by D. B. John
The panorama of hard faces was arrayed before the Americans. No greeting had been offered, no smile. The silence began to fester. The governor’s mouth opened in confusion. It was obvious he had expected a word of welcome.
Directly behind her Stevens breathed, “Those Cold War talks with the USSR? Swingers’ parties compared with this …”
Unperturbed, the governor smiled genially, took out his speech, and put on his glasses. He was no stranger to an audience in need of a warm-up. But just as he did so, Colonel Cho laid his own speech on the table. In a ringing voice he began reading. Even weirder, the speech had been printed in a newspaper, in what seemed to be the lead editorial of the Rodong Sinmun.
Leaning in close to the governor’s ear, Jenna translated the hectoring prose—Yankee unjust blockade of Korea a barrier to peace! The only path for flunkyist nation-sellers is destruction! The governor pursed his lips and nodded his head, listening with understanding for the first minutes, taking out his pen and jotting down the odd note, but his expression turned to mounting bewilderment as Colonel Cho turned a page and his voice rose a notch to condemn Yankee venality and moral vacuity until, after some twenty minutes had elapsed and the speech gave no sign of reaching a point or drawing to a close, the governor raised a hand and waved in a high, exasperated movement, signaling for Cho to stop.
Cho looked up.
“Sir, I’m an old man. I fear I don’t have time for this, because I might be dead before you get to the end of that piece.”
Jenna translated. Another silence followed, as all eyes looked from her back to the governor.
Then the man to Cho’s right reacted. He wore thick, steel-rimmed glasses that gave him fish eyes, and a plain brown tunic without insignia. He gave a deep, slow laugh, and Jenna understood what had seemed ambiguous about the whole scene. The dynamic was wrong. Cho was a mouthpiece. This man laughing was the power in the room. The others took his cue and began laughing with gusto, male laughter filling the hall. But Colonel Cho’s expression remained somber. For the briefest moment his eyes met hers before settling on his own reflection in the polished wood of the table. As the mirth continued and grew louder she heard its underbrush of cruelty, as if this wispy-haired old man, the governor, was their enemy’s strength incarnate.
Later, the governor and his aide were led away to their lodgings at a state guesthouse—“Easier to bug our conversation,” he muttered—and the other members of the mission were installed in rooms on the thirty-first floor of the Yanggakdo International Hotel for foreigners, with a view across the Taedong River to the city. The hotel was situated on an island in the river, the only bridge to which was watched. There was no chance of slipping away unobserved and unaccompanied. Minders and guides would be at their side the moment they left the lobby doors, and informers among the hotel staff and drivers would be watching their every move. Their rooms afforded the only privacy, but Jenna felt unsure even about that, and slotted the chain on her door.
She stood at the window for a long time, listening to the chug of a rusted barge dredging shale from the riverbed and the sirens rising and falling, as if the city was readying for an attack. A dark skyline of towers extended to a horizon of ghostly hills. No color or light from commerce; no buzz or bustle, just bare lights glowing in uncurtained apartments, a forest of concrete.
The governor’s exasperation at the meeting had resulted in a minor American victory. The man who’d started the laughter, whom they learned was the First Deputy Minister, had signaled for Colonel Cho to put away the speech. For half an hour their exchange across the table was almost a normal discussion, until the governor, opening the brief Jenna had written for him, and holding up a pin-sharp satellite photo, cited the secret laboratory complex as a grave security concern. The First Deputy Minister appeared mystified, then an aide whispered in his ear and the atmosphere in the room changed in an instant. No one speaks of the camps, Jenna thought, seeing the faces before her turn cold once again. It was as if some secret line had been crossed. Too bad. She would make sure the matter was raised again at the banquet.
