Star of the North

by D. B. John

  Then he ran, wading across crisp snow, into the woods.

  It was darker beneath the pines where the snow had not penetrated. He kept moving, swiping branches aside, weaving between trees, downhill toward the railroad.

  This was the track that carried coal from Camp 22 to a destination he guessed was Hoeryong, about ten kilometers to the north. He’d seen it from the summit, the small city on the banks of the Tumen River, the border with China. He’d be lucky to make it there by evening. How long had he been asleep? From the sky it looked like midafternoon, and darkening. What a fool he’d been! That farmer or his dog would find his tracks and alert the Bowibu before he’d covered two kilometers. His escape window had radically narrowed.

  Cho heard distant dogs barking behind him and felt an electrifying surge of adrenalin. He began to run, tripping and falling on the sleepers and loose chippings.

  Hoeryong was in darkness except for a few sparse lights around the statues and monuments. He felt sure a city this size would have an informal market where he could buy what he needed. Sure enough, along the platform of the railway station he saw several dozen ajummas packing up their wares by the blue beams of pencil flashlights. A coal brazier gave off more smoke than light. He approached a woman whose head was muffled in rags. She was putting away small bottles of home-brew corn liquor and cartons of Chinese cigarettes, the Double Happiness brand.

  He said as little as possible as he made the transaction. A Pyongyang accent would advertise him like a flashing sign in these parts. She cast him only the briefest glance, but in it he saw avarice and suspicion. His stomach clenched as she examined the white pearl of bingdu in the pale glow of her flashlight, opened it, and snorted a tiny mound of it from the tip of a latch key. Moments later he was walking away with a bottle of corn liquor and ten cartons of cigarettes in a plastic bag.

  A group of railroad workers were eating hot broth at a makeshift canteen in the street outside Hoeryong Station, their faces lit by a tiny bright spark in a jar—a lamp that burned rapeseed oil. The vendor accepted three cigarettes from Cho in payment for a bowl, and he joined the men at the table. His only thought was to wolf the food down and leave. He had no documents if anyone challenged him. His best chance of escape across the river was tonight. But as he savored the broth, which had fresh noodles and stringy, marinated pork, he felt overwhelmed. This was the first real food he’d tasted in a year, and its effect was instant and humanizing. Already the animal-slave life he’d been leading seemed unreal to him, a nightmare. He looked at the faces of the railroad workers. They were blackened from oil and coal soot, but to Cho’s prison-camp eyes they seemed a picture of health, and he was reminded that he hadn’t seen his own reflection in a long time. He craned his head around and peered into the glass of a dark window in the station building behind him. Even in the dim light the sight was enough to make him gasp, and a feeling of profound pity for his destroyed body overcame him. His head was a gray skeletal bulb where his hair had fallen out in patches. A bare scalp was crisscrossed with scars from beatings. Sores and boils from starvation and lack of sunlight covered his face, his skin an old rag drawn tight over bone, which made his eyes huge and dark. It was his own face, no doubt about it, and it had changed almost as much as he had inside.

  “Where’re you from, citizen?”

  The railroad worker’s face was an unsmiling black mask. The others had stopped eating and were watching him. Suddenly he was aware of how much the farm overalls stank.

  “From Chongjin,” Cho mumbled, conscious of his accent. “I . . . have been very sick. I’ve come north to buy medicine.”

  Something softened in the man’s eyes, and Cho sensed that his answer had passed a test: people here were accustomed to visitors hoping to slip into China to buy goods impossible to obtain at home.

  “Any tobacco on you?” the man said.

  Cho took out a pack of cigarettes, and offered them around.

  “Double Happiness,” the railroad worker said appreciatively. He put the cigarette behind his ear and went back to his broth. Cho thought that was the end of the exchange, but then the man said, “The river’s too wide to cross here unnoticed, and the ice is thin. Head westward along the Musan Road until it gets narrow and frozen solid. There’s a quiet spot about six watchtowers away.”

  “If a guard stops you, offer him crackers and cigarettes,” one of his friends said.

  “And promise a gift on your way back,” said the other, lighting up. “A bottle of Maotai is very nice, or Chinese cash. Tell them you’ll only be a day or two and ask the times of their shifts.”

