by James Church
"You like to listen, don't you, Richie."
"Most wonderful thing in the world, to hear other people talk."
"Maybe in your world."
"And in yours?"
"Listening is the anvil that forms the sword, the fire that melts the lead for the bullet. Listening is the time to recoup, to gather your wits, to plan your attack. If you listen to anyone carefully enough, you'll hear the slip that points to their vitals. It's the compass on the killing map. People talk, but no one wants to say anything, because someone might listen."
"My God, Inspector, I think you're serious."
"Listen carefully, Irishman, I might find a voice we never knew I had."
He looked sad, as if something in him had bent to its limit. I could see he was uneasy. He tried to shake it off, cleared his throat and ran a hand over his scalp, just to get an extra second. That wasn't enough, so he coughed and looked at the clock. Finally, he crossed his arms over his chest.
"However you want to proceed, Inspector."
"fust pretend you didn't hear me say that. I'm not looking for sympathy."
"Don't worry." He nodded, and I knew he'd found himself again.
"I'm not looking to give any. You said Pak told you to go to Manpo. Curious thing for him to do. Makes me wonder. Why would he send you right into Kang's arms?"
"Pak spent most of his days trying to keep me out of trouble, one way or another. It's always been easy for me to step over the line, I don't even know where it is half the time. The other half I don't care. Pak didn't want me transferred away. We were comfortable, a comfortable office, nice way to spend the days. Pak took his job seriously, and he looked out for me. That's just the way he was. I would have done the same for him." I paused. "I should have."
The Irishman lit a cigarette, looked at it with distaste, then put it out.
"Should have. Another way of saying, 'Didn't.'" He tapped the tape recorder. "Ready? Nice and slow. Keep your voice level, would you?"
"Screw all machines, Richie. Have they got buttons on that thing for sarcasm, or irony, or the unspeakable? Do they make machines like that in the West? We don't. We still just use our voices to help out where words can't quite bridge the gap."
"Now you're really breaking my heart, Inspector. Can we get on with it?"
A mountain road runs by
The stream where we rested.
Listening to the wind in the larch trees, I wonder if summer Still lingers in Manpo.
-- KimYun Sook (1 799-1LV'^)
The station platform at Manpo at three in the morning is filled with people, but it is eerily quiet because none of them speak. When they move, they are no different than the fog drifting past the naked bulbs that flicker on the low wooden ceiling overhead. It was August, but colder here than in Kanggye, and I wasn't dressed for it.
Later in the morning, maybe I could find a jacket; for now I needed a place to stay and something to eat. I had a few meal coupons with me, some dirty Chinese currency, and about a hundred wrinkled dollars, but at this hour there probably wouldn't be anything open.
I squeezed through the crowd and emerged onto the square in front of the station. I did not expect to find anything, and I didn't. The vendors were all gone. Out of the darkness I heard a voice behind me, low and close. "You want a girl?" In Pyongyang, I would have grabbed the voice by the throat and pushed it against the wall. One thing I didn't allow in my sector was pimping out in the open. I couldn't stop it in the clubs or the hotels, but I drew the line at the street, and after a couple of months nearly everyone got the word. Once in a while someone came in from out of town who didn't know the rules. They learned, or they sashayed into another section of the city. Here, though, I had no jurisdiction. I turned around slowly. The voice belonged to an old man.
The sleeves of his shirt were too long for his arms, while his trousers were too short and the waist, too big, was cinched tightly with a rope belt. When he raised his hands, a gesture to show he meant no harm, I saw that both of his sleeves were torn at the elbows. He dropped his hands to his sides, then put his thumbs through his belt and smiled. I was amazed to see he had all his teeth. "Nice girls." He smiled again, not a leer, no hint of anything lascivious, just a friendly observation.
"Grandfather, I want a place to stay and something to eat."
He kept smiling. "So do we all, my friend. So do we all." He paused.
When he turned slightly, I saw that despite the worn elbows, his shirt was crisp, freshly pressed, not a wrinkle on it, and on his chest was a badge, a small round portrait of Kim II Sung. It was from maybe twenty-five or thirty years ago, the sort ranking cadres used to wear.
