“How could your son ever be the leader of North Korea? Don’t his looks reveal that he has ‘American imperialist bastard’ blood, as that fascinating biography of Jong Il so insistently puts it?”
She came to a sudden stop, knocking her walking stick against the stout base of a towering pine tree, startling a flock of doves to spiral off into the sky like roman candles, wings whistling through the air. “You don’t know what he looks like?”
“No, why should I?”
With a little laugh she said, “I thought everyone in the world knew what he looked like!”
“Well, I know what Kim Jong Il looks like,” I said. “And I think you have crap taste in men.”
Jaw clacking open and shut like a marionette’s, she laughed in high-pitched, staccato bursts. “Oh, Lisa, you can get away with saying that out here”—her hands flowered underneath the perfect blue sky—“but you must learn to control your tongue if you are to be of any use.” Resuming our climb, she said, “To be perfectly honest, I didn’t choose him. He chose me. When a powerful world leader says he wants you, well, that makes a girl feel really special. He gave me all this.” Her beringed fingers fanned wide to indicate the trees, the sky, the earth, her bodyguard, who dogged us like a grotesque shadow, and me. “He loves me so much that he keeps me locked away, at some peril to himself.”
“What, even you can’t leave here?”
She jangled her head back and forth, making her pigtails dance. “I don’t think that would be advisable, no. For many reasons. The most important of which is my son. Ah, here we are!”
We had crested a ridge to arrive at a vermilion-roofed pagoda that was perched in front of a rocky outcropping tufted with hummocks of pale green moss and feather-finned ferns, argent trickles of water lacing between them. Waiting as the burly guard laid the table with a surprisingly deft delicacy, I peered down into a wild valley that stretched far below us, a distant roar telling me that the thread of silver that could be glimpsed stitching the thick tapestry of lush foliage was a river. I took careful note of that, for in the accounts of people lost in the wilderness that I’d read, they always followed the river to civilization.
Honey eagerly heaped her plate with food. “It’s such a relief to once again satisfy my appetite.” Gingerly patting her midriff, she said, “Still a little puffy from the lipo. But in a few weeks my tummy will be flat as this table.”
“Did Dr. Panzov do your liposuction?”
Crunching on a drumstick of fried chicken, she nodded. “He is indispensable to me.”
“Is he the one who did that to Yolanda’s face? Because she is not exactly a convincing advertisement for the benefits of plastic surgery.”
“Ah, Yolanda. She is a true friend. She has sacrificed much for me. She is not happy about your arrival, though,” Honey noted with spiteful satisfaction. “She sees you, quite rightly, as a rival for my affections.”
No stranger myself to jealousy, I felt a brief pang of sympathy for Yolanda, who seemed to have sacrificed so much for Honey and received so little in return. “What happened to Yolanda? Was she in some sort of accident?”
The high cry of a hawk skittered like a stone skipping across the lake of the sky.
“She did it for my son. For little Jonny.”
Another hawk’s cry, a mournful warning that sent a shiver down my back. “Jonny had his face redone? So that he would look like a full-blooded Korean?”
Tipping her eyes up at me with a coquettish glance, she exclaimed gleefully, “See, you are smart! You can figure things out for yourself, if you will only think. I know as an American, you are not used to having to think to survive, but you’ll have to get used to doing that as a North Korean.”
She made it sound as if being North Korean was merely a state of mind, like being in love or achieving nirvana. “Is Yolanda supposed to look Korean?”
“She kindly consented to being a guinea pig, especially for the eyes, which was tricky. Making an Asian eye Western is a well-researched field, but making an eye look more Asian? It had never been done before! She also helped with the cheek and jaw implants, which made Jonny’s face look rounder and much more like his grandfather’s. Vladimir didn’t have to do anything to the chin, though. That chin, with the dimple, is pure genetics.”
“And the nose?” I asked, my fingers wandering up to my own.
