The Patagonian Hare

by Claude Lanzmann

  We arrived late, just as the houselights were dimmed; every one of the thousands of seats was filled. Following our guides, we groped our way through the darkness to our reserved seats, thereby protecting the delicate eyes of the public from foreign contamination. Almost no one saw us. Almost 90 per cent of those in the theatre were young soldiers in uniform. The acrobats and trapeze artists were as marvellous as those I had seen years ago, vying with each other in daring to the rather apathetic applause of the troops who appeared to have seen the show several times before. I hoped I might see some faces when the curtain went down, but we had to get up some seconds before the end and make a dash for the nearest vomitorium; once outside, we were piled back into the minibus. Dinner, too, took place in complete isolation: a small private dining room had been reserved for us; no one saw us and we saw no one, with the exception of two silent, thin-lipped waitresses. The food was inedible, thin slivers of cold mystery-meat, swimming in some acrid, purplish liquid that burned my throat, which I pushed away after the first mouthful. To drink we had a pale locally made sparkling drink every bit as vile as the main course. While the Anglo- Saxons – doubtless disciples of Chomsky – cleaned their plates with angelic smiles, I went in search of the kitchens, planning to bribe someone to make me an omelette. I needed wine too, or at the very least water. The French interpreter rushed to block my way: clutching my stomach as though in serious pain, I told him I felt sick and that I needed eggs. My acting proved effective, he got them for me. I also casually mentioned that in a hotel like this for the élite nomenklatura, surely there was someplace where, in exchange for dollars, wines and spirits might be obtained. (My frequent visits to Eastern Europe had taught me that much.) This proved to be the case and he led me to the basement where there were bars offering every possible kind of drink, casinos with no gamblers, massage rooms, and so on; all were absolutely deserted. For a small fortune, I bought a mediocre Spanish Sangre de Toro, which I took back with me and savoured, to the quizzical and disapproving stares of my British comrades. As they all headed back to their respective rooms, I went out on to the forecourt to get some fresh air and walk around in authorized, circumscribed circles. It was clear to me that the hotel was an Alcatraz, from which there was no escape.

  The following afternoon, while the Chomskyist faction led by the English-speaking guide scrupulously adhered to the itinerary, I told my guide I had a sore throat and said I would stay in my room until evening. Two hours later, I went downstairs again, firmly resolved to go into the city on my own and convinced that by now he would have left the lobby. A grave error on my part; as soon as I stepped out of the lift I saw him sitting on a bench, staring at me. He had been waiting for me: he would have waited all day and all night, those were his orders. I went outside, he was right beside me, there was a lone taxi waiting. I wanted to take it but he said, ‘It is not for us.’ ‘Let’s walk, then,’ I said, and set off briskly in the direction of the bridge, determined to wear him out. He was at least sixty years younger than me but I noticed he quickly became breathless, he was struggling. I continued to quicken my pace. After about a kilometre, he begged for mercy. I said, ‘The taxi we saw must be free, otherwise it would have passed us by now, there’s only one road.’ He suggested going back to get it, no longer objecting to taking it. At this point I told him that I was a film director by profession and that I needed to get a feel for the city, for North Korea, for which I felt a profound sympathy, that I was considering making a film celebrating the glories of his country and would be happy for him to accompany me. So he headed back towards the forecourt of Alcatraz, while I lay on the grass and waited; it was a long wait. Then suddenly, to my surprise, I saw him arrive in the taxi. I climbed in and explained that I wanted to head down the left bank of the Taedong to the next bridge. He translated for the driver, who did as I asked. I recognized the bridge where I had rendezvoused with my beloved. I suggested we get out, asking my guide to come with me and make the taxi wait for us. Things that had been crucial to my brief encounter had vanished: there was no bank now, no towpath, but instead a large flagstone promenade that seemed to stretch out forever. In the distance I saw a number of small boats circling. The embankment from which the singing brigades had so intently watched Kim and me was now a line of tall buildings overlooking the waterfront. In fifty years, the city had had time to change. And yet I still needed to locate the Taedonggang Hotel. We got back into the taxi and I pointed to the road I wanted to take, indicating to the driver to go slowly. Though I looked carefully, I could not see the hotel, something that completely baffled me. I told the interpreter that some decades ago, a friend of mine had stayed in a hotel that bore the name of the river, which, from what he had told me, should be around here somewhere. He had never heard of it but asked the taxi driver, who said that the remains of the Taedonggang Hotel, which had burned down in 2001, were behind the fence we were just driving past. It was not my memory that had been at fault.

