The Accusation: Forbidden Stories From Inside North Korea

by Bandi

  “Father doesn’t have time for anything except the cultivation site.”

  “Oh? What kind of work does he do there?”

  “The other day when there was a parents’ meeting, he just sent a note to the teacher instead. That’s all we get from him as well. Even yesterday.”

  “I see, and what’s yesterday’s note about?”

  “Our mother’s memorial rites.” As soon as those words were out of his mouth, the boy pressed his lips together, but it was too late to try to hold back his tears. Feeling extremely ill at ease, Yunmo renewed his efforts.

  “There now, hold this for me. We need to get this other hinge out too…. Ah, this one’s a real bastard!”

  He began cursing and exclaiming even more vigorously than before. And it wasn’t only the boy he was hoping to cheer—he could feel his own eyes on the point of tearing up. Luckily, something unexpected happened just then to put a smile on Hye-myong’s face.

  The hinge that Yunmo had been straining at, thinking it would prove as tough as the first one, had abruptly popped free, causing him to lose his balance and land with a thump on his backside. Though the tears still glistened in his eyes, the boy burst out laughing at the sight.

  “So, Mr. Reporter, is there really a wild boar wreaking havoc in the cultivation site?”

  Yunmo was startled. “How do you know I’m a reporter?”

  “Ha—I knew all along. You’ve come to see my father.”

  “Why, you little rascal! But how did you find out?”

  “Don’t you remember? You came to our school at the start of the term and took a photo for the paper.”

  “Ah, so I did. But what’s this all this about a wild boar?”

  “Well, in his note father said it was because of some trouble with a wild boar that he couldn’t come home for Mother’s memorial rites.”

  “Oh, that must be true. Boars are a major nuisance, you know. They always go around in gangs, so even in a large cornfield they could do considerable damage in the space of a single night.”

  “Ah! Then it was true!”

  “If it were me I’d miss the pair of you so much I’d want to be here all the time, but I guess things are different with your father?”

  “He’s busy with work … but he’s a really good father to us. He misses us and he knows we miss him, and he really wishes he could be here for Mother’s memorial rites, but he has to stay in the mountains. Every morning when he goes to wash his face at the spring, he sees our faces in the water. He wrote that in one of his letters.”

  “And?” Yunmo couldn’t keep a tremor from his voice.

  “And he gave the man who brought that letter some raspberries and mushrooms for us, and my sister used them all for mother’s offertory table.”

  Yunmo had to avert his face. Pretending to brush the sweat from his forehead, he secretly wiped away his tears.

  He took a good look around Inshik’s house that day, in every nook and cranny, even taking the time to give the gate a new hinge. The house spoke eloquently of suffering, and of Inshik: a man who had painstakingly collected mushrooms as an offering for his late wife, a woman whose memorial ceremony he could not even attend; a man who had plunged his hands into brambles, hoping the raspberries might lighten his children’s hearts, children whose faces he had to content himself with merely imagining. The crooked fence, the storehouse roof which could not keep out the rain gave clear expression to the fact that the man of the house was somewhere else, pouring his efforts into some other toil. The place even seemed to echo with his voice, alone on the mountain on the anniversary of his wife’s death, outwardly engaged in chasing away wild boars, inwardly praying that she had found some happiness.

  Afterward, Yunmo was confident that he could dash off an article in a single stretch, immediately if need be. He already had a stockpile of facts and figures relating to the cultivation site, from researching a separate issue. But by now he had fallen under the spell of Inshik’s human qualities, and a burning desire grew up in him to talk face-to-face with the man himself, to be in the presence of that distinctive personality.

  And so, that day, Yunmo urged himself on to the cultivation site, a distance of a hundred ri from the town, disregarding the scorching midday sun.

  3

  Rather than being stretched out in a straight line, those hundred ri were like a loosely folded rope. The cultivation site looked down on the town like someone peering into the depths of a well, and to get to your destination you had to double back on yourself again and again.