“Yes, of course. The nose.” She also passed a quick stroke of a red-glossed nail over the cubist angles of her nose. “Vlad didn’t need any training with that. That was his specialty, and how he came to my attention. He was on a visiting delegation of medical professionals from the Soviet Union, which had just become Russia. I was assigned to translate during a demonstration Vlad gave of his, at the time, cutting-edge technique. With Jonny in mind, I begged Jon to hire him.”
“At the fall of the Soviet Union? But Jonny would have just been a kid.”
“A mother must plan ahead. Which brings me to why we have brought you here…”
She placed a hand on mine, and I could feel the desire like a heat off her body. It scared me. To forestall her, I pulled my hand away to reach for the foil-wrapped tip of a drumstick. “How did you end up in North Korea? Were you kidnapped too?”
“I wish you would stop talking about kidnapping, baby, OK?” The incandescent glow of her eyes held my gaze until I slowly nodded. She pat, pat, pat my cheek in approval, then launched upon a meandering and sometimes inconsistent story that started with a round-the-world trip after graduating from her posh boarding school, which took her and a boyfriend to Thailand where they became addicted to heroin, which led to her parents cutting off her funds, forcing her to work in Patpong luring American customers into the Puss N Buss nightclub, where she met an American man who persuaded her to go with him to Korea, where he was based as a something or other in the army. There was no heroin in Korea, so she became clean and, bored with life with the soldier, reconciled with her parents and had them buy her a bar in Seoul, which she called Honey Do. Unbeknownst to her, the bar was a secret rendezvous point for North Korean agents, and one of them proposed she take a trip with him to China. Lured by the chance to get a glimpse inside a country that few westerners had visited, she flew to Shanghai, where she checked into the Peace Hotel. It was not the man who had arranged for her to go to China who came to her room that night, but a man with an Elvis quiff, square gold-rimmed glasses, and adorable baby cheeks. Three days later, having seen nothing at all of China, she returned to Seoul with the promise that Jon would send for her once he had arranged things with his dad. But after returning to Seoul, she found out she was pregnant and feared he would drop her when he got news of her condition, but he asked her only to give up the baby. A few days after giving birth, she returned to China, from where it was a simple trip over the border into North Korea. Soon, she was pregnant again. The day after she gave birth to her son, she again had her newborn baby taken away from her, this time against her will. She didn’t see him for another thirteen years.
She paused at this point in her story for a second helping of food, and I found my throat parched, as if it were I who had spent the last hour talking nonstop, and shakily brought a glass of lemonade up to my lips, each swallow detonating in my ears. We sat in primitive silence, which was really just the absence of human-made noise: no distant whine of traffic or hammering of construction, no footsteps or muted conversation, no bicycle bells or barking dogs. Not even the silver flash of a jet passing way up in the sky. Eventually, a lone fly arrived to drift around the unfinished food, landing on the fruit salad to rub its front legs together like a money-grubbing millionaire. With a shudder, it occurred to me that Honey had brought me out here to reveal the full extent of our splendid isolation, showing me that escape was impossible.
Daintily nibbling at an almond lace cookie, she continued. “Jon’s older children were sent to schools in Russia and China, but with the collapse of the Soviet Union, our entire country was thrown into turmoil. The highest cadres of China
were beginning to send their children to American schools, and I used all of my wiles to persuade Jon to do the same with our Jonny. It was a hard-fought battle, but in the end I triumphed. Registered as a Chinese student, Jonny spent three years at St. Paul’s, the alma mater of a long line of LeBaron males.” Her mouth curled at the irony. “His father, extremely pleased with his progress, consented to allow Dr. Panzov to operate on him upon his return. After Jonny graduated from Kim Il Sung University—the first student ever to pass all his exams with perfect marks—his father bestowed upon him his very own country retreat. He called it Villa Umma in my honor, and ever since, it has been my home. And now it is yours.” She snapped her fingers at the bodyguard to indicate that lunch was over.
The man quickly cleared the table while Honey and I started down the path. She linked her arm in mine, squeezing me close. “So, Lisa, I hope you are satisfied now that I’ve answered your questions. And I hope you realize that all those secrets I have just told you mean you can never leave this country again. You simply know too much. I’ve trusted you with the truth, and now you must trust me with your future.”