  Time had stood still in North Korea at least twice: in 1955, at the end of the war, and in 1994, after the death of Kim Il-sung, the Great Leader. Kim Il-sung is not dead, he cannot be dead, he is here for eternity. As all infrequent tourists do, as all the children, the pioneers and the citizens of the People’s Republic have a duty to do several times a year, I had to profess my respect and admiration, participate in the cult of his immortal personality. At the entrance to the park, on the brow of a hill, where the colossal, twenty-metre-high bronze statue of Kim Il-sung was erected, teenage girls dressed in white arrived carrying small bouquets of flowers – also white – that, having reached the summit, they had to lay at the feet of the man-god. The gleaming sculptured bronze of the statue reflects the sun so intensely that one has to squint if one wants to take in the vertical panorama, to contemplate him in his full stature. The statue is flanked, to left and right, by two grey bas-relief statues of men and women fused together, armed with rifles, sickles, hammers, with every tool devised by man, and all leaning forward, so accustomed are they to the sublime fervour that propels them towards the radiant future. There are statues, portraits, photographs and posters of Kim Il-sung all over the country, in every town and village, infinitely multiplied. It might be said that his son, Kim Jong-il, based his authority on the reverence paid to his father’s authority rather than daring to claim it for himself. But war is as eternal as he who declared and waged it: the Korean War is not over, it has lasted for fifty years and is being fought still. The whole country is in a constant state of frantic alert, a veritable hothouse atmosphere without which it would collapse. Everywhere – on television, on the cassettes sold in the basement of the hotel – the North Korean army marches endlessly, company by company, unit by unit, goose-stepping past the grandstand where Kim’s chubby-cheeked son stands, surrounded by his ministers and his generals, ghosts of bygone ages. On other stands are the veterans, the Party leaders, the wealthy élite of the regime who are its bedrock, who perpetuate it, in spite of the sacrifices inflicted generation after generation, on the youth, on a whole people. As in 1958, I was again taken to Panmunjom on the 38th parallel where the armistice that brought hostilities to a close was signed and where I was exposed not only to South Koreans, braggarts in sunglasses photographing the Chomsky faction and me across the famous immaterial line, but also to the officers of the Korean People’s Army in Soviet kepis with broad peaks and large epaulettes, giving the same speech they have given every day for fifty years, the same commentary on the same photos, the same diagrams, feigning anger as though it had all happened yesterday. The weariness of these valiant men is evident in only one respect: they smoke like chimneys, chain-smoking foul-smelling cigarettes. Half a century of mobilization, half a century of being ready for action with not a single shot fired, is something that cannot be, cannot continue, without some powerful consolation: tobacco. In spite of the parades, the goose-stepping and the sabre-rattling, the Korean People’s Army is on its last legs. This is immediately confirmed by the meagre angle of elevat
ion of their extended calves, pitiful when compared to how the Nazis performed their goose step, throwing the leg high, perpendicular to the pelvis.