  It was as though a sharp line had been drawn across the mountainside. The top half was still shrouded with gloomy forest, while the lower was all reclaimed land, stretching so far into the distance it was difficult to tell where it ended. This land had been divided into plots, which each held different crops—some beans, some corn, some potatoes—and its lower edge was marked by a sheer cliff, almost parallel to the tree line above. The mouth of a dark gulley gaped below.

  To find a cornfield on such a steep, remote mountain was a strange and rare thing. If anything, it resembled land cleared through the ancient method known as slash-and-burn. The words “cultivation site” made it sound very modern, very technical, but if its appearance was anything to go by, then “slash-and-burn field” would have been just as appropriate.

  The evidence for its having been cleared in such a way was that it was still a site filled with raw materials. Tree roots resembling dinosaur skeletons, rocks that had tumbled loose, burned stumps, all tangled up on top of one another along the furrows of the field … Its location so far up the mountain meant that the most innovative technology that could have been employed would have been an ox and cart. Considering that this colossal task had been achieved with a mere three bullocks and around thirty men, Yunmo looked at the stones and tree roots with fresh, wondering eyes. And it occurred to him that forty pyeong worth of land for personal use was a pretty poor excuse for a “perk,” given the blood that had been shed in farming it.

  The huts were located in the potato field, a place of relative safety.

  They were low, rather scrappy-looking dwellings, constructed with unsplit logs used for rafters, which were then “papered” with bark and covered all over with soil. Yunmo approached one of these huts and stood at the entrance to the yard. The gate stood ajar, and he peered inside for a short while before setting foot inside. But just then, as though on cue, a woman’s earsplitting scream burst out from inside the house.

  A second scream followed in swift pursuit, that of a different woman, and Yunmo, startled, stopped in his tracks. A shriek burst from his own mouth as he saw a fat, dappled snake plop down onto his toes, squirming like a cut rope. The two maids who had just tossed it out of the kitchen, having been startled in the midst of preparing dinner for the workers, seemed even more shocked than he.

  “Ah, what’s this? What a time for someone to turn up!”

  “Oh, and don’t I know you from somewhere? The reporter? I’m so sorry….”

  Though the women knelt down and bowed their heads to the floor, there seemed no way to appease their feelings of guilt. Yunmo watched the snake wriggle out of the yard and into the hazelnut wood beyond. Only then did a startled laugh break from him.

  “Please don’t speak ill of us. This must be a first for you, Mr. Reporter, but we’re all used to such things here.”

  “Ho, don’t you worry about that. It’s certainly made an impression, though. I won’t go forgetting that in a hurry!”

  Even as he affected a laugh, Yunmo could feel his heartbeat tripping. To steady himself, he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his trouser pocket.

  “It’s still hot outside; come in and sit down, quickly.” The plump woman opened the door to the inner room.

  “I’m all right,” Yunmo said politely. “I need to speak with the comrade in charge first of all.”

  “Everyone goes to gather edible plants in the afternoons. This morning they were pulling the last of the weeds out
of the soybean field. After all, what’s the point of having salt in the kitchen if it doesn’t make it into the pot? We might live on a mountain, a larder right on our doorstep, but the plants won’t pick themselves.”

  “And even the person in charge has to pitch in?”

  “Ai, who could stop him? It’s in his nature to be at the front and show the way. Now, we can’t have you hanging about on the threshold, so come in and sit down.”

  The woman’s concern for his comfort was sincere, and Yunmo didn’t know how to refuse. The feeling that surged up inside him as he stooped to enter the “inner room” would end up leaving just as great an impression as the snake had.

  As though stepping into a Chinese house, Yunmo didn’t remove his shoes before entering. The room in which he found himself was long and narrow, like the interior of a cave. A kind of mat woven from cherry bark covered the floor, and small logs of some dark wood were arranged along the back wall. Yunmo frowned, then after a pause realized that they were wooden pillows. He couldn’t help being struck by the fact that the backpacks hung on both walls were clustered so tightly together the walls themselves were almost invisible. Those backpacks, clearly all each person had by way of a wardrobe or clothes chest to hold sundry essentials—in other words, the sum total of the person’s “household”—were doubly striking because of their differences in color and size.

