The Revisionists

by Thomas Mullen

  “My point,” Hyun Ki said, “is that it will not do for a servant of mine to be seen, in the city, or by guests, with bruises. How do you think we look if our servant has a bruise?”

  “Who cares how we look? And who knows she’s ours?”

  “I care how I look. I am paid to care how I look.”

  “The cast comes off next week, so we won’t have to send her to the store anymore. I’ll be able to get around for myself.”

  “Good. But we’ll need groceries before then. Figure out how to order them online if you can’t keep from hitting the girl until then, all right?”

  Their conversation turned to other complaints, and Sari felt she’d been standing there long enough, so she lightly stepped down the stairs.

  An hour later, after the babies woke again and she rocked them back to sleep, she went into the kitchen to get some water. Hyun Ki was doing the same. She lowered her eyes as he turned to face her.

  “They’re still waking a lot, aren’t they?”

  She could smell alcohol on his breath. “Yes.” She dared to lie. “I think it’s getting better.”

  He stepped aside so she could use the faucet. She started filling her glass.

  “Sometimes I myself have trouble sleeping,” he said. Then his right hand was on her forearm. She froze as his fingers lightly stroked her skin. He was standing just behind her, closer than he’d ever been.

  She didn’t know where Sang Hee was. She remembered Leo’s words: They can do anything they want to you.

  She dropped the glass. It was full and heavy, and it landed with a loud clang but didn’t break. She hadn’t meant to do that, but it worked; he backed off. Water had splashed on her shirt and maybe gotten him as well. She apologized for the mess, but he was already walking away.

  That night she dreamed of her mother again.

  I don’t know what to do, Sari said. The situation in this house is horrible, but if they catch me sneaking around on them…

  You’ve always been so cautious. But maybe it’s time to take a chance.

  Mother, am I their slave?

  If you’re trying to break free, if you believe you can escape, then you won’t be a slave forever.

  But I’m one now?

  Don’t waste time wondering about this. You should be planning how you’re going to get the information the American wants.

  I want to see him again, but Sang Hee’s ankle will heal soon. She’s already out of her hard cast. Then the only way I’ll be able to communicate with him is through notes in the garbage.

  There’s one more thing I need to tell you.

  What is it?

  Wake up!

  Sari sat up in bed at the sound of the crash. Then came the screaming.

  She hurried out of the bedroom, hitting the light switch. At the end of the hallway, by the front door, a reflection of the light moved along the floor. A glass, empty and thick enough to have survived the fall intact, rolled to a stop at the fallen Sang Hee. All Sari could see of the mistress was a pile of purple bathrobe, a white knee, and a foot with green-painted toenails. The fabric thrashed, and Sang Hee screamed again.

  Hyun Ki ran down the stairs and bent over his wife. They spoke so quickly and angrily that Sari couldn’t follow everything. Something about trying to fetch water, the crutch getting caught in the banister. He tried to help her up but she howled in pain.

  The diplomat looked at Sari and told her to tend to Hana. Only then did Sari realize the little girl was crying in her room. Hyun Ki helped his wife hobble to the living room, and Sari smelled alcohol on her mistress’s breath as she passed her. Sari ran upstairs and into Hana’s room, her shadow cast faintly on the wall by the night-light. “Everything’s all right, go to sleep.” She rubbed Hana’s back and spoke softly, making herself into a fragment of a dream. The tiny clock on her bedside table said it was half past two.

  She was still sitting there minutes later, and Hana was softly sailing back down her nocturnal river, when Hyun Ki’s silhouette appeared in the doorway. He whispered that he had to take Sang Hee to the hospital—it looked like she’d rebroken her ankle, or worse. He told her to take care of the children while they were gone.

  Sari watched through the window as the SUV pulled out of the driveway. She prayed that the twins wouldn’t wake up, and then she walked into the hallway and saw that in the Shims’ panic they had forgotten to close, let alone lock, the master bedroom door.

