Under the Same Sky

by Joseph Kim

  My plate was empty. I could have eaten the same meal again, but I was too shy and too distressed by my reception in China to ask for more. I did manage to ask for a cigarette. The man smiled and offered me some loose cigarettes. I took them and he lit one for me with a plastic lighter, which he then handed to me. I bowed my head slightly and slipped the lighter and the other cigarettes into my pocket. Then he reached into his pocket and handed me some bills.

  I looked at them. I knew little about Chinese money and had trouble telling how much I had. Was it eighteen yuan or a hundred eighty? Finally I figured it out. Eighteen yuan. I thanked the man.

  I was so happy having the money that I even thought of going back to North Korea with it. I could use the cash to bribe the guards at my mother’s prison. But it was worth less than three dollars. I wouldn’t have done much good with that.

  I stayed only half an hour. When I left, I decided to go to the Japanese-style pagoda I’d always spotted from my school. I needed to organize my thoughts.

  I reached the foot of the pagoda hill forty minutes later and climbed up. When I got to the top, I turned to the east and saw my homeland. It was so close! I saw the soccer field where I’d played for hours as a child. I saw the river I’d plunged into in past summers. I saw my old school, with students entering and leaving. I could see the house where I’d lived with my mom and dad and Bong Sook. Tears welled up in my eyes.

  I’d been gone only a few hours, but a feeling of loss stole into my heart. I already knew that China wasn’t the paradise I’d imagined. But mostly I felt nostalgia for things and people, even the street corners where I’d begged. Have I left you forever? I wondered.

  I wiped away the tears. I couldn’t return home empty-handed; that would be a disgrace. I decided to go to Kai San, the city where my mother had pointed out the house where she’d stayed with the Chinese broker. He would be able to tell me, I was sure, where to find Bong Sook. And behind the broker’s house was that of her second mother, Cho Hee. Surely she would have the rest of the money for Bong Sook. With that, I could return home and possibly free my mother.

  I walked for mile after mile, determined to get as close as I could to Kai San. But after a few hours, I could feel my legs giving out. Night had fallen. There was no way I could navigate through the countryside and the snowy mountains in the dark. I needed to find a place to sleep. I started down the hill and knocked on two more doors. Again the same response. Barks of suspicion and anger.

  The wind had picked up. I climbed a slope and found a gulley where leaves had been trapped by two walls of rock, forming a deep bed. Here was as good a place as any. I turned away and fell backward, sinking deep into the leaves, which nearly covered my face. I could smell the rich, pleasant odor of decaying matter.

  In ten minutes I was asleep.

  Chapter

  Forty-Nine

  * * *

  I WOKE AT TWO or three in the morning, my feet nearly frozen. The moon was above me, its edge stamped sharp against the black sky. My feet were freezing. If it wasn’t for the cold, I thought grumpily, I wouldn’t have woken up until morning. It felt as though I’d been asleep for only a few minutes. Unrefreshed, I got up, feeling more miserable than I could remember.

  I needed to make my own campsite and start a fire.

  But what if I lit up some branches and then fell asleep? If I didn’t burn myself to death, I’d send a signal to the local police: here is a vagrant, come and get him. I walked up and down the steep hillside, looking for a place where I wouldn’t accidentally start a forest fire. Finally I found a section of the gulley that was protected from the wind. In the middle was a circle where no snow remained. I hunted around and found some old branches and dry moss for a fire. I put everything in the middle of the circle. By now my hands were shaking from the cold. I had the lighter the farmer had given me, and I lit a corner of the dry moss. A flame leaped up and soon the fire was roaring and for the first time in hours I was warm.

  When I’d absorbed enough heat, I smoked a bunch of cigarettes, half asleep in front of the fire, then went back to my leafy bed and slept again.

  Two hours later, I awoke, struggled out of the leaves, and stamped my feet on a rock. The fire was out so I restarted it, looking at the strange shapes of the forest and the unfamiliar mountains around me. Soon the wood was crackling. My homesickness increased as I contemplated another day of wandering and begging. This only got worse when I heard something odd floating through the pine trees: voices, North Korean voices.

  I stood up, confused and scared. Were there agents in the woods, looking for me? But no, the voices weren’t speaking, they were singing. I blew out a breath. I recognized the sounds which floated toward me from the Tumen River: soldiers doing their morning exercises in the camp at Hoeryong. I’d heard them before when I was sleeping rough. This meant it was 5 a.m.

  I listened to the voices, relishing each word. It was like being alone at Christmastime, listening to someone far off singing carols. If I was home, I would have found some family and celebrated the holiday with them. But here I was on a mountainside, freezing my limbs off. I was fairly high up, and through the valley I could see sparks of light from the North Korean side. People were waking up and turning on their house lights. I wondered who they were and if I knew them. My homesickness overtook my hunger, but soon the pain came back.

  I smoked a couple of the farmer’s loose cigarettes, drifted off to sleep, and then snapped awake again. Finally I got up and began to walk, following a river that flowed twenty yards away, burbling in its gulch. I knew that if I kept the river on my right, it would take me to Kai San. A highway ran parallel to the river, and cars zoomed by in the semidarkness. I was afraid they were police. Every time I saw headlights, I would jump down into a ravine and hide. But after doing this four or five times, I realized no one was looking for me. I began ignoring the cars.