  The hatch leading to the “outer room,” which seemed to function as the kitchen-cum-women’s quarters, was covered by a white cloth spattered with soy sauce. The strong smell of stale smoke hung in the room, mixed with that of the sweat of men.

  Yunmo still didn’t remove his shoes as he perched sideways on the sill of the floor, his legs tucked up to one side. Idly, he wondered which of the wooden pillows and which of the variously colored backpacks belonged to Ko Inshik. But no, surely his possessions would not be here. How could they be in such a place as this, completely open to the elements, in truth little better than some Stone Age dwelling? In the winter, the winds from Siberia would howl through this room, while in summer the air hung thick and stifling, heavy with the scent of pollen from the south.

  Yunmo got up and left the room before he’d even smoked a single cigarette. The heat might be even more fierce outside, but he would still rather not be inside that house.

  Not until the ball of fire that was the August sun sank behind the line of trees to the west did those who had gone out to gather plants return, trickling down from the mountain in ones and twos. Yunmo, who had been wandering here and there among the dwellings, met Ko Inshik on his return from the top of the cornfield, where the golden ears were ripening well. Inshik was carrying a gunnysack of edible mountain plants. He appeared already to be familiar with Yunmo through Song, as he held out his hand to shake as soon as the reporter had finished introducing himself. But Inshik’s hand had lost the soft whiteness of the light-industries office worker he had been; nor was it the hand of a chief technician at the soybean factory. Already, that hand was as gnarled as a tree root, knuckles protruding, splotched with blood clots.

  Once Inshik had let Yunmo’s hand drop, he removed his thick glasses and began to polish them on the loose front of his overalls, which appeared to be a habit. In that moment, Yunmo’s gaze fell on a red copper wire threaded through one of the older man’s buttons, holding it in place. The wire was awfully thick; perhaps he had not been able to find anything finer.

  In the future, when his thoughts would turn back to Ko Inshik, the very first thing that would spring to mind would be the copper wire that served as thread for that button.

  “Let me help carry that,” Yunmo said, once Inshik had put his glasses back on and shouldered his gunnysack.

  “All right,” Inshik conceded. Yunmo held up one corner of the sack and walked with deliberately slow steps, remarking on this and that.

  Yunmo had to chatter on for some time to elicit even a single remark from Inshik. He truly was a man of few words, just as Song had said. Only now, it seemed the eyes that had once done much of his talking had lost their ability to smile. Yunmo was impatient. Still, he knew from experience that this was the kind of background digging that needed a firm yet delicate touch, like breaking off a branch from a still-green tree.

  This was all the truer in this particular case, as here he was trying to get information from someone who had spent the whole day toiling in the blazing heat. The task of getting down to essentials would have to be left until after Inshik had got some food inside him. But during the meal, too, Yunmo’s efforts came to nothing. When afterward Inshik lay down with his head on his wooden pillow, it looked as if he might become moderately responsive, but very soon the sum total of his contribution was a barrage of deafening snores.

  Yunmo couldn’t get a wink of sleep the whole night. The problem wasn’t only the chorus of snores, the wheezing, and the snuffling. Though the door had been left open, the air in the room was turbid and stifling, enough to make your head swim. This was only to be expected, of course, with thirty-odd men crammed into the low, narrow room. The grinding of teeth, the exhausted sleep-muttering … Now and then Inshik would toss and turn, groaning as though being stretched on the rack, then swiftly fall back into his steady snoring. Though Yunmo tried every position he could think off, sleep constantly eluded him, and a dizzying phantom haunted his mind.

  This must be a first for you, Mr. Reporter, but we’re all used to such things here. The woman’s voice rang in his ears, and he even fancied he could feel the snake coiling around his ankle.