  Cho could not believe his luck. He bowed and thanked them, and gave them each a full packet, which they accepted. Ivory smiles in coal-soot faces. He stood and bowed again, but was distracted by movement behind him. He turned to look and his heart almost stopped.

  A figure was walking away carrying a pot and a brush. In the very window in which Cho had seen his reflection, his own face now stared back from a black-and-white flyer.

  WANTED FOR MURDER

  CHO SANG-HO

  And beneath the image of his face:

  DANGEROUS!

  REPORT ANY SIGHTING TO THE MINISTRY OF STATE SECURITY

  Murder? He felt his legs turn to paper.

  For a second he was too panicked to turn back to the men.

  Already? The Bowibu were hunting him already? Hyun must have reported him missing immediately. Cho couldn’t blame him, if it earned him an extra cup of cornmeal. He was fixated by the image, from which he felt an odd dissociation. It was the face of his previous life. Clean shaven, hair glossed back, complacent, arrogant, entitled. A photo taken from his Party file. His epaulettes were just visible at the sides.

  “Thank you, citizens.” He wished the men a good night.

  They raised their cigarettes in farewell.

  As soon as he was out of sight he began to run. Wanted for murder? Oh, my ancestors! He remembered this trick: high-ranking cadres were accused of heinous crimes if they defected, and the Chinese police were notified, too. One thing was clear: they were determined to catch him, and this realization ignited an equal and opposite determination in him. He would not be taken.

  But as he dashed down a deserted westbound road, fortified by food and rest, he forced himself to slow down. He himself had seen his own transformation. It was impossible to imagine anyone matching that photo with this face.

  At a bus station on the western edge of the city his face stared from every lamppost. He found another informal market and exchanged more of his bingdu pearls for Chinese yuan, rice crackers, a woolen hat, and more cigarettes. From a vendor selling electronics spread out on a mat he bought an illegal unregistered Nokia cell phone with a charger, and a China Mobile fifty-yuan phone card. The vendor explained how to use the phone card, adding, “If you can find anywhere to charge the phone, that is.”

  He could find no one selling a kitchen knife or anything he could use as a weapon. He’d feel safer if he had something to defend himself with. The remaining cash he used to buy a pencil flashlight, a razor blade, and packet of cigarette rolling papers. With a tremendous effort he remained calm and spoke as little as possible. No one seemed to cast him a second glance. He was a vagrant, a nobody, and he stank like a rank goat.

  On the road out of the city he passed through an industrial area of rusted smokestacks and silent factories. After pausing a moment to check he was not being followed, he slipped into the shadows of a freight yard and found a disused garage. Crouching down on the oily concrete floor he turned on his pencil flashlight and carefully took out the largest remaining ball of bingdu. It had occurred to him that he could at least turn the bingdu into a weapon of sorts. Keeping his hands steady, he slit a Double Happiness cigarette lengthways with the razor blade and tipped the crystalline powder liberally onto the tobacco, so that the tobacco was laced with the drug. He resealed the cigarette with the rolling paper and examined his handiwork. It was almost impossible to tell that it
had been doctored. Anyone who accepted this cigarette from him and smoked it would receive an overdose big enough to stop the heart. Death would come in a puff of euphoria. He returned it neatly to the packet, turning it upside down so that he knew which one contained the drug.

  Soon he was out of the city and following a winding, unpaved track that ran along the Tumen River, the border itself. It was far colder here. The river to his right was a road of ice, pale and translucent, as if it were absorbing the starlight. Too dark to see the Chinese bank. Every few meters stood a sign. BORDER AREA! STOP! But what alarmed him more was the absence of any tree cover and, at each of the narrower points, a blocky concrete watchtower, where he could see the tops of guards’ helmets moving about behind slit windows.

  Cho felt a wave of panic.

  Cross now, a voice in his head said, before you’re challenged. It was dark enough for him to slip across unseen. Why not here, in front of a watchtower, where they’d least expect it, and before he ran into a patrol?

