“Young lady, your laughter is contagious,” she said. “I don’t see enough of that.”
Obediently, as if on cue, the other seamstresses started laughing. It came timidly and forced, but then picked up speed, like a boulder rolling down the side of a mountain. Faces turned red and tears glistened on cheeks. It seemed strange to Gi that everyone laughed, and yet nobody knew why. Perhaps it was only relief.
After a while the laughter began to die down, but some of the women forced their laughter to continue in spite of the natural lull, as if to show off their dedication. As they did this, more and more women forced their laughter, in a chain reaction, so that what was a room filled with hearty laughter at nothing in particular was now a room of forced and compulsory laughter upheld for self-preservation. Everyone was looking around the room, wanting to be neither the first nor the last one to stop. No one wanted to take that chance.
In an attempt to end the cycle, an elderly seamstress stood up and walked to the framed photograph of the Dear Leader on the wall. She kneeled and called out to the picture in gratitude. Then another woman did the same. Then another. Only after prostrating oneself to the Dear Leader was it truly safe to stop laughing. Now that it had started, it would not stop until every person in the room had gone to the photo of the Dear Leader. Not even the presenter could interrupt a person’s display of devotion without fear of punishment. Once it had started, anyone not seen doing it would be considered suspicious. People had disappeared for as much.
“This is going to be a long night,” Il-sun said to Gi.
6
T
HE ORPHANAGE MISTRESS OPENED
the box slowly—restraint was a quality she prized in herself. It was just an ordinary box, like so many others she had seen. She could guess at its contents: several kilos of rice, some kind of dry beans, perhaps a few onions, canned vegetables if she was lucky, maybe some aging root vegetables, and possibly a little bit of soap. Whatever it was would be enough to keep them all from starving. It was the extra thing in the box, the more personal inclusion, whether or not it was even there, that caused her chest to pound. She scolded herself: The food is more important. For the girls.
She removed bags of rice and beans from the box and set them on the counter. She was pleased to find several large carrots, only slightly wilted, and two whole cabbages with more green leaves than brown. There were about a dozen tin cans, all with the labels torn off, presumably to hide their foreign origin. If anyone bothered inspecting the cans closely, they could see that they were not manufactured in
Chosun;
but nobody would be checking them. There was no way to know what was inside the cans until she opened them, but that hardly mattered. There was a small stack of forged ration coupons, neatly banded together. She would have to check them against her legitimate ones to see if she could risk using them, but on first glance they looked passable. For a moment her breath faltered. The box was empty. She brought her hand to her cheek in an unconscious gesture to make sure her face was still there, and not a plate of glass. It was only a small comfort when her fingertips met warm flesh.
Then she saw it. It would have been easy to miss the flat package, wrapped in plain brown paper the same color as the box. She reached in and gingerly lifted it out, relishing all its properties of weight, texture, and color. She brought it to her nose and mouth and inhaled. It smelled vaguely like onions and cardboard, but in her mind it was both sweeter and earthier—a little bit like tree bark, leather, fresh sweat, and ground spices. It was the same aroma still clinging to the air around her from the brief visitor who had come and gone only moments before, delivering the box. Bringing her a gift. She let the package drag at her bottom lip as she lowered it from her face.
The package was thin and rectangular, and the paper was folded with a careless sort of care—the corners and edges sticking out randomly, but the surfaces smoothed over and flattened. She clung to these details as if they were a map to a secret terrain, clues to the heart of the hands that wrapped it.
The mistress savored the action of peeling the paper back, drawing it out for as long as she could. If it were possible, she would take a whole week to open the package. She had to fight an urge to rip at the paper, but she knew that the anticipation of opening it was as much the gift as whatever was inside. Finally the paper was open and slid onto the floor. Her hand went again to her face—her flesh and blood face. She was not invisible.
F
INDING
ENOUGH
FOOD
for the girls was the first obstacle the mistress had to overcome when she took the job at the orphanage six years earlier. Officially, the food shortage was nothing more than a mild inconvenience. In truth, people were dying every day on the streets. According to the state, the
Chosun
people were well cared for in the hands of the Dear Leader, and the distributed ration cards were more than sufficient to feed everyone. Yet even the most obedient
Chosun
could not pretend away the truth, though most of them tried in earnest. If she had relied solely on the rations allotted to the orphanage, many more of the children would have died.
The mistress supplicated her superiors for aid, and when they proved deaf she tried going above them. No one would listen. No one could afford to listen—the food did not exist to be distributed. In desperation, the mistress took the older children and went to the streets to beg.
There was little charity to be found there. People who wanted to help simply could not—it was every person for herself. Three of the younger children became critically ill, and still there was no help. When they died, there was no time or energy for ceremony. A cart came and took them away. There was no shortage of bodies. There was also no shortage of carts, or well-fed carters. This was both a relief, for the sanitation, and an outrage. Once again, the façade of the functioning of the state was more important than the well-being of the people. But that was a dangerous idea. She found it hard to swallow.
The mistress had reached a breaking point. It was a nightmare, and the only thing keeping her from suicide was the thought that so many children needed her. With her, there was little hope; without her, there was no hope at all. She had reached a level of despair and sadness that she had never thought possible. Just when she thought she might lose her mind to the tragedy she was witnessing, a small ray of hope opened up to her.
A man approached her on the street. He was clean and his salt-and-pepper hair was neatly trimmed.
“I think I might be able to help you,” he said. His voice was smooth and reassuring.
There had already been so much rejection and anguish that the mistress was shocked in disbelief, unable to speak.
