But she kept ushering me on, past the cash register, down the stairs, and toward the door.
“But the money,” I insisted, rubbing my fingertips together in the universal sign language for cash. Unsure how to react to my dancing fingers, she decided to go the safe route and assume it was the strange way my culture had of saying good-bye. She rubbed her fingers back at me and practically pushed me through the revolving door.
“They don’t have any women’s pants in that store,” I announced indignantly to Jonny.
“Nah. Pops doesn’t like pants on women. He thinks it’s unfeminine.”
I bit off the sarcastic retort that quivered at the tip of my tongue, turning to look out the window at a fashionable gaggle of young women, all in flattering pencil skirts, walking in lockstep down the broad sidewalk. People walked at one speed, I noticed, a brisk, purposeful gait that was just short of a full gallop.
As he settled a pair of horn-rimmed glasses onto his nose, Jonny said, “Our first stop is the Kaeson Youth Park, a pet project of mine. I must warn you, shit’s gonna get a little crazy when we get out of the car. Try not to get trampled.”
We pulled up in front of a twinkling arch from which hung a metal banner inscribed with gold writing, the chauffer rushing to open the door for Jonny and me and bow us out of the car. It was almost as quiet on the street as it had been in the car, without the honking traffic, jackhammers, blaring sirens, and other typical ambient noises of a city; the loudest sound was that of the wind whooshing down empty streets. The first blush of spring had passed; the trees were minty green with fresh foliage, and the air held a sticky foretaste of the humidity that would come with the summer. The small crowd that awaited us on the other side of the arch began to churn with excitement, and a rhythmic clapping hailed our arrival.
Out in the sunlight, I could see powder clinging to the chub of Jonny’s cheeks, a hint of eyeliner tightening the corners of his eyes. “Jonny”—I leaned close to look at his face—“are you wearing makeup?”
“Lisa,” he explained in a joyful, sunny tone, smiling widely for the crowd, their faces set to pained euphoria as they watched our approach. “Out here, in front of my people, I am the sun and the moon, the oceans and the rivers, the green mountains and the fertile fields. I am a deity and you must treat me with the reverence that is my due.”
We passed under the arch, whereupon a throng of comely young women in chaste but figure-flattering clothes rushed him with squeals and moans, trying to grab ahold of his arms, jostling me, but lightly, as they squirmed around me to get to Jonny. A smattering of older men in drab green military uniforms milled about at the fringes, shouldering each other out of the way. As the women pulled Jonny forward, he twisted his head around to shout to me as I was swept along in the tide: “These are the members of the all-girl band that I am forming. We will get a sneak preview of their act later tonight.”
Though the women did not grab ahold of me as they did Jonny, they pushed me along gently, a few of the bolder ones darting curious looks my way, but mostly they seemed fascinated by the crystals on my shoes, which caught the sun in bedazzling flashes. They all seemed to know where they were going, rushing by the brightly colored metal girders that formed the familiar architecture of amusement, the same here as in the American heartland: brightly painted metal molded into serpentine coils, arced swoops, laddered pylons, and octopus-like tentacles.
We came to an abrupt stop in front of the vertiginous helix of a roller coaster, where Jonny asked me with a maniacal giggle, “Are you ready for the most thrilling ride of your life?”
“I don’t really like roller coasters.” I grimaced apologetically.
Slapping me hard on the back, Jonny cackled like I had just told a good joke, and a man firmly guided me toward the torpedo-shaped car, indicating I should use the metal rungs that extended from the bottom to stand belly-up to its hollowed-out plastic shell. I nervously gripped the handles that were at face-level as the man strapped me in, then lowered a metal shield to screen my face and that of the woman next to me, who had been chosen at random from the crowd and was already whimpering in terror. The car levitated with an electric hiss until we were suspended facedown over the platform. My mules fell off and the man obligingly picked them up, rubbing the velvet in wonder as he tucked them under an arm for safekeeping. Jonny waved at me from below.
“I thought you were going to ride with me!” I yelled.
Ho-ho-ho-ing like a jolly Santa Claus in a Mao suit, he said, “I would never be allowed to ride on such a dangerous machine. What if it malfunctions? It’s been known to happen.”
