“Are you crazy?”
“Aren’t you curious?”
“He gives me the creeps.”
“He looks interesting. Maybe he’ll give us a ride on his scooter!”
“No way.”
“Come on, Gi. Let’s have some fun.”
“I’m going home.”
“I’m going to talk to him. You’ll be jealous after he has driven me all over the city on his scooter and all you’ve done is play dice with a twelve- year-old.”
“You’ll be jealous when I’m playing dice and you’re dead.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“The mistress will kill you, if the guy on the scooter doesn’t.”
“You’ll cover for me, won’t you?”
“Il-sun!”
“Gi!”
Gi paused, then sighed. “Okay. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“You know me.”
“Yes, I do.”
13
G
RANDMOTHER WAS THE FIRST
to go. She died peacefully in her sleep during their first week at the prison camp. The guards had been merciful—mindful of Grandmother’s old age and confusion, they did not overwork her. She was sitting on a stool in the garden pulling weeds the day before she died and, to Gi, looked content. That was the benefit of Grandmother’s confusion: From moment to moment, she could forget who and where she was. Gyong-ho and her parents did not have that luxury.
The family arrived at the prison camp just after dawn and was immediately split up. They were told it was to facilitate reeducation; a rottenness had infected the family, and in order to keep it from spreading among them they needed to be isolated from one another.
The camp was large, like a small city, with miles of dirt roads lined with rows of barracks made of plywood and tin, plus several buildings for labor and reeducation purposes. There was a constant flurry of activity. Guards with rifles patrolled the perimeters and the streets like gangs of angry youth, looking for, and often creating, trouble. The men, women, and children were all housed in separate areas and were not free to roam between them. Gyong-ho was allowed to see her mother for thirty minutes every few days, which was how she learned of her grandmother’s death, but was never permitted to see her father.
The camp was nestled in a deep valley and was surrounded by electric fences topped with razor wire. Guard posts with bored and trigger-happy sharpshooters were spaced every hundred meters, and the inmates were warned of land mines in the surrounding fields. The prisoners were a gaunt and dirty lot, their clothes stained, torn, and foul. They reminded Gyong-ho of farm beasts, wallowing in filth and excrement. The inmates had faraway looks in their eyes, weighed down by grim and sagging mouths. For weeks Gyong-ho walked on tiptoe and made a great effort to keep from making contact with the filth that was all around. Little by little, as her own clothes became stained and smelly and layers of grime coated her body, she began to recognize herself as part of her surroundings, a member of the sallow, sorry community around her.
Gi was assigned to one of the windowless barracks where more than a dozen girls slept on hard, bare planks. She was given a thin blanket, a small tin bowl, and a set of rough wooden chopsticks. These were her only possessions. The blankets had to be particularly well guarded because some of the older girls were inclined to steal them in order to better insulate themselves against the frigid
Chosun
nights.
Gyong-ho cried inconsolably the first night she spent in the crowded and dirty room. She was frightened and missed her family. The guard assigned to her dormitory, a severe woman in a crisp uniform, irritated by the noise, jerked her by the arm into the street outside and told her that if she did not stop breaking the Dear Leader’s peace immediately, her mother would be brought out and shot dead in front of her. Her vivid, eight-year-old’s imagination could visualize it clearly; and with every ounce of strength that she possessed, she swallowed her grief and tears. With no outlet, however, the wailing echoed inside her, filling her up, reverberating until her every moment was saturated with it. It was a constant background hum.
14
T
HE MISTRESS STOOD, HOLDING
the gift gently with her fingertips as if it might crumble into dust. The young man had seen her, and understood her, even without words. They were kindred outlaws, treasonous in their thoughts and desires.
The brown paper had fallen to reveal a clear cellophane package stapled closed at the top, together with a thin cardboard label. The label was printed with what she recognized as Chinese characters, though she could not read them, and below that was a foreign script—perhaps English or French, or even German. She carefully removed the label by prizing up the staples, and then set it on her dresser. She would hide it later in the pages of her Bible, along with the few other foreign wrappings and newsprint scraps that had been stowed away in previous food boxes. She cherished these illegal snippets.
Gingerly, she withdrew a new pair of sheer, white nylon stockings from the cellophane. They had been wrapped around a piece of cardboard to preserve their shape in the package. They were smooth and pristine, never before worn. She slipped a hand into one of them, pulling the stitched toe over her fingertips, careful not to snag any threads on her fingernails. The fabric was cool on her skin. It had been several years since she had had new stockings.
She brought her hand up to her face so that she could feel the virgin cloth on her cheeks and across her lips. The mistress ached to be a woman—she so often felt like a machine. There was something suggestive about the gift, more intimate than the hand mirror he had brought the week before, or the hair clip several weeks before that. It was as if, when she wore the stockings, he too would be sheathing her feet, her calves, her knees. What would it feel like inside the stockings, his hands sliding over her legs?
T
HE
GIFTS
WERE
a recent development in the boxes delivered by the young man. The first one she had found in the rice when she was unpacking the box. It was small, and wrapped in a ragged, old piece of newspaper. She pulled back the wrapping to discover a fancy hair clip tucked inside, made of polished wood with an ornate leaf pattern carved into it. It was held together with a strong spring and looked new. She fished in the box for a note, or some indication that the young man had intended it for her; that it had not accidentally fallen into the box on its way to some other, less featureless girl. There was no note, so she looked more closely at the wrapping. It was randomly and raggedly torn, with no apparent hidden message in its clipped content. Looking more closely, she realized that it was from no ordinary
Chosun
newspaper. In fact, it was not
Chosun
at all. It was clearly
Hanguk,
being torn from the middle of an article about an art installation in Seoul. It was pedestrian, commonplace, exotic, and, best of all, illegal. Potentially lethal. She smoothed the wrinkles out of the paper and hid it within the pages of her Bible.
