“I want to go home,” Il-sun said quietly, coming out of her daze.
“This is home, teacup. The sooner you get used to that the better it will be for you,” Cho replied.
“What do you think they want from us?” asked Gi.
“Haven’t you figured that out yet?” Cho asked with sharp amusement.
Gi looked down in shame of her own ignorance.
“I can’t do it. I won’t!” Il-sun burst, and then began to sob.
“Do you think you’re too good for that, teacup?” Cho’s voice was full of ridicule. “What, did you think Gianni was going to take you away and marry you? What a fool! Let me tell you about your friend Gianni: He sold you, sold us all, for cigarettes and whiskey. The only person he cares about is himself. He’s gone now, teacup, so just forget about him. You’re in the meat industry now.” Cho turned away from her and walked toward the window. Il-sun began wailing and fell to the floor. Gyong-ho was confused, not understanding the comment about the meat industry. She knelt next to Il-sun and draped her arms around her.
Cho looked out the window for a moment thoughtfully, then she softened. She turned and put her arms around the two girls on the floor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be unkind. Look, we’re in this situation now and there isn’t a lot we can do about it. I was tricked too, and I feel angry about it. But you heard Mr. Choy. If we work hard we can pay off our debts; then eventually we can either get papers or try to go back home. I’ve been selling flowers for two years now. You get used to it.”
Cho’s comment upset Il-sun more than it comforted her, and she cried harder. Gyong-ho was perplexed by the connection between selling flowers and the meat industry. She wished Cho would stop speaking in riddles, but she was too ashamed to ask for clarification.
38
I
L
-
SUN
WAS
NUMB
.
F
IRST
she had had the biggest fright of her life, fearing that she was going to be arrested for treason and all that that implied. Then there was the horror of having to flee the country and nearly being arrested at the checkpoint. It was all going to be okay, though, as long as she was with Gianni. She had been feeling a kind of giddiness lately that she had never known before, something biological, and possibly even spiritual. Whenever she saw him, her heart would race and her palms would begin to sweat. When he said her name, which was not often, she would quiver from someplace deep down—she might have been the only woman, or certainly the most important woman, in the world. Whatever the feeling, she no longer felt like a girl. He had promised to lift her out of mediocrity. He had promised that he would take care of her. He had promised so much. All of that
had
to mean something, didn’t it? Because her feelings for him were so strong, didn’t he also have to feel that way about her? Gianni was supposed to be her man: It felt like destiny.
Love, in
Chosun
, was meant to be a partnership to benefit the glory of the state. Even the popular films portrayed love as a happy sort of friendship where the couple comes together in some revolutionary cause. Personal satisfaction and glory are an insignificant secondary element of love. For romance, one had to read between the lines. Even still, the married seamstresses at the factory would giggle knowingly and make vague, lurid references to the marriage bed. She had not understood those comments much, until recently.
But now the shock was too much. Gianni had deserted her—no, had sold her, to strange men in a foreign country. It was unimaginable. She retraced every moment she had spent with him to try to find where she had gone wrong. What had she done to upset him? Surely there was some inner failing that she could have mended, had she been aware of it, and he would not have been so eager to abandon her across the border, away from him forever. Had he meant none of the sweet promises he had whispered in her ear, the ones that had a way of undoing buttons and untucking blouses? Could a man lie about such sacred things?
The ride in the van from the DMZ was a blur. Even what must have been a fascinating glimpse of the imperialist-occupied South went unnoticed. Wave after wave of terror, grief, denial, and even moments of utter resignation had rippled through her; and the balance of those feelings was to feel nothing. There was no fight at all inside her. It had been drained out of her the moment Gianni broke her heart.
Someone handed her some food in a paper wrapper, and Gyong-ho encouraged her to eat it, but she could not. Hungry as she had been since her mother died, she could not open her stomach to it. The thought occurred to her that if she never ate again, she would die; and that seemed fine—a sweet relief. Even being shepherded into the building and taken up the stairs to a small apartment, she did not take in the details. It was not until the lock clicked shut behind her that the gravity of their situation began to take hold.
Il-sun had only the vaguest of notions why two
Hanguk
men would want to buy women. She was still so close to her innocence that it was almost easy to retreat back into it, but Cho brought that effort up short with her snappy innuendoes. The world now was much too big a place.
39
I
T
WAS
DUSK
WHEN
Mr. Choy and Mr. Lee returned, bringing with them a sack of rice, a few vegetables, canned food items, towels, and a bar of soap.
“Once we know we can trust you, we’ll fix your doorknob so you can open the door from inside your room. You’ll be able to use the toilet and go to the showers freely,” Mr. Choy explained. “There is always someone at the gate and you are not to leave this floor unless you are chaperoned. For the time being, you will be doing most of your work in this building. We will bring you food and supplies.”
“But we have to pay for them, right?” asked Cho.
“We will keep a running tab, and do all the accounting for you. Once you pay off your debts, as I have already said, then we will work on getting papers for you; but not before.”
“How long will that take?” asked Il-sun.
“That all depends on you: how hard you work, what kind of work you do for us, what kind of a tab you run up, that sort of thing,”
“What are our choices for work?” asked Il-sun.
“For the two of you,” he pointed to Il-sun and Cho, “there are more options because you’re pretty.” He then looked at Gi. “I’m still not quite sure what to do with you,” he said. “What’s your name?”
Gi’s mumbled reply was unintelligible.
“What was that?”
“Her name is Gyong-ho,” said Il-sun, scowling.
“Gyong-ho? A boy’s name?”