"How the mighty have fallen." He watched me closely, the unwavering smile no longer necessary, past time to fade. Most people smile quickly at a stranger and are done with it.
The air was getting unpleasant as the fog thickened. It passed through my mind that standing in the damp, holding a conversation with this old man, was not what I wanted at this hour of the morning, yet there was something hypnotic about him. He glanced down at the badge, then back at me. "The sun rises, the sun sets. It only seems brighter at noon," he said, and grunted softly. "Yet right now, it is very dark." After the barest breath of a moment, the smile left his lips and his face became a portrait of indifference. Too blank, too fast. I felt my stomach tighten. He looked past me. "Not much open at this hour, but I know a restaurant. A few Russian girls. A few Chinese girls. You'll have to buy them drinks. If you like, after that, there may be a place to stay."
"No, thanks. Too complicated. I'll just walk a little."
"I wouldn't advise that." He didn't look thin or old anymore. Something stern passed over him, as if he suddenly recalled a time when he was obeyed immediately and without question. "This isn't Pyongyang."
Just as the last word was spoken, I felt the back of my head explode, the dim light behind the old man went red, and my knees buckled. The left one went first, so I knew that, as usual, I would wrench my back. As I slipped to the ground, I wondered if there was any tea where I was going, and then I was gone.
2
I knew I was in a bed. I was pretty sure not much time had passed. I didn't know my name, or why I smelled perfume. If I didn't open my eyes, I didn't have to deal with where I was, or why. But if I didn't open my eyes, the perfume might go away forever.
There was one lamp in the room. The bulb was dim under the yellowed shade, and the light didn't get very far. The perfume was a woman sitting on a chair tipped against the wall. She didn't look Korean, barely Asian. Her eyes were closed and she might have been asleep, but she was smoking. It was a Russian cigarette. She had long black hair and wore a white blouse with shiny blue buttons. The buttons annoyed me. So did the cigarette. The perfume still won. It was like sitting in a meadow looking at rows of mountains slumbering against the dawn. I groaned, remembering how I got here. Sunrise, waiting for a black car to come up from the south.
"Good, you're alive." The woman sat up in the chair and opened her eyes. They were Asian but reaching west. Even in the half shadows of the room, her eyes were vivid, brighter than the lamp beside the bed.
For a moment I could see the steppes, Mongols on ponies sweeping through villages, blood and flames. Then I realized I didn't have a shirt on. I pulled the blanket up.
"Did the earth move for you, too?" I said to no one in particular.
"Hemingway," she said. One word, but she took her time saying it.
Her voice was like what I remembered from breakfast in Budapest, honey on warm bread. "Nice. But don't flatter yourself. I only took off your shirt because when you fell, you fell into something not so sweet.
It's bad for business if the bed smells like a sewer." I wondered if my head had been hit harder than I thought. One minute she looked Asian, then she didn't.
I noticed she had a cup of tea on the small table beside her. She watched me lick my lips. "Sorry, the hot plate is broken and I'm out of coal for the firebox until tomorr
ow morning. All I have is beer and black bread with jam."
"No honey? Maybe a drop of vodka?" Beer and jam. I shuddered, and it wasn't from the cold.
"Jam," she repeated irritably. I didn't say anything, so she shrugged.
People do that, it doesn't mean much, but the way her shoulders moved, you paid attention. "Suit yourself." As she took a deep drag on the cigarette, she looked slowly around the room. It was her exercise, like taking a walk in the park. I could feel myself getting short of breath, waiting until she exhaled. She was in no hurry. Finally, when her eyes were back on me again, she made a perfect circle with her lips and the smoke came out, a little at a time. "My name is Elena. My father was Finnish. My mother Chinese. I wish I were in Finland, but I'm not. I'm in this stinking city." She was speaking Russian. She still smelled divine.