I stumbled over a root, my knees bending precariously beneath me as if they were made of paper, Honey’s grip on me tightening to hold me upright. My brain clicking uselessly like a gun firing on an empty chamber, I stammered, “What do you want from me?”
She paused, waiting for the bodyguard to catch up, his boots smacking the ground as he hurried toward us. “I’m glad you asked.”
The bodyguard huffed up behind us, and she started into the trees. I realized that the bodyguard was there not to protect us from intruders, as I had first presumed, but to protect Honey from me.
“Jon understood that when you strip away centuries of tradition, you must offer the masses something in its place, and he has given them films, mass spectacles, traveling acrobats, and other quaint entertainments. But times are changing, and the people want something new. Now, this is a secret that I’m sharing just between you and me.” She rattled at my arm, hugging me to her side. “I’ve mentioned it to Jonny a few times, just to plant the seed, but haven’t yet revealed to him the full extent of my plan. That’s the way you handle powerful men, Lisa, by planting seeds so they think the ideas that eventually bloom in their head are their own.”
I murmured my appreciation of her handy gardening tip for the Machiavellian helpmeet.
“Jon doesn’t like the internet; he doesn’t understand it and thinks he can just throw a wall up around it, pfft.” She raised a hand like a stop sign. “The irony of it is he’s huge on the internet. There are whole websites dedicated just to him! So, what if we did that for Jonny, make a website with lots of fun stories and flashy photos that subtly promote Jonny as the natural, inevitable heir to his father? There would be news stories, cultural pieces, human-interest stories, uplifting and a little sappy, all with the underlying message that Kim Jong Un is making life better for all North Koreans. You can do that, right?” Her eyes, like halogen headlights on bright, blinded me. “Create a website.”
“Uh…” Of course I couldn’t, but I wasn’t about to tell her that when she was offering me access to the internet. After all, there was more than one way to escape. I modestly shrugged. “Yeah, probably.”
“Of course you can.” She sighed happily, planting a tender kiss on my cheek. “Now, not a word to Jonny yet,” she whispered conspiratorially. “Let me sell him on the idea first, make him think he was the one who thought of it. For now, it will just be our little secret.”
“How could I say anything to Jonny? Is he coming here?”
But Honey didn’t answer, dropping my arm as we entered the bamboo grove, the light murky and thick. We walked the rest of the way in silence, and soon we were at the entrance of the compound, which yawned suddenly from the earth like the mouth of a serpent, waiting to swallow us whole.
In retrospect, maybe a romance that started in the shadow of 9/11 was destined to end in disaster. I cheated on Nigel during winter break with an old boyfriend of Mindy’s, a lacrosse player at St. Albans, who now, a mere two years after high school, had already begun to spread, the rugby shirt with the flipped-up collar just a little too tight across his stomach and chest. He recognized me at a party and asked me out, taking me to a swank steak place of a type that proliferates near the hallowed halls of power in Washington, DC, serving expensive red meat to expense account lobbyists and their politician guests. Without consulting me, he ordered us both Cokes, which I thought mulishly sexist, and when the waiter brought the drinks, he scooped the ice into his water glass, urging me to do the same and tapping on his hip. Then, with a practiced grace, he pretended to show me something on his phone while pouring rum into my Coke from a hip flask. I relaxed a little. My kind of guy. A rummy who knew a rummy.
Promising a well-stocked bar and absent parents, he took me to his house, a large stone mansion on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River. After more than a year of playing it sober for Nigel, it felt liberating to drink and flirt with a guy. This was really who I was, I told myself, the party girl who could drink any of her dates under the table. Soon, he was nuzzling my neck. His desire for me stirred my desire, and when he slid his hand under my shirt, I arched my back in invitation. It wasn’t that I was more attracted to him than to Nigel. In fact I found him kind of sad. I just wanted him to want me and was gratified when he did.
“Just confess to Nigel,” Mindy advised me later. “He’ll forgive you and then you can move on.”