The next time the young man came, she made a point of wearing the hair clip and showing a lot of profile in hopes that he would see it on her and mention it, or at least confirm in some way that it was truly meant for her. He said nothing, and so, in frustration, neither did she. That same day, however, there was another small package in the box. This time it was a music box that played an unfamiliar tune when its lid was lifted. The mistress realized that this was more than a coincidence, that these presents were clearly left for her.
Almost every week since then there had been something, some small token, left for her. In her entire life she had never felt so real.
15
I
T WAS LATE AT
night and Foreman Hwang was sitting in his office, poring over papers at a scratched old desk, a dim electric bulb above casting a small circle of light around him. The factory was otherwise dark and empty. Three loud bangs rang out from the large metal loading-dock doors. The foreman looked up at a clock on the wall. Ten-thirty. The boy was always punctual.
He rose painfully from his chair and limped the length of the factory to the loading dock. He lifted the rusty bar off the doors and opened one of them a crack. The faint light coming across the factory through his office door was barely enough to illuminate the face of the man standing outside. He was young and full faced, and wearing a strange foreign cap.
If this boy was not so bloody useful
, the foreman thought,
I would love to hit him across the face with a board. That would wipe off his insubordinate grin.
“Do you have something for me?” The foreman’s voice sounded like dry leaves crumbling together, which made the young man feel like swallowing.
“I do, if you are still able to do something for me,” came the reply.
“Have I ever let you down, you disrespectful little shit?”
“Not yet.”
“I have half a mind to turn you in just to watch you be shot.”
“But before they shoot me, I will have told them all about you, you dirty pervert.”
The foreman looked as if he had been slapped.
“Relax, old man. I may be many things, but a rat isn’t one of them.”
“You’re a lowlife and a criminal.”
“But I also have what you want.” The young man produced a brown paper bag and handed it to him. The foreman took it quickly and held it behind the door. He unfolded the top of the bag and looked inside: two large bottles and a bundle of magazines. He felt a wave of gratitude for the young man.
“Don’t let me down, Colonel. I’m going to need your help soon.”
“Everything is already prepared.”
16
I
L-SUN WAITED FOR
G
YONG-HO’S
breathing to become deep and regular. It always took so long for her to get to sleep, and tonight it seemed that she would never settle down. Gi tossed back and forth on her sleeping mat. Several times she inhaled sharply as if she were about to speak, but then said nothing. Il-sun had the sense that she was chewing on some kind of an explanation or apology but could not find the right words to begin; and she hoped that Gi would not find them. She did not want to talk about it. It was painful to be so near her internal struggle and yet not be able to offer help. The problem was that Gi wanted something that Il-sun could not provide: more closeness, when Il-sun was needing more space. Lately Gyong-ho seemed so . . . childish, clinging with ever greater tenacity to the games and play of girlhood, just as Il-sun was trying to shed them to be more womanly. She was embarrassed now to be seen with Gyong-ho, who was so awkward and insular.
Il-sun rolled over, turning her back to her friend, and feigned sleep. She was just able to shake herself awake before slipping from consciousness. The pull of dreams had almost drawn her under—she was so tired lately. Gyong-ho’s breathing was now heavy and rhythmic, so Il-sun shed her blanket and sat up on her mat. She had laid out her clothes next to her sleeping mat in such a way that she could dress without fumbling in the dark. There was not even a hint of moonlight, and the room was in absolute darkness. She wished that she had better clothes; her nicest outfit was her factory uniform, which she donned with a grimace. If only her mother had not died.
She began tiptoeing toward the stairs. Just as she was starting to believe she had made a clean getaway, she stumbled loudly on a pile of books one of the girls kept near her mat.
“Il-sun?” Gi cut the darkness with a loud whisper.
“I’m just going to the latrine, Gi. Go back to sleep.”
“Where are you going?”
“I told you, to the latrine. I’ll be right back.”
“You’re going to meet him again, aren’t you?”
“Shhhhhhh! I just told you, I’m only going to the toilette. Now go to sleep!”
“Il-sun—”
“Shhhh! I’ll see you in the morning.” With that she turned and made her way to the stairs. She descended them in twos, making an effort to miss the squeakier steps. She felt a moment of pride for having had the guile to plot the quietest route the day before. There was a certain thrill in doing what was forbidden. She had left her sneakers in the corner of the foyer at the bottom of the stairs so that she could easily find them, and sat on the floor to put them on. When she stood back up, she found herself facing the portrait of the Dear Leader. She could only barely make out the edges of the frame, but his image was already burned so deeply into her mind that her eyes did not need light to see it. Without thinking, by some latent reflex emboldened by the near perfect darkness, she formed a ball of saliva in her mouth and spit upward at the photograph. She felt a moment of tickled delight, knowing that she had just defiled the most sacred of images and that no one had seen her commit the crime. She stared into the blackness at the point where she knew the eyes to be and spit again. And again. She stood there for a moment, reeling in the power of what she had done.