  I tried another farmhouse. To my surprise, the couple living there were nice. More than nice. They invited me in, asking no questions, and gave me rice with chicken and some cabbage. “You must be from Book Jo Sun,” the man said, which meant North Korea. I nodded. I noticed a girl, perhaps in her late twenties, watching me from a doorway. I was startled and stopped chewing the rice.

  The girl was beautiful. And then I realized why she was looking at me: I had slept in a pile of leaves, some of which still clung to my clothes and hair. My face was dark with soot, and I was wolfing down the food like a starving animal. I smelled terrible. Embarrassed, I dropped my eyes. The girl retreated into her room.

  She had a brother, who was also kind. After I’d eaten my fill and drank as much water as I could, he took me outside.

  “Where do you want to go?” he asked.

  “Kai San.”

  He nodded, pointing to a road that wound up the mountainside.

  “If you take that road, it’ll cost an extra day. There’s a shortcut through the mountains. Do you see there?”

  I turned and followed his pointed finger to a cut between the rock-strewn slopes. It didn’t look passable, but he assured me it was.

  “It’ll take me away from the river,” I said.

  “Yes, but do you want to walk for another day?” He looked at me with concern.

  I decided to follow his advice. I thanked the family and set out. It was scary; I was walking through a completely alien landscape without a landmark to guide me. I tramped across cultivated fields and small rock mounds. The snow began to deepen, coming up to my knees. My breath came out in ragged gasps as I pulled a foot out of one ice-encrusted hole and plunged it a couple of feet ahead. My anxiety mounted. I could feel the ground underneath was made of clay. With the sun on the snow, the clay was slippery. The wetter it got, the more it tried to hold on to my shoes when I walked. There was a sucking sound when I pulled my foot away.

  After an hour of hard walking, I stopped. I looked back the way I’d come and saw the farmhouse. If you turn back now, I thought, you can pick up the river route.
<
br />   But I pressed on. It took me four hours to reach a small city. When I came down the mountainside and saw it in front of me, I marveled at how big everything looked. It was Kai San, all right, but I had no idea how to orient myself or where my mom’s friend’s house was.

  I picked up my pace. I spotted a man out for a walk, wearing a fedora-type hat, and asked him if he knew the two old men that my mother had spoken of.

  He looked at me strangely.

  “Are you here for the funeral?”

  “What funeral?”

  He shook his head and turned. “Take this second right, then go up until you see the red house on the corner. Take that left. Theirs is the second house in on the right.”

  I thought that the older of the two men I was looking for, the eighty-year-old, must have died. I thanked him, and in ten minutes I was standing at the door. I felt eager and nervous. At last I’d made it. Now I’d find out where Bong Sook was. I saw her face against the dark red sweater.

  I knocked and an old woman opened the door. Probably a relative, here for the funeral. In the background I could see an elderly man with straight white hair looking at me. I asked the old woman if the other man, the fifty-year-old, was at home.

  Her eyes, clouded with cataracts, regarded me. “He died two days ago.”

  My knees felt weak.

  “My mother and my sister, Bong Sook, came through here after leaving North Korea. Do you know where my sister is?” I said this loudly enough for the old man to hear me. But his face registered nothing.

  The woman shook her head. “Soon Ryul, the man who died, took care of all that. He told nothing to us.”

  The woman closed the door. I stumbled away, feeling dizzy and sick.

  I was two days too late. My last connection to Bong Sook was gone.

  If I couldn’t find Bong Sook, I had to get enough money to go back and redeem my mother. I walked around the corner of the house and found a small lane behind it, on which fronted another house. This must belong to Cho Hee, the old woman who was holding on to the remainder of our money. I rapped my knuckles on the wooden door.

  My mother’s description of her second mom was so loving that I half expected an angel to answer, someone with beautiful, kindly features and light shining from behind her. I was fifteen; I still took things literally.

  The door opened and a woman was standing there. She wasn’t evil or bad-looking, only an old Chinese woman in a red knitted jacket.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m Kwang Jin, Sook Hee Kim’s son.”

  A tremor or some thought passed over her face, but she didn’t nod or say anything at first.

  After a long moment of silence she said, “Who?”

  I tried to calm myself. I wanted to make sure I heard her correctly.

  “Are you Cho Hee, the mother of Bae Sung Il?” In China, a person is called “the father of this one” or “the mother of that one.”

  “Yes, that’s me,” she said.

  I was incredulous. “You don’t remember my mother? She traded with you, she stayed here many times. And she left money here.”

  At that, her face hardened. I knew I’d made some dreadful mistake. Perhaps I should have asked about Bong Sook. That would have pulled on her heartstrings. Instead, I began with money. I could feel her wariness go up like a shield.

  Cho Hee looked down and shook her head.

  “I never knew a Sook Hee.”

