When I arrived near homesteads the dogs were more vicious than the cold. Every time I approached the gate of a farmhouse, a dog would greet me with a growl, lips curled back to bare its teeth. As I plucked up the courage to knock on a front door, the dogs of the village shouted to their masters, ‘Here is the murderer you’re looking for!’
I wandered the neighbouring village for more than hour, realising that Young-min had been naïve to think that he or I would be let into a home more readily on account of being a single stranger instead of one of a pair. I remembered Chang-yong, who had brought us dumplings while we hid in the mountains; Mr Shin, who had given us 100 yuan and called it mere ‘pocket money’; and the old man at Longjing, who had fed us rice when all we asked for was water to wash our faces. While I was immensely grateful for their kindness, I despaired that I would not meet with such good luck again. With a new sense of urgency, I decided to turn around and set off back towards the village with the tree under which we’d promised to meet.
Although I noticed a few stables on the way, I wasn’t brave enough to spend the night outdoors on my own. If we had to spend another night under the freezing sky, I reasoned that it would be more comforting for us to do so together. I hoped that Young-min had come to the same conclusion and would be waiting for me beneath the tree. Even if he hadn’t managed to find shelter, he might have found some food to surprise me with.
But when I arrived under the tree, Young-min wasn’t there. Perhaps he had been fortunate enough to find a warm room for the night. As the darkness deepened, I had no choice but to spend the night alone, that tree my only companion. It was unbearably cold. Huddled beneath the tree, I counted the seconds out loud and waited for sunrise. As the winds changed, I shuffled round the tree to find better shelter. Icy tears trickled down my cheeks.
As blue gradually seeped through the night sky and morning approached, my vigil became more desperate. I endured the cold by mumbling Young-min’s name over and over again, blowing on my hands with my breath. Yet long after the allotted time had passed, Young-min did not appear. When heavy snow began to fall from milky clouds, I could not bear the cold any longer. I stumbled into a small building not far from the tree. It contained some machinery connected to a pipe that seemed to disappear beneath the hills, and I guessed that the building housed a pump.
Wind buffeted into the pump house through the small glassless windows, but I was grateful that my clothes remained dry and free from melting snow. This comfort was momentary, however, as the space was cold as a tomb, its four walls like sheets of ice. When I decided I could not stand the cold any longer, I ran back outside. Sitting under the tree once more, I actually felt warmer, but my whole body was shaking. I bit my lips to keep my mouth shut, but my teeth clattered and I was unable to stop them.
More frightening than the cold was the thought of another night spent alone and in the open. I looked up at the sky, in the fear that it might be turning dark again soon. Suddenly, that wide sky shook as I teetered on the verge of collapse. I had to throw up although there was nothing in my stomach. When I sat down, I felt that my body was sinking further into the ground; and when I stood up, it seemed to sway from side to side as if I were on a swing.
As hard as I tried to decide on my next move, my brain would not focus on the decision. Despite my determination to gather my thoughts, my mind remained blank. The thought of not having eaten for several days was too painful to consider, until I was possessed by a sudden desire to find a stable and chew on hay. When I became conscious of this strange impulse, one of my poems floated into my mind. It was based on a story told to me by a beggar girl back home in North Korea. I was walking in Pyongyang when I saw her on the street. I knew that there was a food stall not too far away, so I asked what she most wanted to eat, something that she might share with her siblings. As we walked to the stall, she sobbed and told me her story.
THE MOST DELICIOUS THING IN THE WORLD
Three months ago, my brother said
The most delicious thing in the world
Was a warm corncob;
Two months ago, my brother said
The most delicious thing in the world
Was a roasted grasshopper;
One month ago, my brother said
The most delicious thing in the world
Was the dream he ate last night.
If my brother were alive today
What would he say this month, and next,
was The most delicious thing in the world?