The ride shot off, twisting quickly around a corner, then climbing at an agonizing pace up, up, up, before plummeting down so fast I could feel my lips being blown back from my teeth. My companion was weeping hysterically, screaming the same phrase over and over. A whiplash turn, and then another, and I thought my head would dislocate from my neck. A few more stomach-churning flips and turns and then we were back at the beginning. As we disembarked, my neighbor threw up to the delighted cheers of the crowd.
“I was just joking about the safety of the ride, Lisa.” Jonny giggled as he led us on to the next ride. “Just like any world-class amusement park, we are deadly serious about safety at Kaeson. Now, you simply have to experience the Spinning Wall of Death!” He rolled out an arm, presenting the ride with a jazz-hand wave.
I shook my head no but was already being spirited away by the same guy who had strapped me into the first ride, a muscular automaton programmed not to take no for an answer. There were many seats to fill on this ride, and most of the crowd was recruited, just a lucky few women left to cling gratefully to Jonny as they trilled encouraging words to their colleagues. The city of Pyongyang whirled like a kaleidoscope on fast-forward as the centrifugal force of the ride pinned my spine to the seat.
After I was made to go on the Spinning Saucer, Jonny announced it was lunchtime. He and I were the only ones to descend to the restaurant, where alluring photos of fast-food fare hung over the counter. Our meal was already waiting for us, double cheeseburgers nestled inside cardboard containers with a side of French fries in grease-blotted paper sleeves. A young beauty scampered up with a big bottle of beer, which she ceremoniously uncapped and lovingly poured into two small glasses. When I thanked her in my best Korean, Jonny laughed and admonished, “Please don’t thank her. She has been told not to look us in the face, and by speaking to her, you might get her in trouble.”
He tore into his burger, using his impressive front chompers to shear off chunks of meat, cheeks pouched with food as he chewed with openmouthed satisfaction, his fat tongue licking the ketchup off his lips. The wet sucking sounds of his mastication, combined with the sight of the macerated meat and the smell of griddle grease, did nothing to settle my stomach, still queasy from the rides. Breathing slowly and deliberately through my mouth, I stared at the pin on his chest, finding a small comfort in the airbrushed benevolence of the two elder Kims. After he had gobbled down his burger, he boomed, “Eat up, Lisa. Don’t you know there are starving kids in Alabama?”
Feeling a little better, I took a sip of beer, thinking that the bubbles might be soothing to my stomach. He reached for my burger, lifting his upper lip to free his two front teeth to do their job.
“People say these are the best burgers in Asia,” he declared, quickly scooping back a chunk of meat that threatened to escape his lips with a flip of his tongue. “I came up with the recipe myself.”
He put the burger back in its little box, and not even thinking about it, more from reflex than anything else, I pulled the container back over to its rightful place in front of me.
His eyes goggled with astonishment, his small mouth rounded to a Cheerio, and I immediately realized my mistake.
“Oh god, I’m sorry, here, here, you finish it.” I hastened to correct the situation, and then the angel of a serving girl swooped in to my rescue with a fresh, piping-hot cheeseburger.
He
unleashed his signature full-toothed smile on me, which I recognized from the pin as the very copy of his grandfather’s. “You know, Lisa,” he said, warmly patting my arm, “I feel like you’re the sister I’ve always deserved. Someone I can joke around with; someone who is my equal, almost; someone who will love me unconditionally.”
Ever a whore for approval, I actually felt a twinge of pride that this overindulged man who had a whole nation of people vying for his affections liked me. As he sunk his teeth into the virgin burger, grease spurted down his jacket and onto his pin, blurring the smiles of his illustrious forefathers.
The server swayed gracefully between us, pouring glasses of beer with a perfect cap of foam, before retreating with tiny, mincing backward steps.