  On the far bank of the Taedong, directly aligned with the giant statue of Kim Il-sung, and almost as tall, is the Juche Tower, culmination of the theory of ‘self-reliance’ and as immutable, more crucial now than ever. There are no means of transport in North Korea, trains, like buses, are rare and slow, cars, motorbikes and bicycles non-existent. On our 250-kilometre drive, Noam’s friends and I encounter only three official limousines. The only means of transport: walking. This is where the Juche, which makes man the master of his own destiny, fully comes into its own. For on the same 250-kilometre drive, we pass or encounter countless people walking. As they set out, they walk briskly, energetically, arms swinging, each, even if alone, attempting to be his own singing brigade. They start out intending to walk five, ten, twenty, even thirty kilometres, but as we have seen, they quickly become breathless and they are hungry, very hungry. In truth, these fanatical disciples of Juche tire quickly, their progress slowing to a crawl; they stop frequently, hunkering by the side of the road, waiting to gather their strength. Traffic in the city flows so freely it seems unreal, Pyongyang is the city of the ‘as-if’ personality, and there is something almost comic about watching the slim, almost diaphanous young policewomen in Soviet caps perched on pedestals shaped like drums at every major crossroads directing the exclusively pedestrian traffic with the jerky movements of wind-up toys. Their robotic gestures, the unearthly solemnity of their faces are infinitely more effective than all our road markings and traffic lights: no one would dare to try and cross at the wrong time, though it would entail only one risk, the greatest risk of all, that of breaking the rules.

  My guide worked hard to come up with plans that I did my best to thwart, but I knew I had to give in to him if I wanted something in return, that something being nothing less than a sliver of freedom – supervised freedom, of course, but enough to allow me, with him by my side, to retrace the steps of a past I could not help but try to rediscover. So I agreed to taking the Pyongyang metro, which, according to him – and he was right – dwarfed those of Moscow and Beijing by the vastness and the opulence of its stations, the numbers of commuters, and the unbelievable depth of its tunnels, which even offer shelter in the event of nuclear war. In fifty years, the masters of Korea had succeeded in making their capital at once monumental and desolate. Pyongyang was clean, there were no shanty towns, no slums, but the living moved like shadows. As the days passed I felt increasingly hungry, since I did not eat anything that was offered, anxiously waiting to board the plane again. And yet Kim Kum-sun was engraved on my memory and I stubbornly kept thinking about the impossible film, which hunger and my revulsion for the food made seem even more impracticable. My ‘bodyguard’, increasingly baffled by the demands I made of him – he was beginning to realize that I knew Pyongyang – agreed to take me by taxi to the scene of my shipwreck with Kim, which I tried to locate precisely, pacing up and down the promenade, talking to myself and gesticulating wildly. But the area was barely recognizable: everything had vanished, the ticket booth, the steep bank down to the river, the hut where we had left our shoes and, most of all, the boats. The only place to find them was across the bridge, past the Tower of the Juche Idea, where a few small boats circled in the distance while a dozen others were moored along the quay waiting for the following Sunday. The Pyongyang of today, sleek and with no past, offered me no purchase. Since we were now on the far bank, I explained to my guide that I wanted to follow a particular route, that he needed only to translate my directions to the driver. After that, I promised, we would rejoin the rest of the group for a dance performance in a ‘traditional’ restaurant to which we had been invited.

  I had got it into my head, as a sort of ultimate test, to try to find the hospital. So I gruffly gave directions, as though I knew exactly where I was going: ‘right, left, straight ahead, keep going’, to my young guide’s mounting astonishment, my commands all the more brusque because I was not at all certain I knew where I was going. Suddenly, I shouted – almost yelled – ‘STOP!’ The hospital, set back in its large courtyard appeared before me like a mirage, unchanged, the only complex of buildings in the whole city that was exactly as it had been. I had helped Gatti across this very courtyard on our first night here, had crossed it with Kim the day before I left, it was here we had passionately kissed, our tongues meeting, oblivious to everything, in a hopeless embrace. I was speechless, staring at the building, then I heard myself unexpectedly say, ‘I know this city very well.’ I could no longer keep my guide on tenterhooks and, in a sense, I was happy to be able to tell him the truth. I told him I had been treated at this hospital, that I had been to Pyongyang long before he was born, probably before his father was born, that I had been a member of the first delegation of Westerners invited to North Korea after the war, and, most importantly, that I had seen the Great Leader Kim Il-sung in the flesh many times, I had had dinner with him twice, that if he wanted to check he had only to read the newspapers of the period, which had daily reported our thoughts and our comments. Talking to him in the car, still parked in front of the hospital, I witnessed an extraordinary metamorphosis: since I had broken bread with the Great Leader, I therefore shared something of the nature of him; a veritable transubstantiation was taking place, making me sacred. The young man closed his eyes, he reached out, touched me, and an expression of rapture I had never seen before came over him. He was so eager to share the good news that I did not want to keep him hanging around any longer. I said – in Spanish for some reason – ‘Vamos’, which he nevertheless understood perfectly. On the way back, I told him that I had said I’d never been to North Korea before because I thought that no one from my visit fifty years earlier would still be around and I would have had to leave China long before I got through the bureaucratic red tape. I was thinking about making a film in praise of North Korea and I wanted to face my past dispassionately before officially declaring myself. He told me that he would have to refer the matter to his boss, who would probably want to meet me. I asked if he could do so as soon as possible: the flight back to Beijing was leaving the following day and I could not prolong my stay. I did not tell him the real reason I could not stay: I was starving.