When I wrote that poem, I had my table lamp switched off and I was crying. Even if I couldn’t see it with my own eyes, the terror in the child’s eyes and her hopes were too pitiful to face as words on the page. I hated the reality of hunger for that girl and her brother, and I had felt ashamed of myself. But when I came to find myself in the state of the poem’s protagonist, it wasn’t emotional in the way it had been when I had written it. It was distant and impotent. It seemed that my senses, once attuned to the faintest sound of rustling leaves, had shrivelled and been shattered by the cold winds. There was no poetry in hunger. North Korea was a nation without poetry. With only these last thoughts remaining, my body felt even heavier. I sat down in exhaustion and stared blankly at the sky.
An old woman passed by and startled me. ‘If you’ve crossed over from North Korea, don’t stay around here,’ she said. ‘Yesterday, the authorities swept through this village.’
It took me a while to comprehend her words, because my dulled senses were wandering aimlessly in the narrow confines of desperation. As I struggled to gather my mind into focus, one word stood out. Yesterday – wasn’t that the night Young-min had stayed in this village? Had he been caught? Yet the old woman made no mention of anyone being arrested. Young-min would have fled without a single glance behind him. Maybe he had run too far, become lost, and was looking for a way back. Or perhaps he had gone to find Mr Shin. Yanji city centre was not too far from here.
I decided that I had to call Mr Shin as he was the only point of contact we shared. In some corner of my mind there was a nagging suggestion that I knew something relevant. To awaken my senses, I bit my tongue. Out of the throbbing pain, an image gradually formed in my mind: the house of the old man at Longjing, who not only gave us water to wash our faces, but a meal as well. He would surely help me one more time.
I hurriedly tried to raise myself from the ground, anxious to arrive at the old man’s house before dark. But I took a step before I was able to balance myself and fell forward. My legs were unstable, and my feet were no longer under my control. When I picked myself up again, my legs swayed as if trying to hold up the heavens. The distance between each of my steps wasn’t measured by my will. Whether it was because of the dark of night, or because the earth’s gravity had lost its grip, it felt at times like I was sprinting, at others like I was walking on the spot.
In spite of my worries during that three-hour walk, I was able to find the old man’s house without much difficulty. Driven by the belief that I had to knock on his door before he turned in for the night, I staggered to the doorway, where I collapsed in exhaustion.
‘Sir!’ My hands, pounding on the hard, thick plank at the base of the door, had no feeling left in them.
From somewhere inside the house, a small chime sounded. When the old man came to the door and found me on the ground, he bent down to lift me up and support me into his home. It felt like an embrace.
‘Your friend? Where is the young man you were with?’ the old man asked.
‘We lost each other,’ I said, as I crawled nearer the kitchen fire where there would be warmth. I couldn’t feel the heat at first, but gradually, it rushed at me. Then I could feel the current of my blood, flowing through veins thinned by the cold, as it rushed all the way to the ends of my toes. Seeing my state, the old man understood there was nothing more to ask, and went into the kitchen. He returned with a bowl heaped with rice, a plate of picked cabbage and five boiled potatoes. As the old man turned round to fe
tch me a spoon, I said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ to his back, but perhaps there was nothing left in me, for no sound emerged.
He watched as I ate, shovelling spoonful after spoonful of rice into my mouth. He smoked one cigarette after another. As I ate, I could not say a word. It was not because I was rushing to sate my hunger after eating nothing for days, but because of my streaming tears. I was so grateful for the old man’s kindness, but tears were my only expression.
‘There are potatoes aplenty here,’ he said. ‘Tell me if you want some more. It would have been nice to see your friend again.’
At those words, I suddenly regained my senses. ‘Sir, please may I use your phone to make a call? There’s somebody whose number both my friend and I know. I want to ask him about my friend’s whereabouts.’
