The Patagonian Hare

by Claude Lanzmann

  The itinerary for the Korean trip was interesting, sometimes frightening, exhausting, even backbreaking. Two or three factory visits a day, presentations, welcome speeches, farewell speeches, responses, the exchange of presents – including Chris’s Giraudoux par lui-même, the mother of all gifts. The responses given by the delegation were made either in French by Raymond Lavigne from L’Humanité – christened Sur Chung, or ‘Lush Springtime’ in Korean – and translated by Ok, or, more often, in English by myself, as a number of Korean officials understood the language. Sometimes I had to speak three times in a day. Like China at the time, North Korea aspired to complete self-sufficiency, planning to construct vast steelworks and factories, and I think I sensed even then that Kim Il-sung, with whom we dined twice at formal state receptions, was already contemplating a nuclear arsenal. We were taken to places far from Pyongyang that appeared on no maps, to underground facilities guarded by soldiers, where everything seemed to be top secret. During one of our dinners with the Great Leader and his ministers, all from the anti-Japanese resistance movement, I dared to raise the subject of certain dissidents plucked from public life, whose disappearance had been mentioned to me in Paris. Hardly had I mentioned the names than the broad smiles on the faces of Kim and his Praetorian guard vanished. Suddenly, there was a granite hardness in their eyes, I was meddling in the internal affairs of the People’s Republic, showing myself to be a dissident. The Great Leader uttered a single phrase, haltingly translated by Ok: ‘They are enemies of the people.’ To persist, to argue, was out of the question. The entertainment was supplied by the National Theatre, the Opera and the acrobatic athletes of North Korea, the best in the world, who invariably performed to packed houses mostly made up of soldiers, this was always immediately followed by speeches in the actors’ dressing rooms and an exchange of gifts. In the streets, the trains, the buses, we never saw a Korean woman with a European man, it was simply unimaginable and the only ‘long noses’ to be seen were ‘experts’ from other People’s Republics – mostly Polish, East German and Czechoslovak – come to support a brother country. They were always on their own or accompanied by their wives – fat, flabby Soviet bloc creatures – and indeed they lived in an enclosed neighbourhood. Among the pleasures of the country – and by no means the least – was the national dish known as sinseollo, ‘Soup of the Mountain Gods’, an elaborate fondue of subtle flavours and spices topped with ginseng, a dish from the ancient Korean royal court that supposedly enhances sexual desire and prowess, a peculiar contra-indication to the ascetic life in store for us. During these dinners, the so-called Asian impassiveness was shattered. I persuaded a number of young officers and soldiers aged between twenty-five and thirty to talk about the war that had ended five years earlier. Each of them became animated as I asked questions, before dissolving into tears. Heroes decorated for bravery were racked by heartrending sobs as they spoke of the terrible slaughter that had so recently seen the narrow strait separating China from the Nippon archipelago run with blood.

  I had left Paris already exhausted from my hard work on the ‘Curate of Uruffe’ article and since, as I’ve said, I was only thirty-three, I believed in health. There are fads in medicine. The fashion at the time, the one that most interested me since I believed in its regenerative powers, was for intramuscular injections – in the buttocks – of 1000µg of Vitamin B12. It was my friend Louis Cournot, who had a practice on the rue de Varenne opposite the Musée Rodin, who first prescribed the treatment to me. ‘If you feel run down while you’re there, take some.’ I had brought seven doses with me, together with the prescription. After a month of North Korean Stakhanovism and ten days before we were to leave for China (in fact, the delegation was to split into two: Gatti and the others were staying in Pyongyang, I was heading for Beijing via Manchuria with my enemy Chris), I decided I needed invigorating and I confided in my dear Ok, explaining to him that, so as to avoid any complications, I would go to the hospital by myself if he could simply tell me to which department I should go. That would not be necessary, he told me, someone would come to my room and give me the injection. The procedure, I was solemnly informed, would take place the following morning, Monday, at eight. When the knock on the door came, I was already up, in pyjamas, the windows were open, it was hot, it was summer. I open the door and am greeted not by a male nurse, but a stunning female nurse in traditional dress, her breasts restrained but still visible beneath her smock, her long black hair in two plaits, her eyes slanting and aglow with fire, though she keeps them lowered. I step aside and, taken aback, gesture for her to come in with a sort of Grand Siècle bow. Behind her stands Ok, who also steps in, behind Ok a man in a peaked cap, behind the man in the peaked cap another man in a peaked cap, and a third and a fourth and a fifth: all told there are six men standing in my hotel room, ready to observe every detail of the procedure, meticulously. I hand Ok the box of magic phials together with Louis Cournot’s prescription, which he translates for the nurse with the lowered eyes. She does not say a word, but takes a syringe, a needle, alcohol, from her case; in a shaft of sunlight she watches carefully as she draws the 1000µg of Vitamin B12 into the syringe. I stand next to her, ready to slip my pyjama trousers down slightly to reveal a buttock, but Ok and the five men in peaked caps – whom we had long since recognized as members of the Korean KGB, silent phantoms that moved through the corridors of the hotel and followed us wherever we went – have not moved, show no signs of moving, but stand in a circle watching us. I tell Ok, ‘I’d be grateful if you could leave, please ask them to go outside. In France we do not have injections in public.’ He seems very annoyed, says a few words, and they all step back a metre, but no more. I raise my voice, pretending to be angry, protesting about their evident mistrust of me, a government-invited official and a guest of the Great Leader. They move back now, though only as far as the door. I grab the nurse by the arm, and leading her to a blind spot in the room where I cannot see them, nor they me, I now present my naked flesh to this impassive beauty. Her movements are perfect, precise, clean, without brutality, I feel no pain as the needle goes in and she begins the procedure, which is usually uncomfortable, very slowly injecting into the muscle thereby avoiding any suffering. Picture the scene: the spacious hotel room, the door open on to the corridor, the everyday noises of the hotel, Ok and the men in caps huddled, waiting, an idle and frustrated crack team; a surreptitious intimacy born out of transgression – in moving to the blind spot – is established between the nurse and me without a single glance, a flutter of eyelashes, without the least sign of complicity being exchanged. My pyjama trousers pulled up, I reappear in the middle of the room as she puts away her instruments. I say, ‘You may come in now, messieurs.’ This they do, though slightly less assertively than on their arrival. An appointment is made for the same time the following morning. To the nurse, I say nothing other than, ‘Thank you, mademoiselle’; to Ok, who puffs out his chest and translates to the others, ‘She is a consummate professional, there are not many like her in the West!’