The sirens hadn’t stopped and were starting to unnerve her. She turned on the ancient Toshiba television set to mask the noise. Preschool children wearing makeup and pulling exaggerated faces of joy were performing a little dance, putting their hands in the air and singing, “Let us reap a richer bean harvest …”
Cho had sat out the rest of the meeting in silence. Something had happened to him since New York. He’d met her eyes only for a second, and in them she’d perceived not conceit but something altogether unexpected, something vulnerable. She’d seen sorrow and shame and regret. She was sure of it. It seemed borne out by his taking no part in his comrades’ laughter. A word alone with him had been impossible. That left only this evening’s banquet …
She hung up her clothes and lay down on the bed. She was exhausted. Within minutes she had fallen asleep to the children’s singing, drifting into a restless, shifting dream in which the television set was watching her, the door handle to her room turned, and the chain on the door rattled.
34
Hyesan Train Station
Ryanggang Province, North Korea
It was midday exactly on the station clock. Mrs. Kwon heard it first. Then all the women heard it, and looked up from their mats. It was coming from the far side of the city, a cry like the wind catching the eaves of houses during a storm, or the howls of bad spirits in the mountains. As it drew nearer they discerned the sound of many whistles blowing.
The market stopped to listen.
Suddenly they saw Shovel-face, without Sergeant Jang, running toward them down the aisle, holding on to the visor of his cap. His face was plum red. He signaled for them to gather round.
“If any of you ladies have illegal phones—get rid of them now. And you didn’t hear this from me.”
The whistles rose again, many together, and were now joined by the wail of the air-raid sirens. The women turned in the direction of the sound, alarm bright in their eyes.
“What’s happening?” Mrs. Yang said, but Shovel-face had gone.
“We’re at war,” Mrs. Kim gasped, covering her mouth with her mittens.
Mrs. Moon sat listening from her mat. This is what had been building all morning. It had made the atmosphere as tense as a drum. The electricity was still out. Without the covering noises of the loudspeaker or the trains, the whistles’ notes seemed to gather and fall in ghostly waves of sound.
Then her attention was drawn by a squeaking sound in the square outside the station. She squinted, and through the fence saw a long red object moving into her line of vision. A teenage troop leader was directing a group of Socialist Youth as they pushed an enormous placard supported on wheels, rolling it into position in front of the Party Bureau. In letters a meter high it read LET US DEFEND COMRADE KIM JONG-IL WITH OUR LIVES!
From the opposite side of the square came the growl of an engine—an army truck moving fast. It lurched as its brakes screeched to a stop, and troops jumped out of the back. They began pulling out more placards from the truck. Their officer was shouting, pointing to positions around the square where the placards were to be affixed.
The whistles sounded again, like screams, and closer now. High keening notes behind a violent hammering of nails into walls.
The first placard was up, and a black dread crept over Mrs. Moon. The letters were daubed hastily in white paint.
DEATH BY FIRING SQUAD TO THOSE WHO SPREAD RUMORS!
The air filled with hammering. Customers seated in the market’s two canteens stopped eating and stared, as if witnessing someone being clubbed to death. A second placard was up, then a third and a fourth.
DEATH BY FIRING SQUAD TO THOSE WHO SPREAD FOREIGN CULTURE!
DEATH BY FIRING SQUAD TO THOSE WHO ORGANIZE ILLEGAL GATHERINGS!
DEATH BY FIRING SQUAD TO THOSE WHO ABANDON SOCIALISM!
Without a word the women gathered their goods together and started packing up. Mrs. Moon lo
oked about for Kyu. She’d feel safer with him, and he would know what was going on. The hard-currency store opposite the Party building was evicting its patrons; the state beauty parlor had already emptied; the pharmacy had closed.
“A maximum sum of one hundred thousand won,” said an iron voice from the loudspeaker.
The volume was explosive, almost rupturing her ears. The current was back. The station lights came on. The city was reeling, not knowing if it was day or night. The drone from the loudspeaker was loud and even. “I repeat: within two days, up to a maximum of one hundred thousand …”
The women froze.
They listened through to the end of the announcement.