“My parents wanted a boy,” whispered Gi.
“Well, you don’t have quite the looks that these two do. But there are still options.”
“What
are
the options?” asked Cho, frustrated by his elusiveness.
“Okay, I’ll spell it out. Have you bumpkins heard of the Internet?” He said the word
Internet
in English. They had not, so they shook their heads.
“The Internet is an information system that reaches around the world that people access using computers. You do know what computers are, don’t you?”
They nodded.
“When you connect to the Internet, anything you want to know, you simply type it in and the information just pops right up, complete with pictures, sounds, and video.”
The women looked incredulous. If such a thing existed, surely
Chosun,
the most advanced, sophisticated society in the world, would have it.
Mr. Choy chuckled woodenly. “I have seen this before with you Northerners. You think your culture is so superior, with your Great Leader and all, that you don’t believe in anything you haven’t seen before. I’ll show you tomorrow. Anyway, there is a lot of money just floating around the Internet—people buying things all over the world. If there’s one thing that’s certain, sex sells. Men all over the world will pay good money to watch a pretty young girl take her clothes off. It’s called a strip show.”
“So all we have to do is take our clothes off for this . . . Internet?” asked Cho. Gi and Il-sun looked terrified.
“That’s one option,” Mr. Choy replied. “Of course, that doesn’t pay as well as other things you could do.”
“Such as?” Cho’s frustration was apparent.
“Well, men will pay more if you’re willing to do things for them, like if they ask you to touch your tits, and you do it for them in real time, right there on the Internet. Then, of course, you get paid more.”
“Real time?” Gi was unaware that there could be a distinction between real time and any other time.
Could there be artificial time?
“It’s an Internet saying. It means it’s happening right now and streaming on the Internet live.” Mr. Choy could see that the women were still confused. “You’ll understand it when you see it. But the fastest way to pay us back,” he paused to make sure they were listening, “is to see private clients.”
“What does that mean?” asked Il-sun, her face losing its color.
“You know what it means,” snapped Cho severely. She folded her arms across her chest. Il-sun looked stung, and hung her head. Gyong-ho was confused. “So how much time, if we see ‘private clients’?” Cho asked.
“Could be as little as six months, if you work hard.”
“And if all we do is take our clothes off?”
“
Quite
a lot longer,” Mr. Choy said enigmatically.
Cho looked away thoughtfully. Then she turned back to the two men and asked, “Do you have a cigarette?
Mr. Lee reached into his pocket, withdrew a half-empty pack and handed it to her, along with a book of matches. Cho tapped the pack to remove a cigarette and lit it. She took two deep drags. Everyone stood in silence as the women absorbed the information.
“And what happens if we refuse?” Cho’s arms were still folded across her chest, her clawlike hand clutching her cigarette.
Mr. Choy took on a hard, stern look, the hint of a dangerous rage rippling across his eyes. It was a look that said his friendly, accommodating exterior was a thin crust over a far more volatile core. He smiled wryly and said, “If you refuse to work for me, I will have no choice but to hand you over to the American army, who will rape, torture, and kill you. Of course, the choice is yours.”
A
S
DUSK
GAVE
way to night, the alleyway below came to life. Bright lights lit up the walls of the building next door and flooded the apartment with a red glow. The street outside, which had been relatively quiet during the day, teemed with vehicles. Loud music was emanating from somewhere nearby, a driving bass line and pounding drums causing the apartment to pulse and vibrate. For Gyong-ho, the sound was overwhelming and made her anxious.
The activity within the building increased after dark as well. The gate guarded by Razor opened regularly, hinges squeaking, and closed with a bang. Voices drifted up and down the hallway and doors slammed. Male laughter cut through the thin walls. In the apartment next door there was a rhythmic slamming of something hard against their adjoining wall. A woman groaned loudly over and over again, sighing and calling out. A man grunted wildly into the night.
Il-sun, Gyong-ho, and Cho were exhausted from lack of sleep. The women bedded down in the small European-style bed, Cho and Gi on the outsides with Il-sun in the middle. It was a tight fit, even for three small women, and they lay with their arms around one another for lack of anywhere else to put them. Gi enjoyed the closeness with Il-sun and was comforted to inhale her sweet scent. She had not showered—none of them had because they were afraid to ask to leave the apartment—and there was an earthy pungency to Il-sun’s sweetness that Gi liked. She smelled real and alive, almost animal. In spite of her exhaustion, Gi could not sleep.
Chosun
nights were quiet and dark, even in the city, and the constant intrusion of sounds was too much for her. The apartment felt vulnerable without portraits of the Great and Dear Leaders to protect them.
As Gyong-ho lay there with her eyes closed, she listened with wonder to the sound of traffic. She could hear layers of traffic, in an endless radius, like floating in a vast sea of motors and tires and horns. It was as spectacular as it was terrifying. Finally, about an hour before dawn, she fell into a fitful sleep.
40
M
R
.
C
HOY
AWOKE
AT
eleven, the whore still passed out in his bed.
At least she didn’t puke on the satin sheets,
he thought to himself. His mouth was dry and tasted like gin, so he put on a silk robe. His apartment was long, and each footfall jarred his aching head as he padded his way to the kitchen at the other end. It was very modern, crisp, and clean—almost industrial—made of stainless steel and glass, exposed iron beams and concrete. The length of the apartment offered large picture windows with a spectacular view of downtown Seoul. Business was good. He poured himself a tall glass of orange juice from a carton, and drank it back in one lift of his arm. The fog on his brain lifted a little.