  The procedure was repeated exactly the following day with the sole exception that there were not five men in caps this time, but four. And I did not have to ask them to withdraw; of their own volition they did not cross the threshold. The nurse and I went to the blind spot, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, our haven, like the bull’s querencia in the bullring. I never heard my nurse’s voice. How could she speak to me? We had no common language, and in any case the men in caps were all ears. On the third day, there was one less cap again. Then, nothing changed until the sixth day, when only three people showed up: one cap, Ok and the nurse. The final injection was to be the following day, which was Sunday. I asked if the time could be pushed back to ten o’clock, say, rather than eight as I wished to make the most of the Lord’s Day to sleep in. Ok reminded me that the delegation was scheduled to go on a picnic to the country, a favourite pastime among Koreans, leaving between nine and half-past nine. I said that I had decided not to go,
that having met so many people and spent so much time talking over the past month, I wanted to spend some time alone, which would be the best way to get some rest, and I hoped he understood. Besides, I did not much like the lakes where they took us for picnics, man-made expanses of water from which rocks poked up here and there rather like those mawkish unimpressive landscapes in Japanese prints. The appointment was therefore set for ten. I assumed that, in the absence of Ok, the nurse would be accompanied by one or more men in caps. Nothing was as I expected. At ten o’clock precisely there came a knock at the door. I opened it: no caps, no one but her, transformed, barely recognizable, dressed in European clothes, a light print skirt, her unrestrained breasts filling out her blouse, the braids gone and her hair piled up in a chignon with a curl falling over her forehead, her mouth red with lipstick, an insolent, an intriguing beauty. All this I observe in a single glance, I am so astonished that I stand frozen on the threshold, not even thinking to let her in, heedless of the men in caps who must surely be about to appear. She does not look down this time, but straight at me. The situation demands a response, I act quickly, reflex and reflection merging into one, leading her to the blind spot in the room and leaving the door open as I had done every day. I am filled with an almost unbearable sense of imminence. Something is about to happen, cannot not happen, I do not know what or when. I am trembling inside; I have not touched a woman since Paris. Pyongyang is particularly hot that morning, beads of sweat appear on her upper lip, further accentuating the sensuality of her mouth, the irresistible sexual magnetism that emanates from her body, her face. As she gives the injection, she moves with infinite slowness, breaking down her every gesture and time itself, as though it would never, could never, end. The injection now administered, as she packs her case she finds ways to slow, to defer her every movement. The door is still open, I cannot bring myself to believe that the caps will not suddenly appear, something that intensifies the feeling of imminence, of anxiety. Everything is done, I have no idea how to take my leave of her; I tell myself she is probably waiting for me to pay her and remember that I have the huge bundles of crisp new won, the Korean currency, which had been given to each member of the delegation the day after our arrival, to pay for incidental treats and expenses. Aside from the drums I was planning to bring back to Castor, there was nothing to buy here. I gesture for her to wait, take one of the bundles from the wardrobe and offer it to her. She vehemently refuses, shocked. I rush to my suitcase – before leaving Paris I had bought a number of pretty shirts, which are still wrapped in tissue paper; I think they might suit her, or she might have some use for them. I offer them to her. She categorically refuses. We are no longer in the blind spot but standing in the middle of my room, in full view of the door, the caps are forgotten, suddenly insignificant compared to what is about to happen, to the devastating power of the inexorable. I don’t know which of us moved first, I never did know. We fall upon one another, kissing each other fiercely, our tongues wrestling with a passion, a strength, an eagerness, a ferociousness that is immeasurable and uncontrollable. We are in plain sight, making no attempt to hide, but it is impossible to leave things like this, I want more, I want it all, we want it all, so I act with extraordinary decisiveness: bringing her back into the blind spot, taking off my watch and resetting it to read two o’clock. I tap my watch several times with my fingernail to make sure she understands. I am not asking if she agrees, this is a command, an order. I lead her to the window overlooking Pyongyang Avenue and, leaning out, I point to a spot about two hundred metres away where the avenue meets the river. The watch in my hand now reads a little after two. With an imperious gesture I remind her of the time of the rendezvous while pointing repeatedly to the bridge where we are to meet. I am suddenly seized by panic: the caps are bound to show up and if they see she’s still here it will be disastrous for her. She presses herself against me, oblivious to danger, completely overcome, but I refuse to be moved, refuse to kiss her again, I throw her out without even checking to see if the coast is clear, I close the door, preferring to lose everything at that moment so that I might gain everything later.