He nodded and showed me his landline. It was an old-fashioned rotary phone, and the numbers were worn with use. Too hasty in dialling the numbers, I had to start again. I pressed the receiver tight against my ear, hoping and hoping I would hear Young-min’s voice at the other end instead of Mr Shin’s. But from the other end, all I could hear was Chinese. The old man listened for a moment and told me that the phone had been switched off. Over the next hour, I told the old man what had happened since we’d left his house. Then I tried to call again. There was only the same recorded message.
When the old man heard that the men at the church in Yanji had attempted to report us to the authorities, he became furious, as if it was he himself who had been insulted. He was extremely apologetic and said it had been his fault to make the recommendation. We sat in silence. He had lived on his own for some years now. He pointed to a picture of his wife on the wall, and the old photograph showed a smiling woman in her mid-fifties. Below that there was a small television set and the rotary telephone. In the small room beyond, through the open sliding door, I could see traditional wooden furniture and a sewing machine. Just as the old man had told me, his home hadn’t changed since his wife died.
‘Stay at my place until you can contact your friend,’ he offered. ‘In fact, just as you made your way here, he might find his way here too. Then you can be together again.’
‘Thank you. I’m sure we will find each other in the next day or so. Until then, please let me help you around the house. Ask anything of me.’
The next day, I tried Mr Shin’s number again as soon as I woke up. To my great relief, I could hear a ringing tone instead of the recorded message.
Mr Shin picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello, it’s me. I’m calling you because I lost Young-min.’
‘Make it quick,’ he replied. ‘Where are you now?’
I didn’t understand why Mr Shin was speaking in such an urgent tone. ‘I’m in Longjing. Do you know if—?’
He cut me short. ‘Listen to me now. You have to leave there at once.’
‘Why? Has something happened to Young-min?’
‘Trust me, you have to get out of there. If you’re at that house you went to with Young-min, hang up and call me from somewhere else.’
I said, ‘I can’t call you from anywhere else, and I don’t have any coins. Please, tell me what happened. I need to know before I try to make my way alone.’
Mr Shin explained: ‘Young-min came to me two mornings ago. It must have been several hours after you’d both parted. The authorities suddenly arrived and began to search the village, so he had to run. He came all the way here to Yanji, and do you know what he said to me? You won’t believe it. He asked me to take him to his cousin’s house!’
I replied, ‘So, you said no, right? Where’s that stupid boy now?’
He said, ‘I had to take him back to my place, because he said you would call my number. At my flat, he kept demanding that I take him to his cousin’s house. In the end, I was able to make contact with Young-min’s uncle through my friend who works at the local broadcasting station.
‘The uncle was much more sympathetic than the cousin, perhaps because he’s a closer blood relative. He said his nephew would never murder anyone, and that he really wanted to see Young-min.
‘When Young-min heard the news, he left the house and didn’t come home even when it’d turned dark. Then yesterday, around four in the afternoon, I received a call from Uncle Chang-yong’s wife. She said that the authorities had come and taken Chang-yong away, claiming that you two had just been arrested.
‘That got me scared, so I turned my phone off and packed. We’re ready to move. I switched the phone back on briefly this morning and that’s when you called. You’ve got to get out of there. If Young-min really has been arrested, it’s only a matter of time before they work out where you are.’
My hands were clammy with sweat when I put the receiver down. I was sure that the door would swing open at any moment, and that soldiers would come rushing in, just as I had feared when Young-min and I were hiding together.
The rays of morning sun that pierced the windows looked as sharp as silver blades. Where could I go from here? I had no money and the snow outside came up to my ankles. There was no way I could survive away from the village. For a fleeting moment, I was too frightened even to open my eyes, and I thought that surrender was the best option. I opened my eyes when a thought occurred to me – Chang-yong had received $700 from us. I had given that amount to him not merely to transport us a couple of miles, but because I had mistakenly believed that the road to South Korea would be easy after coming into town. Of course, it was embarrassing to ask for the return of money I had already given someone, but what did that matter in my current situation?
First, I called Mr Shin to find out Chang-yong’s phone number. When his wife answered, I said, ‘Hello. Is Chang-yong home yet?’