  Was it really this easy?

  She crept downstairs, entered her room, and opened the closet. Beneath a stack of extra blankets was the scanning device Leo had given her. Then she walked upstairs, holding her breath as she passed Hana’s doorway. She quietly closed the master bedroom door behind her, turning the lights on but keeping the dimmer low. This was the only room in the house she did not clean, as Sang Hee had made it clear she was not allowed inside. Entering their matrimonial space felt alien, and as she stood looking at the unfamiliar photographs and decorative fabric, she realized how little she really knew these people whom she’d been living with for weeks. She was exhausted, and the usual heaviness behind her eyes was there, but her heartbeat was fast, and she realized her hands were shaking.

  Where to begin? There were two desks crammed in the bay window, as well as a tall filing cabinet whose doors were locked. Surely there was a key somewhere.

  She opened his unlocked desk drawers, flipped through some papers. She tried to make note of the exact arrangement of everything she touched, but she worried that she was so tired and nervous that she’d botch this, that they’d know instantly what she’d done. She saw Hyun Ki’s computer on one of the tables and turned it on. Leo had told to her what to do; she had some experience using computers but none doing the bizarre copying that he required. She tried to remember the steps, nervously pressing the keys and inserting the flash drive he’d given her.

  Only the next morning would she realize she could have called Leo, asked his advice while she fumbled along. But what she’d felt more than anything at that moment was alone, alone in other people’s words, in their language, in their sparsely decorated little world. She understood little, but she grabbed what she could, hoping it was important, hoping this mattered.

  Sari was sitting on the living room floor with the babies when the Shims returned. Sang Hee was still on crutches, and the soft cast had been replaced by a harder one, larger than before, extending almost to her knee. She made eye contact with Sari and wordlessly handed the crutches to her husband, then hopped up the stairs on her good foot.

  Sari was more nervous than before, afraid they could somehow see the guilt in her eyes. But mixed with that was an undeniable pleasure at seeing pain in Sang Hee’s face.

  While the shower ran upstairs, Hyun Ki barked at Sari for not having his breakfast ready. Carrying one of the little ones with her, she hurried into the kitchen and made it for him.

  “My wife is in a lot of pain,” he said between bites. His eyes were red and his hair was badly combed. “You are to take her meals upstairs, as she’s less mobile than before. Do whatever she asks and don’t give her any lip, understood?”

  She said of course, and then he was gone. The flash drive was hidden between the mattress and box spring of her bed, where it would stay until that night, when she would hide it in the recycling bin for Leo to retrieve.

  “How were the children last night?” Sang Hee asked as Sari carried her lunch into the bedroom.

  “Fine, ma’am. Hana woke briefly but fell back asleep right away. She probably doesn’t even remember it.”

  “You think a daughter could forget the sound of her mother crying out in pain so easily?”

  She hesitated. “Of course not.”

  Sang Hee watched her for a moment as she placed the plate and glass on the bedside table.

  “You’re a very careful girl, aren’t you?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Nothing. You can go.”

  The rest of the day was normal, task after task
after task, occasionally interrupted by tense moments with Sang Hee. After Hyun Ki came home and the couple ate dinner, Sari put the babies to bed, then took out the garbage and the recycling. She hid the flash drive in an empty can, placing it exactly where Leo had told her to. She felt nervous as she did this, but surely no one could tell this was different from any other garbage night. While crouching there at the sidewalk, she gave the briefest of glances down the street, the rows of cars parked on either side. Was Leo sitting in one of them right now? Was he watching her?

  She walked into the house through the back door, resisting the temptation to look over her shoulder at the innocent-appearing trash and recycling bins. To her surprise, Sang Hee was sitting at the kitchen table, alone, with a bottle of whiskey and a glass.

  “Excuse me,” Sari said, lowering her eyes.

  “Sit down,” Sang Hee said. “Have a drink with me.”