  An owl hooted somewhere close at hand, as though it were crying somewhere beneath the eaves. Eventually, Yunmo had to get up and go outside. There, the irritating whine of the grasshoppers agitated the moonlit scene.

  Yunmo strolled where his feet would take him. He wandered through trees and tall grass until his whole body was damp with dew, and then, at the bottom of the potato field, he came in sight of the spring. The brilliant white of the crescent moon floated on the water’s quivering surface. It occurred to Yunmo that this must be the spring where Inshik said he saw the faces of his children every morning and evening. But surely not only his children’s faces? Each of those same mornings and evenings, the face of his wife must appear to him too, the woman who had begged him to work hard for the sake of their children, to work his way back to his former position!

  Yunmo sat absentmindedly by the spring until his surroundings brightened with the advancing dawn. By chance, the first of the men to appear at the stream was Inshik, carrying his toothbrush in his mouth. It was clear from the look on his face how sorry he was that Yunmo’s sleep had been disturbed. Was the reporter up so early because the hut had been too uncomfortable for him?

  “How could I be uncomfortable?” Yunmo answered brightly. “The air is so clean and refreshing here.” And his happiness wasn’t feigned; this opportunity for a quiet conversation with Inshik made up for his restless night. After all, for what reason had he struggled a hundred ri up that mountain path only the day before, other than to see for himself how the men lived and worked in this place? To see what Inshik’s strenuous efforts were all in aid of: to solve the bean paste problem for the area’s inhabitants or simply to obtain a private perk? The ultimate goal of Yunmo’s research had been to confirm the true character of this man Ko Inshik. So far, though, Yunmo had been thwarted at every turn.

  Putting it off until some later time was not an option. It was always difficult to rock the boat, but he needed to just go for it, and there was no time like the present. Inshik had already finished brushing his teeth, and had moved on to washing his face, splashing himself with the water bubbling up from the spring.

  Yunmo went straight over, sat down next to him, and plunged both hands into the water.

  “Ah—it’s cold!” He deliberately exaggerated his astonishment, and Inshik turned to him. “How is it, the water here? It’s much colder than in the main river, no?”

  “Yes, and much clearer.” Puffing a few times as though to
supplement this plain, straightforward answer, Inshik stood up and pulled a small towel from his waistband.

  Yunmo instantly buttoned his lips, then, realizing that Inshik was not in fact about to speak, undid them again.

  “Living here like this, do you think about the time when you worked in Pyongyang?” Yunmo made sure to ask this with a cheerful, almost amused tone, pulling out his handkerchief as he followed Inshik away from the spring.

  “I don’t have time for that. I’m new to agriculture, so I’ve a lot to learn. That’s the only thing I’ve got on my mind.”

  “Of course. You’re busy solving the town’s bean paste problem.”

  “No, that’s not what I said….”

  “According to Dr. Song, when you came here, Comrade Chief Technician, well, ha … the chief secretary even said something about a perk…. Do you never think about that either?”

  Yunmo left the question hanging and cast a sideways glance at Inshik, wondering whether this had been overly direct. But the mild expression on the older man’s face showed no change whatsoever.

  “Song’s talking nonsense….”

  “No, but it wasn’t his fault. I’m the one to blame. Since whatever the business, in front of a reporter there’s no way not to spill the beans.”

  “There are no beans to spill. Even I’m not a machine that knows nothing but work; why wouldn’t I want to receive a perk and be restored to my old position? But the work I’m doing here isn’t sufficient to warrant that.”

  Silence spun out between the two men, as the dawn breeze brought the scent of flowers in full bloom. Yunmo’s face flushed as he compared Inshik’s answer, which had flowed out as easily as water from a tap, with the question he’d had such difficulty formulating. That the man in front of him was capable of dissembling, of hypocrisy, was not even in the realm of possibility. If the sincerity with which Inshik devoted himself to his work were to spring from some kind of selfish motive, his hands would not have become the tough, clawed hooks they were today, and the hinge of his front gate would not have made his young children cry.