  I am alone, I consider things, tell myself this is madness, the regime is terrifyingly Stalinist, the indoctrination of everyone by everyone allows for no freedom or – which amounts to the same – no deviation. What does the sudden transformation of the nurse with the downcast eyes mean? Does she come from South Korea? I convince myself that she will not show up for the meeting, that she will not come because she cannot, because she will realize the enormity of the risk. Besides, how would we communicate? She speaks Korean, Russian, perhaps Chinese, languages that are utterly alien to me… If she were mad enough to meet me at the bridge, we will have to invent our own language. I get some paper, two notebooks and some pencils. I suggested meeting her by the bridge because the previous Sunday the delegation had walked along the towpath by Taedonggang past a place where boats could be rented. As I pointed to the place where we should meet, I was thinking we could walk as far as the pier, she would know where it was, rent a boat and let it drift downstream through the city and out the other side, ending up in the countryside where we could make love, out of sight, in a rice field whether desiccated or waterlogged, in the grass, in some meagre forest, in the boat itself.

  I didn’t have to worry, didn’t have to wait for her. When I arrived she was already there, leaning against the bridge, dazzling, her lips red, as the crowds crossing the bridge in their Sunday-best gazed at her, undressed her with their eyes. When she saw me, the flicker of a smile lit up her face. I did not approach her but simply nodded towards the towpath and mimed rowing a boat. She immediately understood and walked on ahead in the direction I had indicated. She walked quickly, and I hurried to catch up with her. She stared fixedly ahead, either quickening her pace when she felt me drawing near or deliberately dropping back if I insisted in trying to keep pace with her. Below us to our right the river, some three metres below the towpath. To our left a two-metre-high embankment, and above, close enough to touch us, in an unbroken line that stretched all along the route, were the singing brigades of reconstruction workers. They wore lightweight work clothes, in different colours depending on the section they belonged to, but they were all white with dust since their almost Sisyphean task was to clear away the ruins and the rubble piled high since the end of the war: it was impossible to conceive that they would ever finish. Armed with a megaphone, a political commissar controlled the rhythm of the work like the leader of a coxed eight on the Cam. Or rather he barked hoarse orders that, as one, the red pioneers of Pyongyang duly obeyed, having sacrificed their day of rest to rebuild the nation’s capital. To maintain the harsh rhythm imposed, these young men and women sang at the tops of their voices, poignant airs of radiant tomorrows to the glory of the Great Leader, celebrating victory over imperialism or the triumph in every heart of Juche, the ruling dogma in North Korea, the product of the prodigious brain of Kim Il-sung, whose subtlety may be gleaned from a few trenchant quotes: ‘The North Korean is master of his own destiny’, ‘He will overcome every obstacle’, ‘For disciples of the Great Leader nothing is impossible’, a more inflexible version of Mao’s Little Red Book. But Juche did not preclude astonishment or shock. For me, having to walk ten paces in front of or behind this woman I was taking for a walk was unbearable; I could not understand what crime I would be committing in her eyes and the eyes of others simply by being close to her, by trying to talk to her, even if she didn’t know what I was saying. I could not imagine walking four kilometres with my conquest without a word or a smile, without brushing against her hand, her arm, just as Cau and I had done on the Champs Elysées. But the moment the singing pioneers realized we were together, the moment I flaunted the fact – against her will – that I was with her, the brigade fell silent, stopped working, stopped in mid-stroke, leaned on their shovels and picks and stared until we had passed, only for the next brigade to do the same. Now, she quickened or slowed her pace so noticeably that
it seemed to me like the admission of some terrible crime, proving them right, confessing the offence, presenting us to be judged. But she was the one who was right, as an insider she had anticipated everything, the brigades’ reactions, their thoughts, their comments, she knew what she had to do; it was I who was being improper, inappropriate, who was dangerously compromising us with the pathetic idealism of a French Don Juan, following his own narrow navel-gazing rules. We could not be together, it was as simple as that. By the time we had walked a kilometre, we no longer were. I was beginning to wonder how we would be able to get into the same boat.