But I couldn’t. I was the serpent eating my own tail, my jealousy a self-fulfilling prophecy: terrified that Nigel would find someone worthier of him, I made myself unworthy. It really hurt me to break up with him, but I thought my unhappiness a small price to pay to keep Nigel from finding out just how much of an asshole I really was.
Chapter 9
“My parents are André Previn and Mia, but obviously they’re not even my real parents.”
–Soon-Yi Previn
When the door of my room locked shut with a slow exhalation, I stood with my forehead pressed against the cold steel for a long time. Was it better to have tasted freedom and lost it than to never have had it? The very real prospect of months passing before I could once again savor the simple joys of the outdoors sent a numbing haze of despondency stealing through my body. I wished I had been more forceful about pressing Wendell on how exactly he could help me escape, because that was now the only thing I had to hold on to.
In the ensuing days of solitude, the enigma of Honey—the anti-mother who had reached across the years and the continents to drag me back to her stonehearted bosom—consumed me. I spent hours staring at my face in the mirror, searching for any trace of Honey there other than the nose. She was nowhere to be found in the close canthi of my brown eyes, the lowness of my brow, the roughness of my skin, the generous swell of my lips. But what about intangible characteristics? Along with her nose, did I inherit that big lacuna inside her, that dark cavern where a heart was supposed to be? Was her legacy to me her wanton cruelty, her narcissism, her utter disinterest in anything but herself? After all, what was it but cruelty, narcissism, and blind self-interest that led me to sleep with Kenji? To upset Mindy right before her big reunion with her birth mother? To go with Ji Hoon to Jeju-do? Behind every mistake I had made, I now saw the shadow of Honey. I was but a chip off the old block, a sapling off the mother root.
But maybe I could turn that to my advantage. Above all, Honey was a survivor. Scheming to advance her son’s fortunes, she took the long view, hatching a plan to do the impossible and working ruthlessly toward that goal over the decades. That was a legacy of hers that I could fully embrace: the will to survive. For whatever mess I had made of my life, I knew that I didn’t want to give it up. If this nightmarish twist of fate had taught me anything, it was that I wanted to return to the wreckage of my old life to put things right, to complete the journey toward self-actualization that I had started, even if I did stumble right out of the gate and h
ad wandered so completely off track. I resolved to do whatever it took to get out of North Korea alive. I would not succumb to despair; I’d wait patiently and feel my way forward. I’d turn my inherited character flaws into my most potent weapons and practice the dark arts of cruelty, narcissism, and mono-maniacal self-interest. And I’d do so at my mother’s knee, following by example and, at the same time, earning her favor. I’d play the game by her rules and win.
To pass the time, I stood on the chair to look out the window at the lonely view of rocks and bamboo, the only change the waxing and waning of the light, the wind rustling through the daggered leaves, the occasional sweep of rain. Once, Ting caught me on my perch, and I thought I saw an expression of pity quickly pass over her face. She was my only companion, my only diversion, and I’d babble at her as soon as she came in the door. “How are you doing this morning, Ting? You look very sporty in that zebra-striped chiffon blouse. And those pants, for once you don’t have to cuff them. Though they sag on you, they would have been very tight capri pants on Honey. I’m guessing that you are the lucky recipient of all the clothes that turn out to be too small for her. Am I right, hmm, Ting?” Every time I said her name, she would flinch just a little without looking my way. I wondered if maybe they had cut her tongue out, as I had yet to hear her utter a word.
Then one day, she brought me dumplings for lunch, and I exclaimed, “Jiaozi! Oh, yum!”
She had been deftly karate chopping the sheets as she made my bed, but stopped and looked straight at me out of her wary, fish-shaped eyes. What had I said to elicit this unprecedented reaction? The next moment, though, she was back to hospital corners. Eyes on her, I put a dumpling in my mouth, the thin skin tearing to release an oleaginous explosion of minced pork and chives. Chewing loudly, I exclaimed, “Haochi!” She paused for an infinitesimal beat and then finished smoothing the bedspread over perfectly fluffed pillows. I stood up and confronted her. “Ni yao bu yao chi jaozi ma?”
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