"First"--my head cleared a little as I focused on each object in the room, the bed, the chair, the small table, the lamp--"I'd appreciate getting back my shirt." I tucked the blanket under my chin. "I assume you are washing it."
She didn't move a muscle.
"Second, I love your perfume, but it's drowning in cigarette smoke."
She put on a pouty look, but somehow she didn't resemble a traffic lady. "You asked for a nonsmoking room, perhaps? Let me check your reservation."
I decided not to be distracted by her lips. "Third, who is grandpa, why did he drag me here, and what time is it?"
"Aren't you going to tell me your name?
"What for?"
"I told you mine." She leaned against the wall again, the cigarette dangling from her fingers. Her nails were painted a glossy red. She wasn't wearing shoes, but her skirt was so long I could only see the tips of her toes.
"Your blouse?"
She sighed. "Yes?"
"Is it Finnish?"
"Why, do you want me to take it off so you can see?" She barely hid the disdain in her voice.
"No, it's the buttons. They're blue."
"Yes, like the lake beside the town where I grew up."
"Blue like Lake Keitele," I said without a pause, and she nearly jumped off the chair. I realized I had scored a bull's-eye, totally by accident.
I hadn't even aimed the shot. "Surprised?" I tried to smile, but it made my head hurt. "Don't worry, I haven't looked at your file. I had a conversation with a Finnish businessman a few years ago in a bar in Pyongyang. He was drunk and talked about Finland. Funny man. He said he wanted to be a police detective, but there was something wrong with his knee, so he became a salesman--machinery, cosmetics, something.
I didn't ask, and he was vague. He showed me a little book of landscape paintings by Finnish artists he carried around so he wouldn't get homesick. One of the paintings was of a place called Lake Keitele.
It was a beautiful blue, peaceful but ice cold all at once. I decided that someday I wanted to go there."
She had settled back in her chair. "Do you know much about Finland?"
"Not much besides vodka, blue buttons, and paintings of blue lakes. I've heard the forests are endless. In the summer, when the wind rustles the leaves, they say it sounds like a hundred distant waterfalls." I felt like pressing my luck. "Your father was from near Lake Keitele?"
"He was. He drowned himself in the lake on his seventy-fifth birthday."
Another bull's-eye, only this one I didn't want. I must have turned white. "Don't worry," she said. "He always told us that was what he was going to do, and so none of us were surprised. My sister wrote and said he just announced one day that he was tired of getting old, finished his coffee, and walked out the door. It was a pretty day, in summer. The lake must have been very blue."
The whole time she was talking I was searching my mind desperately for an exit line. "The bread might be good after all." It was all I could find. "Is the jam blueberry?"
"Supposedly from your Mount Paektu, very sweet. Your Russian isn't bad. Not many people can change the subject so smoothly in a foreign language."
She stood up. She was tall. I tried to imagine how her father, the taciturn Finn, had stumbled into China. Must have been in the northeast; no woman in southern China would give him such a daughter. After she closed the door, I threw off the blanket, which I knew was a mistake as soon as I'd done it. My back screamed. I'd wrenched it.
Every time I was hit on the head, I fell off balance to the left. Pak complained that I was the only one in the unit who needed an extra three days to recover after getting knocked out. The dizziness would clear-- it always did--but the back would linger. That meant limping through Manpo, even though it was plain this was not a town where you wanted to be marked as a wounded animal.
I shuffled to the window. The sky showed no sign of dawn, so I guessed I'd only been here a few hours. I was on the third floor. In the moonlight I could see we were in an old wooden building. The last time it had been painted it had been white. I didn't hear the door open behind me, which was a surprise because in old buildings like this, the doors usually stick. It's easy to fix, but no one takes the time.
"You want me to close my eyes while you jump back into bed?"
Elena had two pieces of black bread on a plate, a spoonful of jam next to each one. "Your shirt won't be dry for a while. Then it needs ironing.
The girl who does that never gets here before eight o'clock."
It was cold, and a little hammer inside my head was pounding my brain. She put the plate on the bed, then moved to her chair. She didn't look at me, she hadn't done anything wrong, but I suddenly didn't like her or the accommodations. "You don't have to sit and watch me. I won't run anywhere without my shirt."