  I was speechless. What should I do? I couldn’t go to the police. I couldn’t rob the woman; that wasn’t in me. I shook my head and walked away, feeling there was nothing but darkness in the world.

  Chapter

  Fifty

  * * *

  MY MOTHER HAD told me about one other house in Kai San where she knew the family. I went there next. It was a much grander place. When I knocked on the door, a handsome, well-dressed woman opened the door. She wore makeup and had raven-black hair and kind eyes. Behind her, I could see fancy mahogany furniture gleaming in the living room.

  I asked her about my mother.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “She was captured in Hoeryong. I’m very sorry for you.”

  This showed me that information flowed between North Korea and China. So Cho Hee had to have known that my mother was in prison. She’d probably prepared herself for the day someone appeared at her door, and that was why she was so cold.

  I wanted money to go get my mother. But the rich woman offered me nothing. I turned away from her door.

  What to do now? There was a North Korean woman in the next district who knew my mother and Bong Sook. This my mother had told me before leaving that first time with my sister. I knew she would help me, but I didn’t have her address. I began to walk west through Kai San. Perhaps I would bump into her.

  I walked for a good two hours, searching for any woman who looked more North Korean than the other pedestrians, while scouting out places to stay. Finally I found an abandoned house on the outskirts of Kai San. Dusk was darkening the streets. Inside, I took the clothes I was carrying and put them in a large dresser drawer, making a bed for myself. I laid the drawer on the floor and curled up inside it. This is better than the mountains, I thought. At least I’m out of the elements.

  I stayed in that house for a week. In the mornings and early evenings I would go begging for food. In the afternoons I would sit and think of what to do. But my options were limited. Things hadn’t turned out the way I’d expected.

  My training with the Association helped a little bit. When I begged at a house, I would mark the front walk or wall with chalk to show that I’d already been there, something we’d always done. If my chalk was used up, I would memorize the door colors or the gates or where the TV antennas sat on the roofs. If I came just once, the residents would think I was passing through and might not think to report me to the police. If I went to the same place twice, the people would know I was staying in the area. Also, if you keep knocking on the same doors, people feel you’re pestering them and they’re more likely to get you in trouble. North Koreans who’d been to China had told me again and again: “Keep moving. Don’t stay in the same area for long or you’ll be caught.”

  I got enough to eat from knocking on doors. Barely. But my fear of being sent to prison never left me.

  The sixth day, I knocked on a door and a woman opened it. I knew immediately that I’d been there before. In fact, this was the first house I’d come to.

  “You’re back,” the woman said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Please don’t report me.” I turned hurriedly to go.

  “No!” she called. “If you’re still around, you must really be in trouble. Wait here.”

  The woman was gone for three or four minutes. When she returned, she had packed a bag of food.

  “You must go to a Christian church,” she said.

  The word “Christian” brought back the corn summers and the tent in my small grandfather’s field. The only time I’d heard that word before was when the ex-convict who’d been watching his brother’s farm had mentioned it to me, then failed to explain what it meant.

  “How do I find this church?” I asked.

  “Look for a cross.”

  I was confused. “A cross?”

  The woman looked surprised. She bent down and traced a cross on the ground.

  “Have you never seen that?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “On the walls of hospitals.” It was the symbol for a medical building in North Korea.

  “This is not a hospital. Look for it.”

  I thanked the woman and walked toward the market, looking for a cross. But there was nothing. None of the walls or gates had the familiar lines etched in them. I stopped an old man. “Do you know where I can find a cross?”

  “Look up!”

  “Look up?”

  He pointed to the sky.

  “Look up.”

  And there I saw one, lit against the dark gray clouds. I walked over and knocked on the door. When someone answered, behin
d him or her I could see young men in their early twenties bent over these strange-looking flat boxes, tapping on them. It was the first time I’d seen a computer.

  I told the man at the door that I was from North Korea and was sleeping in the mountains, hoping this would make him feel sorry for me. I needed food and money. I guess I was pretty blunt. Because of the story the ex-convict had told me, I just expected them to help.

  “What does this look like, a bank?” the man said, frowning.

  I froze. I felt I’d said something wrong, but I didn’t know what. Fear prevented me from saying anything else.

  The man sighed and turned away. A couple of minutes later, he returned with a small bag. “Here,” he said. “Come back tomorrow.”

  The bag had some rice and Chinese vegetables in it. I quickly ate the food outside on the sidewalk, then went to the abandoned house I’d spotted to sleep.

  Chapter

  Fifty-One

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY, soon after the sun rose, I was back at the church’s door. This time, the man gave me twenty yuan, the equivalent of about three dollars.

  So it’s true, I thought. Christians are real.

  The church members even gave me new clothes. I took a shower there—more precious than food—and scrubbed every part of my body until I was scraping off skin. Others came to the church to become reborn; I was reborn in physical form. I’d been a walking garbage heap who now emerged as a clean-cut young man who might be a computer programmer or a bank clerk. The Christians hadn’t touched my soul yet, but my body was spotless. Now I looked like a real Chinese teenager, down to my new white sneakers. I asked the church members where I could buy a bus ticket to Yanji, the biggest city in the area.