“I’ve liked you from the moment we met at Honey Do. You tell it like it is. I’m surrounded by people who tell me what they think I want to hear. The only person who is honest with me is Pops, but he can be a real asshole about it because he’s jealous of me, of my youth, of the fact that he has to die soon while I will live on. It’s what made him wait so long to announce me as his heir. His years of silence have emboldened the hyenas who cringe on their bellies before me, drowning me in flattery, all the while dreaming of the day when they gather to feast upon my carcass.” He pawed gently at my shoulder. “To show you how much I trust you, I’ll answer any of your questions about North Korea. Ask me about the prison camps, the drug running, the nuclear program, that goddamned satellite photo of the Korean peninsula at night, anything. Go on. I know you want to.”
“Um…” I stalled by taking a bite of the cheeseburger. It was actually pretty good, a real taste of home. Chewing slowly, I formulated a question that was impertinent but not offensive. “Uh, well, Kaeson was pretty amazing, but wouldn’t it be better to spend the money it took to build Kaeson on feeding your people?”
“Have you seen any starving people in Pyongyang?” he asked, fingers scuffling in the paper bag for the last few stubs of French fries.
“Not Pyongyang, no. But some of the people we passed on the way…”
The serving girl materialized like some sort of kitchen genie with another serving of fries.
“Your country’s propaganda department loves to go on about famine in our country. Sometimes, not often, but yes, I admit it does happen here in North Korea, we have drought or we have floods. Then the people must make do with less. They are happy to do that. They know that is the price of freedom from the American imperialist bastards.”
“Do you make do with less at those times?” I oh-so-gently mused.
“Now, Lisa.” He wagged a finger at my sophomoric logic. “Do you ask your president to go without breakfast because there are American children whose parents can’t afford to feed them? Do you expect your politicians to go homeless until everyone in the country has a roof over their heads? Do you not go to the doctor because the poor in your country are denied access to health care?”
“Jonny, I saw a little boy wearing a plastic bag,” I whispered.
He shrugged, belched, and then shrugged again. “And I’ve seen the homeless wearing plastic bags for shoes in your country. You Americans think, because you outsource your human exploitation to foreign shores, that you are blameless in the misery that you wreak upon this earth. While you talk about your lofty principles of democracy and equality, people are worked to death and their homelands poisoned for your ease and comfort. Ask the tantalum miners of the Congo, the gold prospectors of Peru, the seamstresses of Bangladesh, or the oil pirates of the Niger Delta. Instead of examining your own role in exploiting the masses and raping the earth, you westerners like to point fingers at other countries, like ours, that they have deemed their enemies based on some arbitrary classification that serves their political interests. Are we really more of a threat to your country than China, with its billion people, nuclear arsenal, and aggressive territorial moves in the South China Sea? No, but it serves the propagandistic purposes of your leaders to pretend as if we were.” Satisfied that he had schooled me, he leaned over to refill my glass, much to the distress of the serving girl, who fluttered up to take the bottle from his hands so that he might not debase himself any further. “Any other questions?”
Since he seemed to be in such a good mood, I asked a question whose answer I really did want to know. “Did you ever consider that I had a pretty good life before you brought me here?”
His laughter rattled like machine-gun fire. “You weren’t doing anything with your life. Now you’ll do something with your life.”
When Jonny waved away a fourth cheeseburger, the serving girl brought out a tray of hot towels and carefully wiped him down, lovingly patting his chin and mouth clean, swabbing off each fat finger, and cleaning the congealed grease from his pin with a careful reverence.
The entourage was waiting for us outside, and once again the ladies skirmished among themselves to link arms with Jonny as we quick-time marched to the bumper cars, where to the relief of everyone with a vagina, it was men only, Jonny himself wedging his rotundness into one of the tiny vehicles and gleefully ramming any officer who was hapless enough to get in his way. I couldn’t get out of the Drop Tower, but compared with the Spinning Wall of Death, it was as tame as a Ferris wheel. The excursion culminated with Jonny riding the carousel as the rest of us cheered him on with adoring applause.
The women pushed and shoved one another to get in a last touch to his sleeve as they escorted us back to the Rolls-Royce. Some gained the courage to walk side by side with me, bending their faces down to my shoes with the same yearning expression with which they looked at Jonny, hypnotized by the bling. As we pulled away, I looked through the rear window to see the women bursting into nervous laughter, their pretty faces stamped with abject relief and the men lighting each other’s cigarettes with shaking hands.