  An unbearable agitation overcame him, and he found his legs carrying him toward the ice, his faculties overridden by panic. The far bank was no more than forty meters away. He’d be across in under a minute. He stepped down the bank. His right foot stepped onto the ice and the blood sang in his ears.

  “Halt!”

  The voice rang out of nowhere. Cho stood frozen.

  “Hands up! Turn around.”

  Slowly he raised his hands and turned to see a single soldier, still a teenager from the sound of his voice, pointing an AK-74 at him. Barely out of Socialist Youth League. The soldier turned on a thin flashlight that was attached to the barrel.

  “What are you doing here? It’s a restricted area.”

  “Comrade, I . . .”

  “Do you have anything to eat?”

  Surprised, Cho signaled to the plastic bag he was carrying, and lowered it. Slowly he handed a packet of rice crackers to the soldier, who snatched it and shoved it into the tunic pocket of his coat. Encouraged, Cho handed him an unopened packet of cigarettes and the small bottle of corn liquor, which all disappeared into pockets. The boy wore a camouflage helmet and a pair of enormous canvas boots.

  “Show me your ID.”

  Cho held up his palms. “Comrade, I’m just an ordinary fellow, hoping to visit relatives over there who’ll give me the medicines I need. I’ll be back tomorrow night at the same time, with a gift of rice for you, and a bottle of Maotai.”

  There was a pause as the boy took this in.

  “You’re from Pyongyang . . . ?”

  “Yes.” The word was out before Cho could stop himself.

  The boy reached into his tunic breast pocket and pulled out a flyer. The flashlight was directed into Cho’s ravaged face, and then back to the flyer. Then again. Cho squinted in the bright beam.

  “What is your name?” Louder now, excited.

  Cho had never thought of an alias. He hesitated, and the boy’s whistle was blowing before he could speak.

  To his astonishment lights came on everywhere, along the bank, on the roof of the watchtower, finding him and converging on him, as if he were an actor on stage.

  Cho turned and ran, ran for his life, skidding and falling on the ice. Getting up and running. He heard his breath snorting in his nose like a bull.

  Voices shouted behind him, and a siren rose from the watchtower. He knew the border garrison was not allowed to fire at the Chinese bank.

  “Stop or we shoot!”

  The farther across he got the safer he’d be . . . Second after second, meter after meter, he got closer, and saw China taking shape in the dark. Tree and hill and field.

  Something shrilled past Cho’s ear. Shards of ice struck his eyes like glass where the first bullet hit the frozen surface, followed by the whip-crack sound of gunfire.

  Another bullet thunked into the trunk of a tree ahead of him.

  He was just a short distance from reaching the bank when he felt a sensation like a massive shove to his left leg, followed by the crack of another shot. He fell, skidding across the ice on his face.

  For a second or two he felt no pain, though he knew he’d been hit. Then pain seared through him like a lightning bolt, blinding him. He cried out. It was hard to breathe. When the next bullet passed so close to his ear he could feel the lash of the wind, something almost supernatural in him propelled him on. He got up, supporting himself on one leg, feeling an adrenalin rush. Next thing he knew he was grasping root and branch and hauling himself up the bank, up from the ice.

  The searchlights from the North Korean bank seemed to lose him, their beams sweeping from side to side penetrating the black woods, making long shadows of the trees. Cho crawled forward without stopping. He plowed through deep snow, trailing blood, shielding his face from bare branches. His body was getting heavier, sinking in the soft powder. He fell onto his chest and caught his breath. Half his face felt shredded and burned where he’d skidded across the ice. His calf was on fire. He could feel the scorch of the bullet’s heat. The overalls on his leg were black with blood. The searchlights went out and for a moment he was in pitch darkness, but he knew the soldiers in that watchtower would already be on the radio to the Chinese border force. Emergency! A murderer has escaped . . . They’d request clearance to send the Bowibu agents across to put him down, like an escaped zoo animal. He’d lost the bag with the rice crackers and provisions. But he still had the packet with the doctored cigarette in one pocket, and the cell phone and charger in the other.