At first, Chang-yong’s wife, in a terrified voice, asked who I was. When I explained that I was the one who had given him the $700, she began to complain, almost in tears. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked. ‘The officers said he’d be back home by morning, but he’s still not home. If you’re going to escape, you should have gone far away from here! Why on earth have you been sitting round in Yanji?’
I asked, ‘Did the officers really say that my friend had been arrested too?’
‘That’s what they said yesterday. Why would they drag away my poor husband without any evidence? It’s all right if they interrogate him, but if they fine him, we’re ruined! They’ll ask us to pay back twenty times the amount we received, and we’ll be left out on the streets with nothing!’
I wanted to curse at her. So preoccupied was she with the fine she might have to pay that she’d volunteered not a single word of concern for my friend, whose life was in jeopardy. As I struggled to compose myself, I realised that I had an excuse to sink as low as I needed to resort to blackmail for survival. ‘Hey, listen to me,’ I told her. ‘My friend doesn’t know that I gave your husband any money, because I was the one who gave it to him. So you don’t need to worry. But if I were to be caught, I can’t guarantee that I’ll keep my mouth shut. So that I can escape far away, promise Mr Shin that you will give him $100. Tell him you will transfer the money to him right away.’
She didn’t hesitate for a second and promised to do as I’d asked there and then. When I checked three times that she would keep her word, she said she would swear by her entire family wealth, which consisted of two oxen. That was enough.
‘Sir, I’ll come back to repay you if I make it to South Korea,’ I said to the old man as he walked me all the way to the road out of the village. Then I put my sunglasses back on.
A few hours later, I met Mr Shin at Yanji Station. He took out 800 yuan, the equivalent of about US$120, and handed it to me. I wasn’t sure how much two oxen were worth, but Chang-yong’s wife had kept her word. He looked at me awkwardly as he said, ‘I know my uncle and his wife very well. She’s not the kind of woman to just hand over a large sum of money like this. You know, I was born with a knack for getting hunches right. I’m sure you’ll make it to South Korea.’
I put 400 y
uan in my pocket and placed the rest of the money back in Mr Shin’s hand. I said, ‘If Young-min comes to find you, please deliver this money to him. And please, keep your phone switched on!’
I got on a bus to Shenyang and collapsed onto the furthest seat at the back. The bus was half-full, but most of the passengers were sitting near the front. So much had happened in such a short time. I wanted to close my eyes and rest my mind for just a few minutes, but everything I had seen and heard in the past few days rushed into my head. Young-min’s face was the strongest image, and it took me completely by surprise. Why was I planning to run away when my friend had been captured? We had crossed the river together with a resolve to kill ourselves if we faced repatriation. What had gone wrong? Why was Young-min so set on going to his cousin’s house, when he knew it was surrounded?
I went over everything Mr Shin had told me from the very beginning. Chang-yong had been taken by the authorities, who claimed that the pair of us had already been arrested. They’d said that he would be returned home after a night of questioning. But they had made no demands for the fine Chang-yong needed to pay, although there would have been no stronger grounds for his arrest than their knowledge about the money. In fact, Chang-yong’s wife had returned $100 to me so as to send the secret of the other six hundred far away from her and her husband. And I was sure that Young-min would not have been so reckless as to go to his cousin’s house. He would have first kept watch on the house from afar – he had that sort of introverted patience.
Out of the bus window, I could see enormous fields and large heaps of grain piled here and there. As we passed each one, I repeated to myself how everything would turn out well, and how we would be reunited. When the bus crossed a wide river, I stopped repeating my prayer and experienced a moment of relief. I looked up at the blue sky, where there was the silhouette of a bird. Seeing the speck, I dearly wished for a bird’s eye view and a bird’s heart too, so that I might look down on the earth and all its trivial suffering with indifferent contempt, and soar on through the air.
Dear Leader Page 23