“All schools and universities are closed until further notice; all cell phones and memory sticks must be handed without delay to representatives of the Ministry of State Security …”
On tenterhooks, the women were staring at the floor, waiting for the announcement to repeat from the beginning.
The news swung through the market like a wrecking ball.
“A new, more valuable currency is being issued. The new won is worth one thousand old won. All citizens have two days to exchange the old banknotes for the new ones, up to a maximum of one hundred thousand won. I repeat …”
The stillness was like the aftermath of an explosion. As the smoke cleared, devastation stared them in the face.
The state was wiping out what was left of their savings.
Mrs. Kwon sat down on her haunches like a peasant and began wailing with her hands covering her face; others continued to concentrate, listening to the announcement again, stupefied, as if they’d misheard, or its words might change.
All their enterprise, all their long hours, all their hard work.
For minutes they were lost in thought. Then Mrs. Lee gesticulated angrily at the loudspeaker. “All I have left is in won,” she shouted, and dismay turned to anger like damp firewood beginning to catch. The scale of this disaster was sinking in. A moment later, all of them were talking across each other. How much had they saved in won? How much in secure, hard currencies—yuan, dollars, euros?
“Why are they doing this?” Mrs. Yang shrieked.
She’d questioned the unquestionable, but no one appeared shocked. Her words seemed only to stoke the anger spreading through the market.
Because to trade is be free, Mrs. Moon thought, and looked down into her lap.
The whistles rose again in unison, a background noise now to the hubbub of angry voices.
A young man holding an infant boy in his arms came hurrying down the aisle. He was approaching the traders who sold clothing; each of them shook their heads. He reached the women at the end near the bridge and pleaded. “Please, I’ve been saving to buy my son a coat.” With his free hand he was holding out a wad of soon-to-be-worthless won.
His words seemed to trip a switch, and the febrile mood of the market changed again. Panic followed him down the aisle, like leaves stirred up by a sudden breeze. Now panic gripped the women around Mrs. Moon, and panic spread to the customers. Within seconds the market was in uproar. Everyone was trying to spend their won on anything they could resell.
“A day of ill fortune, ajumma.” Kyu had materialized beside her.
Without hesitating she pushed a grubby bundle of won into his hands—all she had.
“Buy anything that can be resold,” she said. “Hurry. Go.”
She slumped down onto a pile of rice sacks, dropping her head into her hand, ignoring the shouting and arguments she could hear breaking out around her. She felt as if she were sitting on the shore of a flat dark body of water that stretched on and on, cold, and forever. For a long time, years perhaps, she had distracted herself from it, ignored it. Now she faced it, and accepted it. It would always be there. It would never change. There is no future, she thought. The melody she half recalled played through some door in her memory that opened onto long ago, and her vision became misted and blurred.
A lamb goes uncomplaining forth, the guilt of all men bearing …
It brought with it an image of a young woman in a beautiful hanbok dress, sitting amid petals in the dappled shade of a cherry blossom tree. Her singing was sweet and lovely and full of hope. Her mother, long dead. Mrs. Moon pulled two of the rice sacks toward her, hugging them to her chest, resting her head on top of them. Her baby sons, only thirteen months between them. How they’d cried and gurgled, how healthy they’d been, how noisy with life. Lost to her, like everything else.
When Kyu returned the sky was fading to gold, with fiery red clouds near the mountaintops. He dropped a weighted cloth bag to the ground. He was dirty, with wipe marks round his eyes, and had a tear in his coat. He sat next to her on her mat without a word, took out a wrap of bingdu and his pipe, and performed his ritual with his thin fingers. He didn’t need to tell her. The noise of the battlefield had raged all around her. Fighting had broken out as people outbid each other to buy anything they could resell. With one finger she lifted the rim of the bag. He’d managed to buy a stuffed toy bear, a used sweatshirt, and a pig’s head. He’d spent two thousand won on goods that would have cost a few hundred this morning. The three bills he had left he gave back to her.