  That evening, when we got back from the show, the Deputy Minister for Tourism and a high-ranking Party official was waiting for me at the hotel. He was a slim, elegant man of about fifty with a pleasant face and a perfect command of English: he had clearly lived abroad. Here, too, transubstantiation played a role: he showed great deference as I talked on and on about the Great Leader, his comportment, his authority, his wisdom, his political audacity, the exquisite ‘Soup of the Mountain Gods’ I had once shared with him. The Deputy Minister did not question anything I said. What most impressed me was that he joined me when I ordered a whisky from the bar, and then he ordered a second, for me and for him. I said nothing about the real reasons I wanted to film in Korea, giving him instead other reasons he would find convincing, just as I had with Polish bureaucrats in order to get permission to film freely in Poland, including in the places where Jews had been exterminated, by persuading them that telling the truth would be the best way of doing justice to their country. I realized the Minister was not opposed to such a project, indeed that he was interested, even fascinated. He did not suggest that he would have to take it to a higher authority but seemed sufficiently high-ranking to make the decision himself. I told him that, for my part, I would need some time to think about it, that it would take considerable preparation and a number of return visits to Korea. He gave me his address and every modern means of getting in touch with him. We took leave of each other on friendly terms, he believing that he could trust me, that such a film would help Korea break out of its isolation, I believing that perhaps things were not as bad as I have just painted them. Sometimes, all it takes is one man.

  My real problem, one that I have not resolved t
o this day, was – my ‘brief encounter’ will probably never be filmed – what film? I felt profoundly repelled, almost outraged, at the thought of making fiction. Anyone other than me would have decided to shoot the film using actors in South Korea or some other Asian country by some other river without a constant police presence, without having to charter a plane to ship in food for the cast and crew. It’s even possible to imagine it being shot in a studio in a purely Hollywood style: Universal, Paramount or Spielberg’s Dream Works are designed for such productions and would not baulk at the scale of the project or at potentially despoiling the truth by reinventing it. The result might even be a magnificent film – something they have proved time and again they are capable of. As for me, it’s not completely impossible that I might one day write a screenplay based on this true story. But, leaving Pyongyang after what I had experienced over those four days, my natural inclination and my filmmaker’s instincts suggested something else, an insane desire to tell the truth, which, if successful, would have exploded the traditional documentary/fiction dichotomy: I would direct a documentary about the North Korea of today, powerfully depicting everything I have said above about the city – the emptiness, the monumentalization, the permanent mobilization, the tobacco, the universal weariness, the hunger, the fear, the way time has been suspended for fifty years – showing how everything yet nothing has changed, how everything has got worse. And over the shots of modern Pyongyang, a voiceover – my voice as it is today, no actors, no actresses, no reconstruction – would recount, as I did in the previous chapter, the ‘brief encounter’ between Claude Lanzmann and Kim Kum-sun. It would require sensitive, highly meticulous work on image and text, on words and silence and their positioning in the film, the points at which the account of the past is inserted into the present of the city, the discordance and concordance culminating in a single temporality where word reveals itself as image and image as word.