acumen.

  “If we’d stayed in Chongjin, we’d be starving by now,” our mother would say while clearing away dishes. Then her thoughts would turn to Jin, who’d gotten married, and Sun, who was in the army. “Aigo, Jin’s pregnant now. I wonder how she’s getting enough to eat. But Sun must be eating well if she’s in the army?”

  One day, Chilsung disappeared and had not returned home by sunset. Grandmother saw me pacing outside the stone wall and came out to talk to me.

  “Don’t worry, Chilsung is fine. I’m sure he’ll be home soon. Don’t tell your father, and don’t let him off the leash next time.”

  I squatted down in the corner of the wall. Then I closed my eyes tight and pictured Chilsung. The darkness behind my eyelids slowly paled into a milky light. I saw a road, a field, rows of cornstalks flattened in the wind, and among them, a white creature. Our little Chilsung was lying on his side with his legs stretched out. I opened my eyes wide.

  “Grandma! I know where he is. He’s in the middle of a cornfield way over there.” I took off running without a thought as to any danger. Grandmother followed me, first trotting, then slowing to a walk. The fields were blanketed in fog.

  “Slow down, girl! I told you, Chilsung is fine.”

  I passed the train station, crossed the rail crossing, and ran up a low hill. I could see the cornfield. I could hear the cornstalks and the long, flat leaves stirring in the wind. I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted into the dark.

  “Chilsung-ah! Chilsung-ah!”

  Grandmother panted as she climbed over the hill. I stood there with my ears perked, trying to make out any other sounds among the rustling of the leaves. To my right, I heard something that sounded like a short grunt. I pushed my way into the centre of the field and spotted Chilsung’s white fur and outstretched legs. When I cradled his head, he yelped and shook my hands off.

  “He must be hurt. Don’t touch him,” Grandmother said.

  “How are we going to get him home?”

  “I’ll bring your sisters back with the wheelbarrow we keep in the shed. You stay here.”

  She disappeared into the dark, and it was just Chilsung and me in the middle of the cornfield.

  Bari-ya!

  Startled, I looked behind me.

  I almost died! Strange men grabbed me and dragged me into the mountains!

  Chilsung’s breath was weak and shallow. From that moment on, I was not only able to convey my unspoken thoughts but also to hear Chilsung’s thoughts, the same way I could hear Sook’s. I closed my eyes and thought: It’s alright. I’ll keep you safe. You’ll be better in no time.

  Mi and our grandmother came back with the wheelbarrow, and we carried Chilsung home in it. When we got to the house, we took a closer look at his injuries: his ear was torn, he had a large open wound on his back and a telephone wire was wrapped around his throat, digging deep into the flesh under his jaw.

  Grandmother clucked her tongue. “Guess he got away from the bastards who were planning to eat him.”

  “He’s family to us, but meat to everyone else,” Father said. He used a pair of pliers to remove the wire noose and applied ointment to the torn ear and the cut on Chilsung’s back. Then he wrapped the injuries with strips of fabric. We took apart the doghouse that Hindungi had lived in back in Chongjin and used the wood for kindling, and spread straw on the floor of the shed to make a bed for Chilsung. It took over two weeks for him to return to full health.

  *

  All summer, rain fell like a hole had been torn in the sky. The heavy rains that had started at the end of July kept going long past mid-August. The corn and vegetable gardens planted on the mountain slopes were swept away, and even the terraced fields carved high up into the curve of the mountain ridges had collapsed in places from landslides – the red earth beneath the topsoil exposed – or were buried completely under mud. The Tumen River overflowed its banks, and every low place in the city of Musan was puddled with mud. Roads and train tracks buckled and caved. On the radio they said the entire country was underwater. Bodies floated in the flooded fields and at the edges of the cities.

  The part of the city we lived in was on relatively high ground, so other than a little bit of flooding on the road to the customs office, we were unaffected. It wasn’t until the end of August, nearly ten days after the floodwaters had drained away, that equipment arrived from the city, and soldiers on border patrol and young men who’d survived the famine and flooding were able to repair the railroad tracks and the roads. Though autumn was on its way, there was nothing, not a single crop, left in the fields to harvest. Like us, those who survived were probably nibbling away, bit by bit, at the grain they’d secretly stashed. We had one meal of porridge that was both breakfast and lunch made from boiling roughly ground corn meal with wild greens – groundsel, goosefoot, Chinese plantain and such – that my sisters and grandmother picked in the fields, and we had rice only at dinner. Hyun, who had a delicate constitution, used to set her spoon down weakly next to her bowl of porridge, and whine:

  “Mom, can’t we have rice instead? I can’t eat this. It’s too bitter.”

  “Don’t be so fussy. A lot of people have died because all they have to eat are wild greens. We just need to make it through the winter.”

  After the heat had broken and the crickets were starting to sing, we heard the rumbling of an engine outside. No one, not even anyone from the army base or the People’s Committee, had been able to drive one of the Sungri trucks or Soviet-made jeeps for a long time, on account of the fuel shortage, so we stared at each other wide-eyed, wondering if it wasn’t perhaps a car from China carrying familiar merchants. Mi took the lead as we headed out to the courtyard. A white car was already making its way up the hill. With my keen eyes, I recognized Uncle Salamander in the front seat. Ah, Grandmother was right! He was indeed a god come down from Heaven. The moment the car pulled up in front of the house, he got out and looked around at us.

  “You’re all still alive!” he exclaimed.

  “Aigo! Look who’s here! Our saviour!” Grandmother shouted and clasped Uncle Salamander’s hands.

  Mother came running out of the house, and Father, for once unmindful of looking dignified, bounded into the courtyard in his bare feet.

  “Xiaolong is back!”

  “Elder Brother, I’ve been worried sick about you. But things will be better now … Look back there. There’s a shipment of food coming
through customs.”

  The first thing he unpacked when he got inside was a box of moon cakes for us kids to eat, followed by a sack of rice, three bags of cornmeal, two cans of cooking oil and some wheat flour. Before anyone could even tell us to help ourselves, we’d ripped open the box, tore off the plastic wrappers and started munching away, a moon cake in each hand. The sweet filling melted on our tongues. (Years later, after I came to live in London, I would often find myself biting into a slice of pie fresh out of the oven, only to realize that nothing in the world would ever taste quite as good as those moon cakes did that day.) Mother and Grandmother sat with their backs turned to wipe away their tears discreetly, and even Uncle Salamander looked away and took a long drag on his cigarette.

  “When the country goes wrong, the little ones are the first to suffer,” he sighed. Then he mentioned his long-awaited business plans to Father. “China seems to think that the situation here has become very serious. A message came down from the authorities to the merchants’ association we’ve been trading with. It said to deliver food relief immediately, and aid will be provided afterward in the form of loans. Those who can do need to get back to work.”

  “But half our workers are gone. Most of the miners have left.”

  “There’s a company that wants to haul away all that sand and dirt piled up in front of the Tumen River mines and refine it for iron ore. They’ll give you money or food, whatever you need, in exchange for it.”

  “That’s just slag. How much iron do they expect to get?”

  “If you’re just going to discard it anyway, why not get something for it?”

  Our throats were dry from eating the moon cakes, so we took a break to drink some water and rest, and then we started eating again, all the while listening to the grown-ups talk. It was difficult to follow, but we caught the gist of it: there was hope.

  “Fine,” Father said. “Let’s go talk it over with our comrade, the chairman.”

  Uncle Salamander cleared his throat, took a glance around and then spoke in a lower voice: “By the way, Elder Brother … Have you heard about your wife’s brother?”