Jonny consulted his Rolex. “We have some time to kill. What about a driving tour of Pyongyang?”
“I’d rather meet Sally, if I could?” I suggested.
“Who?”
“Sally, your bride.”
“Oh, no, no, no.” He waggled his hand as if chasing the idea away. “You will never meet my real family.”
The sedate pace of the Rolls told me we were in no hurry to go anywhere. As we passed an electric tram crammed with people, some of the more alert passengers noticed the car and pressed their anguished faces ardently to the window, mouths and noses smashed flat against the glass. “How do they know it’s you?”
“They know it is either me or Pops. We are the only ones who ride in the silver car with the winged lady.”
“Do you and your father share this Rolls?” I asked, stroking the creamy leather of the seat.
“No. Pops’s car is even more fly than this. It’s got a bar built into the front here and the seats have footrests that fold out with a press of a button. How sick is that?”
We drove by muscular, grandiose monuments: the Arch of Triumph of Ideals, the Chollima Statue, and the Mansudae Grand Monument, where I got out to pay my respects to Il Sung. “Buy flowers to lay at the foot of the statue,” Jonny advised. I didn’t have any money, and neither did he, so his chauffer had to cough up a few limp, well-worn won.
“Pretty impressive, huh?” Jonny demanded when I returned to the car. “Pops will get his own statue when he goes to the great Mount Paektu in the sky. The craftsmen have already finished it.”
“Someday you’ll get your own statue,” I gushed fawningly.
“Yeah.” He nodded, jowls trembling with satisfaction. “I already know how it’s gonna look. I’ll be brandishing a model of a nuclear bomb like a big middle finger to the world.”
“I thought North Korea was in talks to end its nuclear weapons program,” I said as we cruised slowly by Sungryong Hall, remembering the heavy coverage of the issue on NHK News.
“That’s just a little bit of harmless flirtation to make the imperialist bastards think we’re ready to spread our legs for them. Meanwhile, we’re this cl
ose”—he held up his chubby fist, thumb and forefinger almost kissing—“to developing a ballistic missile that can deliver our bombs all the way to the Pacific shores of the American bastards.” When he saw the shocked look on my face, he patted my knee reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Lisa, we’ll try not to use them. Ah, here we are!”
He knocked against the window, and the car came to a stop in front of a gray ship tethered like a forgotten old burro to a concrete dock.
“Proof that we kicked the imperialist bastards’ ass once and we can do it again.”
“What is it?” I squinted at the small vessel, a troupe of schoolchildren filing up the gangplank.
“The USS Pueblo. Captured in ’sixty-eight spying in our waters. I’m surprised you didn’t learn about it in school. Every North Korean schoolchild knows the story. We humiliated the American bastards, making them eat shit for eleven months, only releasing the crew after your government signed a written apology for spying on North Korea and promising not to spy on us again. But once we had honored our part of the agreement, your country retracted the apology, the admission, and the promise. It was a valuable lesson to my grandfather, which he passed down to his son, who passed it down to me. All Americans are lying scum, and any agreement they make isn’t worth the paper it’s written on because it won’t be honored by the US and therefore doesn’t have to be honored by us.” He rapped angrily on the driver’s window before flopping back into his seat, chewing at the inside of his lip with a disgusted expression on his face.
The tour seemed to be over, the car accelerating to motorcade speed, leaving the downtown behind and winding up into the hills, in whose crevices were hidden large buildings that bore a startling similarity to McMansions. I thought perhaps Jonny had grown tired of me, for he lit a cigarette and didn’t speak until he had smoked it down to its gold-tipped filter. Finally, he growled ominously, “Wonder if Moms has noticed if you’re missing yet. I hope not. For your sake, I really, really hope not.” But then he turned back into good dictator, bestowing me with one of his grandfather’s openmouthed smiles to declare, “Now you’ll see how we party Pyongyang style. Tonight I debut my all-girl band. It’s gonna blow the generals’ little minds.”
Famous Adopted People Page 19