He exhaled the ice-white smoke, and offered her the pipe.
She looked at it. In his small hand it shone like a sacred object. With a sense of ceremony she put it to her lips and inhaled. The drug didn’t burn her throat or make her cough. It was smooth and clean, more like mist than smoke. Her brow relaxed, and moments later she cared even less about everything. She turned to Kyu and put her arm around him. His smoked-glass eyes regarded her, full of knowledge, then he rested his head on her shoulder.
“What’s your family name?” She had never thought to ask him.
“Don’t remember.”
“Don’t remember? Your name’s just ‘Kyu’?” That wasn’t right. Everyone had a family name. A person was nothing without family. “Take mine,” she said.
He smiled shyly as if given a gift of rare and great value. “Moon,” he said.
The whistles and sirens were background music now. They’d lost their power to scare her. She took another puff of bingdu. Kyu was right. It took away pain. It took away fear, and worry.
She was seeing people drifting into the square outside the station, knotting into groups, talking in front of the Party building, oblivious to the sirens. The voice from the loudspeaker continued its steady martial bleat.
“By order of the Ministry of State Security, a city-wide curfew will begin at sundown. Any citizens at large in the streets after sundown will face arrest …”
The last rays of the sun were illuminating the underside of the clouds a deep crimson, but the numbers of people in the square seemed to be doubling and trebling. The bingdu was making her see things that weren’t there. A growing crowd that was unafraid.
Then she noticed Kyu’s face, too, transfixed by the sight, and the women leaving the market and heading into the square as if pulled by an invisible string.
Mrs. Moon stood straight up. She wasn’t imagining it. The crowd was growing.
Holding Kyu’s hand she entered the square. Some faces she recognized—merchants and vendors who knew her—but they were being joined by a multiplying number of other citizens. The whole city seemed to be gathering, drawn out of their factories and apartments, drawn by the gravitational pull of whatever this was. The tension she’d felt all morning had broken. That had felt like a kind of static, but this was something else. She couldn’t explain it. It was a force, a magnetism. Someone carried the yontan brazier from the market into the square, placing it right in front of the Party building, and people gathered around it, blowing into their hands to keep their circulation moving.
When four, five army trucks with their yellow headlights on full beam arrived in a convoy the crowd watched in silence. Rather than scurry away their numbers were continuing to grow. People were disregarding caution; faces were tense with anticipation. Troops jumped
out of the trucks, dozens of them, but faced with an unexpected and very large crowd their whistles fell silent. The standoff lasted a few moments until the cordon of troops parted to allow a captain through. He walked to the yontan brazier at the center of the square, looking left and right, shoving people out of the way.
All eyes in the square were on him.
“What’s going on here?” he shouted. “Have you no respect for our Party Bureau? A curfew is about to start and you’re hanging around like riffraff?” No one in the crowd moved. “This is what happens when the poison of capitalism spreads. Disorder. Disrespect. Selfishness. And since I see so many capitalists here …” He tipped his hat sardonically toward Grandma Whiskey. “… you may as well hear this now: from tomorrow morning the station market will open for three hours only, from eight to eleven …”
“Why?” said a voice.
The captain stepped away from the fire. His hand went to his gun holster, his face suddenly blank with astonishment.
“Who speaks back to me?”
Mrs. Moon stepped through the throng of people to the firelight and stood squarely opposite him on the other side of the brazier.
“How dare you question me.” He was glaring at her, breathing deeply. “You ask me why—I’ll tell you why!” He looked about, to address the multitude, and a slight apprehension came into his voice, at the growing audience of faces. “From now on, prices for food, fuel, and clothing will be set by the government …”
From all over the crowd voices exclaimed in anger.
“The government doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing.” The voice sounded like Mrs. Lee’s.
“The ration system will be working again tomorrow, will it?” The sarcasm was Mrs. Kwon’s.