  Sari had never received anything remotely resembling a social invitation from Sang Hee before. She took a glass from the cabinet, fully expecting the mistress to laugh and rescind the invitation. As Sari filled her glass at the faucet, Sang Hee said, “No, I said have a drink with me. You aren’t Muslim, girl, right? You can drink?”

  “Yes,” Sari said, emptying her glass in the sink and sitting down hesitantly. Sang Hee poured her some whiskey.

  “Tell me, what do you think of my family?”

  “It is a beautiful family, madam.”

  Sang Hee’s face was a mask. “What else do you think?”

  “I think Hana is very precocious. I think she will be a diplomat like her father, or whatever she wishes to be.”

  “What would you do to have a family like mine?”

  “I… I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “It’s perfect, isn’t it? Two cute babies, a sweet little girl. An attractive husband. Don’t blush—I’m only stating a fact. He is a good-looking man. I’ve done well for myself, haven’t I?”

  “You have, madam.”

  “You haven’t touched your drink.”

  Sari touched it, barely.

  “One day maybe you’ll have a family for yourself. After our stay here is finished, after we’ve all gone back to Korea and you’ve scurried off to some other job. Maybe you’ll meet a nice young immigrant, some handsome dark-skinned man, who will take away your maidenhood and offer you something in return.”

  Sari stared at her glass.

  “And you’ll bear him children, and they’ll suck on your round breasts and grow fat, and they will be so cute. You at least will think they’re cute, even if others don’t. So, you’ll be happy. Imagine that for a moment. Are you imagining it?”

  “Madam?”

  “You need to imagine it.” Sang Hee’s voice hardened. “Close your eyes. This only works if you really, really imagine it.”

  Sari was afraid to close her eyes around Sang Hee but more afraid of disobeying. She closed her eyes.

  “Imagine your dark-skinned man. Maybe it was someone you knew back in Indonesia, or maybe someone you saw in the slums at Seoul. A construction worker, a janitor, I don’t know. Imagine him, and imagine him taking you, and imagine the family you create. Now imagine a few years later. There are times you feel tired of him and unappreciated, yes, there are times you wish you could return to the happy courtship days, but overall you’re happy. It’s life. It has its trials and its pleasures.”

  There was a pause as Sang Hee sipped, and Sari wondered if she was allowed to open her eyes yet. She was about to ask when Sang Hee continued.

  “But then things change. I forgot to tell you, you aren’t in South Korea, you’re in North Korea. It’s different there. People think they’re in paradise but they’re not. They’re brought up to believe that it’s heaven on earth, but it’s not, and it only gets worse. One day your husband is angry with you because of something you did—nothing terrible, just some trivial thing, that’s how marriage is—and when he’s out with his friends he gets carried away and says things he shouldn’t. Not about you, but about the Dear Leader. The Dear Leader is what we call God over in North Korea, only it isn’t God, it’s a man, and he is not dear. Your husband says things he shouldn’t, and a few days later the government sends people to your home and they take your husband away. They don’t say why. The night passes and he does not return. All night long you are terrified. Your children—two little girls—ask where he is and you lie to them. You say he will be home soon. But you assume the worst, because this is what happens to people who say the wrong thing. You don’t sleep for two days, and you don’t leave the house, because you can’t bear to tell any of your friends. You’re afraid that if they find out, they will shun you. You would do the same thing to them, after all, and you have.

  “One week later he returns with the government people, and his eyes are black and his skin is sickly and he looks so much thinner. After just one week. He tells you that the family is moving out of the city, to the north, to work new jobs. Are you imagining it?”

  Sari told her that she was.