“I can help you,” he continued. “But you must meet me later at my apartment.”
If the times had been any less desperate, the mistress would have sent the man down the street fleeing a screeching torrent of obscenities. She could not, however, afford to turn down any offer, even dubious or illicit. Either she survived in shame, or she and the children perished in hunger.
“Do you understand what I’m offering you?” the man asked.
The mistress nodded, still not able to find words.
Scared but resolved, the mistress sought out his apartment building on the outskirts of town later that same afternoon. It was a particularly shabby building, with many boarded windows and cracked walls. The stairwell smelled strongly of urine, and she had to stifle her second thoughts—children were starving. She made her way to a door on the fourth floor and, as she had been told, knocked exactly seven times, slowly. The man from the street answered and invited her inside with a subdued hand gesture. He was more handsome than she remembered, having morphed in her imagination, during the intervening hours, into an ogre of sorts. His clothes were a little frayed, but clean, and he had a warm, friendly face. The apartment was mostly bare, except for the portraits of the Great and Dear Leaders, a sleeping mat on the floor, and a small bookshelf with the works of Kim Il-sung. The mistress had an uneasy feeling, but she had already committed herself this far.
At the time, she was in her midtwenties and she had still not lain with anyone. There had certainly been advances from men, but their lurid nature had left her feeling cheap. She wanted her first time to be something special and meaningful. She wanted to be caressed and loved, taken gently by a man who looked
at
her and not through her. She was not holding out for the man of her dreams; she did not care if he was bald, or toothless, or worn out. She just wanted someone who could see her. This was not the scenario she had waited for, but at this point she would have done anything to feed the girls in her care.
“I am sorry to have to be so discreet,” said the man in a near whisper.
The mistress only nodded in response.
“I believe I can help you, but first let me introduce myself. I am Father Lee, but in public please call me Lee Won.” He had a habit of lifting the right side of his lip as he talked, as if he were smelling something foul through only one of his nostrils. This tic was at odds with his otherwise calm demeanor.
The mistress nodded.
“Have you heard of the teachings of Jesus Christ?”
Reflexively she looked over her shoulder at the closed door behind her. This was dangerous talk: To be implicated as a Christian could have dire consequences. She hoped she had not been recognized going into his apartment—there were eyes everywhere. She turned back to him and nodded.
“If you are willing to accept Jesus Christ as your savior and allow me to baptize you in his name, then I will bring food to your orphanage.”
That explained the secrecy. The proposal sounded both easier and more risky than what she had thought she was going to have to do.
“What kind of assistance can I expect, if I do as you say?”
“There are Christian organizations outside the country that work very hard to bring food across the border for their
Chosun
brothers and sisters. The less you know about it, the better it is for everyone. But suffice it to say that every week, more or less, I get a shipment of food and supplies from them. I can make sure that some of that shipment makes it to your orphanage.”
“And what do I have to do, to assure this charity?” She thought she knew the answer, and had steeled herself to go through with it. Surely there had to be a steeper price. She only hoped that it was a onetime fee.
“All I ask of you is to accept Jesus Christ as your savior. Pray to him.”
She would have accepted anyone or anything, animate or inanimate, as her savior for a regular shipment of food for the orphanage. And it seemed that his proposition ended there.
“Fine,” she said, relieved.
“So now I will baptize you in the name of Christ. Please kneel.” Father Lee then performed an incantation and dribbled water over her head. “Now you are officially in the fold of Jesus. Let us pray.” The whole ritual seemed like nonsense to the mistress, but she was not in any position to deride a man who claimed he could help her.
As she was leaving the apartment, Father Lee handed the mistress a book, one of Kim Il-sung’s more popular works. She was confused by the gift until she opened the cover. Instead of the words attributed to the Great Leader, she found, in bold characters, the words
The Holy Bible.
Looking closely, she could see where the binding had been cut and the prohibited book glued in place of the original text. The book was hot lead in her hands—it burned her fingers and exhausted her arms. She knew that if she were caught with it she would be taken away, tortured, and possibly killed. To hold the book was at once frightening and thrilling. She now possessed a deadly secret, which felt both powerful and liberating. Suddenly there was a sense of meaning for her; not because of what was in the book, but for the simple fact that it was forbidden. There was now a place within her where the rigid tendrils of society could not reach. She was no longer just the plain girl with a window for a face—she was a woman with a secret.
7
W
HEN THE GIRLS FINALLY
left the factory and began their walk back to the orphanage, it was already dark. The street was lit by the moon, which was low in the sky over the city, and climbing. The street lights were not working, and there were no vehicles on the road at night to offer even temporary light. The cold, early spring air bit into the bare skin of their faces and hands, and their breath came out in cottonlike puffs. They walked in silence because Il-sun, who was normally animated, was too tired to talk.
During the rare moments when Il-sun was quiet, Gi’s mind had to work double-time to keep itself distracted. On the way home she turned her thoughts to the puffs of steam coming from her mouth as she exhaled. The girls had completed high school, but were not expected to go to university because of their low
songbun
. They had been taught rudimentary mathematics, as well as reading and writing. Being able to read the works of the Great Leader was considered extremely important, and even the lowliest of citizens was expected to have at least some proficiency in reading. Science was a topic that was generally glossed over in favor of the honorable history of the great
Chosun
nation and its leaders. In spite of this, Gi had developed a curiosity about the physical world and the way it works and tried to piece together the mysteries it held. Il-sun took it for granted that when it was cold, her breath would rise from her mouth as a visible vapor. But Gi was aware that there is a subtle order to the workings of nature, and she wanted to figure it out.