"This is my room. I've nowhere to go. Believe me, watching you is not paradise. When I'm alone, I can imagine I'm somewhere else. With you here, I cannot forget I'm in this godforsaken land."
"It's not so bad." My headache was getting worse, which made me determined to contradict whatever she said. "Pyongyang is peaceful.
The parks and the trees give the place a sleepy feeling, especially in the summer. You can hear the trolley bells clang in the morning, and the river sparkles on sunny days. From the top of the Juche Tower, you can see the whole city stretched out like a miniature village in a museum."
"God,
what are you, a travel advertisement? Do you know what you are saying? Have you ever been anywhere real?"
"Real?" I forgot my headache. "Real?" I walked back to the bed, my back shrieking at me with every step. It was all I could do not to drag my leg, but I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction. To hell with her eyes.
"Yes, where there are real restaurants, real buildings, real people."
"So. We're not real?" Getting into bed was torture. How could I lift my legs over the side without moaning like an ox? "If that's how we impress you, I must apologize. How rude of us, not to seem human to someone like you." I saw her body stiffen. Good. I pressed the attack.
"We're real, every one of us. Don't forget it. And, yes, I have been overseas.
Some things are good, some things aren't, same as here. Nothing is perfect. This godforsaken country, as you call it, is where I live. This is my home. The little room I have is where I go at night to find shelter from the storms of the day. Maybe a Finn would think it too cramped, not well furnished, lacking blond wood and bright furniture. But I like it fine." My voice was rising a little at the end as I dropped back on the pillow. It was a good thing I was so angry; it was just enough to cover over the pain that nearly strangled me as I remembered, too late, that I was supposed to lie on my side.
"Now you're mad at me. Why do Koreans get angry so quickly?"
"We don't. We just don't hide our feelings." I closed my eyes. "You may not always know what a Korean thinks, but you damn well know what he feels. If anything, we're melancholy more than angry. Listen to our songs. Always longing for something."
"The Russians are like that. Melancholy."
"Any country that produced Stalin has reason to be melancholy."
"And you
r country doesn't?"
"I just told you, we are melancholy, but it's in our blood, nothing to do with leaders. It goes way back. Maybe it's the mountains. If you can't look off toward the horizon, if there's always a mountain in front of you, you start to brood."
"The Swiss have lots of mountains."
"I know, I've been there. If you ask me, they're cold, not melancholy.
To be melancholy, you have to have blood flowing in your veins.
Have you ever heard them yodel? Depresses the hell out of me. It's an unnatural sound."
She sighed. "Why don't we just stop talking. It's too difficult, finding something we agree on. The silence will do you good."
I opened my eyes and looked at those blue buttons. "Surely you can find another bed." It was a mean thing to say and I said it in a nasty tone, something I find is easy when I'm tired and in pain from having been hit on the head needlessly.
Her face betrayed no emotion, but the voice changed, much less honey to it, and it wasn't just because she had switched to the Mandarin she learned at home from her mother. "As I told you, I wish I were in Finland, but I'm not, I'm here. What I did not tell you was that I despise this place. I despise this country. And I despise you. This room"-- she looked around it as if surveying a battlefield--"this room is all I have. So you can eat the bread or you can choke on it." She finished off in a language I didn't recognize. She switched back to Russian. "That was Finnish. It's the language of endless forests and lakes so blue you feel it is impossible to drown in them." She smiled grimly. "And what I just said is, 'I couldn't care less.' Only it wasn't that polite. Good night, Inspector." She lit another cigarette and blew the smoke very carefully in my direction.
I started to wonder how everyone knew to call me "Inspector," but then I closed my eyes again and went to sleep.
3
"Why do Koreans get mad so quickly." Richie laughed. "A good question."
"Not coming from an Irishman, it's not," I said softly.
"There's that low voice of yours again, Inspector. Come on, we're alone, you can roar at me if you want. Lei off a little steam."