  “So you go north, with your cute children, and you live in a shack with no heat in a destitute little village. Not even a village—a camp, and surrounding it are walls and big ugly guards with guns who call you names and say they’d love to fuck you sometime when your dark-skinned man isn’t around. So you never walk near the walls again, and you warn your cute little girls to stay away too. Your new shack has thin walls and the only heat comes from a small stove—it’s very cold in autumn, and winter is unbearable. You are told that you are a miner now, and they make you crawl into caves and smash a hammer against stone until your fingers feel that they’re breaking off. This is important work for the revolution, they say. Your husband does the same job, in a different mine. You only see him at night, when you’re too tired to talk to each other. You eat thin broth and less than a handful of rice every day. Your children are sent to a special school in the camp where they are told that you and your husband are traitors, evil people who think wicked thoughts and cannot be trusted. Your children stop talking to you. You lose ten kilograms, then fifteen, then more. Your children look terrible. They get sick a lot, and you try to treat them, and it’s the only time they don’t yell at you and call you impure. But the camp doesn’t have any good medicines, so their illnesses linger. You almost prefer them when they’re sick, because at least they let you hold them again. Are you still imagining this?”

  “Yes.” Sari’s voice was faint. It was like she barely existed. Sang Hee’s voice blotted her out.

  “You’re a liar. You can’t imagine it. It’s impossible. It’s something that just happens, and even then you can’t understand it. There is no way a pretty little thing sitting in a clean kitchen with a full stomach can imagine it.” Sari heard Sang Hee pour more whiskey. “But keep trying. And stop ignoring your glass.”

  Sari took another sip.

  “The other thing you can’t imagine is the time. Years. You think you will go insane, and then you do go insane, but it keeps going on. And I forgot to tell you: The people in this camp do not talk to one another. You have all been warned. You are impure elements and cannot be allowed to exchange information, share your dirty germs. You are allowed to speak the bare minimum of words while working in the mines, but that’s it. The isolation is unbearable. To see so many faces and never know what their voices sound like. Now and then there are mine explosions and people die. Now and then people try to escape, but they’re always caught. If they aren’t shot during the attempt, they’re brought in for a public execution. You lose track of how many of these you’ve had to watch. Your little girls have to watch too. After the people who tried to escape are killed, their families are too.”

  Sari could feel the drink affecting her, making her head heavy and her toes warm. Fear kept her awake, yet she felt herself descending into a nightmare. She wanted Sang Hee to stop and let her sleep.

  The mistress told her to drink more.

  “Then something happens. Someth
ing you had not expected, because you had stopped expecting things. One of the new functionaries in charge of the camp is someone you knew from the city. Back when you were a human being. He has just been sent to replace someone, and he sees you walking toward the mine. You look away, ashamed and afraid. The next morning, on your way to work, he summons you into his office. It’s a dirty old building with flimsy walls, but compared to your shack it feels luxurious. You walk past the other clerks, people who have spat at you, and you keep your head down. Then you are alone in his office and he closes the door. He offers you tea. You are too scared to refuse. The two of you knew each other growing up. You went to school together, and you liked him. Only after his family moved away and you grew older did you realize that he’d liked you too but had been too shy to tell you. His family would visit the old neighborhood every now and then, which is the only reason you recognize him now that he’s a man. You’re surprised that he recognizes you, because you are so much thinner and uglier than before.”

  Sari heard Sang Hee take a sip. She told Sari to do the same. It was smoky on Sari’s lips, numbing on her tongue.

  “You sit there as he pulls a file and reads, and you know he is reading about you and your husband, about what your husband said.”

  Then there was proof that the drink was affecting Sari: she asked a question. “What had my husband said?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Whatever they say he said. You sit there while the functionary reads about your life, your rotten and tiny little life, and then he talks to you and asks how you are. You lie, of course. You tell him the Dear Leader provides all that your family needs, you thank him for his beneficence, you say that you are so fortunate to have been granted all this despite the horrible act your husband committed. Then he sends you back to the mines. You wonder if you were rude not to inquire about his own family, but you’d been too nervous. The overseers at the mine punish you for being late—two slaps in the face, and you aren’t given any lunch.