  He blinked the sweat from his eyes and turned over in the soft snow. Ripping a shred of fabric away from his leg he fashioned a tourniquet and tied it at the top of his calf, clenching his teeth as he tightened it, his breath hissing in his nostrils, and rubbed snow on his wound. How bad was it? Bad. Torn viscera, shattered nerves from ripped flesh. A gaping hole in his leg from heavy military ammo. His foot had no feeling and was hanging limp, but the bullet must have missed the bone by a millimeter. A bloody trail in the snow! Could he have made this any easier for them? He felt a sudden surge of euphoria, which he guessed was a hormonal effect of the shock. Reaching for a fallen branch to use as a crutch he heaved himself up and stumbled on.

  Ahead the trees thinned out and he saw a road piled high on either side with cleared snow. Beyond the road, only half a kilometer or so away, were the lights of a farmhouse, and beyond that he could make out the pale-blue outline of a range of bare hills. He forced himself up the ridge of plowed snow and was about to lower himself onto the road, with the pain from his calf shooting orange stars through his eyes, when he heard a car. He would flag it down, he decided, and plead for help. Trust himself to fortune, or die out here. He did not think he could make it as far as the farmhouse.

  It was the lights that made him suddenly hold his breath. The flashing sapphire and ruby of a police car. He rolled onto his back and remained as still as stone. There was no time to flee. The car moved at a slow crawl. A police radio crackled behind a closed window. It proceeded past him and he breathed.

  By the time he reached the farmyard his breathing was ragged and he was struggling not to faint from blood loss. He knocked on the door. A powerful smell of pigs hit him. A dog growled inside. Footsteps sounded, and the door opened, casting a wedge of yellow light across the ground. He saw the silhouette of a man’s head.

  “Who are you? What d’you want?”

  Cho struggled to focus his eyes. The man’s outline became blurred and fuzzy. He couldn’t see the face. He felt nauseous suddenly.

  “If you’ve come from across the river, I can’t help you.”

  His head began to spin. The door closed in his face. Next thing he knew the ground rose up to his cheek and he blacked out.

  Cho regained consciousness to a sound of sniffing and the sensation of a wet nose touching his ear. His calf was throbbing and numb. A coarse, sun-beaten face was peering down at him. The man was about fifty, and eyeing him with the glinting suspicion of a peasant. A chemical reek of disinfectant
reached Cho’s nostrils. His eyes tried to take in his surroundings. He was lying on his back on a tiled kitchen floor in front of a stove fire, which cast a reddish glow. The room was plain and poor, with a set of bashed metal pans hanging above a sink. A dog was busily nosing about him, taking in the stink of blood and filth.

  “What happened to your leg?” the farmer said, in the singsong accent of a Korean Chinese.

  From near his feet Cho heard a sharp intake of breath, and realized that his left leg was resting over a steaming bowl, where a large woman with bright red forearms was attempting to clean his wound with disinfectant. Each dab made him flinch.

  “An accident . . . as I crossed the river,” Cho said feebly. No point denying where he’d come from. “Thank you for helping me.”

  “What trouble are you in?”

  Cho screwed his eyes shut. “Do you have painkillers?”

  The farmer plodded off and returned with a bottle of amber liquid.

  “Made it myself.” He touched the bottle to Cho’s lips and Cho felt the spirit burn its way down his gullet like lava. He coughed, and when he spoke his voice was pure breath. Farmer and wife were both standing over him now.

  “Please. Could I charge my phone . . . ?” Cho feebly pulled it from the side pocket of his overalls.

  The couple exchanged looks. Reluctantly the farmer took it from him. “The socket’s in the next room.”

  “I’ll get out of your way as soon as I can and won’t trouble you.”

  “Rest here for now,” the farmer said without taking his eyes off him. “We’ll talk later.”

  The woman dried his calf and put a towel under it, and the farmer administered another generous slug of moonshine.

  All his strength had drained from him. Again he drifted off, in and out of consciousness, with no sense of passing time. He dreamed of hushed voices arguing in the next room. When he awoke the fire in the stove was lower and his brow was beaded with sweat and feverish, his back stiff and painful on the hard floor. He raised his head and saw the dog watching him from a mat in the corner. The farmer was speaking Mandarin in the next room, then the kitchen door opened a crack and he saw the man peering at him.