by James Church
That was true, if a meeting in the Sosan with the long-dead Mun could be construed as “fine;” if listening to Mun recite a litany of complaints and threats from the special section could come under the rubric of “fine;” if “fine” could be stretched to include a final warning that I should consider myself as being on notice that “some people” were waiting for one more incident to bring down the hammer and shatter my status as the grandson of a Hero of the Republic. This sort of thing didn’t bother me too much. It just wasn’t what I would normally label “fine.” But I also didn’t want Pak to know. He had enough to worry with. This was my business, old business, unfinished business. If there was a problem, it was mine to solve.
Pak’s too frequent visits went on for several days. It got on my nerves. Someone constantly asking you if everything is all right, it can get wearing. Pak didn’t think things were fine, I could tell. He thought things were going to end up in a train wreck. Pak knew plenty, he had good sources, and they must have been warning him. After being surprised once, he was going to make sure it didn’t happen again. He must have dug up every contact he ever had to check what was going on. He wouldn’t come out and say anything though. That wasn’t how he did things. Each time, after I told him things were fine, he’d shake his head and walk back to his office, clucking his tongue.
It was a little curious that he never asked about my meeting in the Sosan coffee shop. I figured there must be a reason he didn’t want to know, something more than his well-honed instinct against delving into things that couldn’t bring anything more than another basketful of bad news to an already bad situation. If he asked, when he asked, I already knew what I’d tell him.
“So, what happened at the Sosan between you and your no-longer-dead friend?” He made sure to be looking out my window when he finally asked, so I couldn’t see the expression on his face.
“Nothing.” I’d practiced saying it out loud. It still didn’t sound convincing.
“Is that a fact? You just sat there and laughed about old times and drank hot water?”
“I certainly didn’t laugh.”
“And him?”
“He sneered, mostly.” Which was true. “I still can’t figure out why he wanted the meeting.” Also true.
“Not good.” Pak had come away from the window and was rearranging a pile of papers on my desk. “Whatever he’s up to, it’s not good, we can assume that, but what else? He must have asked you a few questions.”
“That’s what I was expecting, questions. At least some probing for what we knew about the foreigner. But no, nothing like that. There is one thing, though. He said he wanted to get in touch with some of the people from our operation, the one he and I were on when everything went wrong.” I glanced at my desk. Pak had put everything in two neat piles. I’d known where every piece of paper was before. The latest Ministry reports had been on the edge of the desk closest to the window, in roughly the order they came into my office; interrogation reports were more or less in order of priority along the the opposite edge of the desk, nearest the door; laterally filed field reports from other sectors in the city were pretty much everywhere else. “You might as well take those piles to your office,” I said. “I’ll never be able to find anything anymore.”
“Why? Why did he want to get in touch with those people?”
“How should I know? I told him I had no idea where anyone was, and he sneered.”
“Did he ask for another meeting?”
“No. But I’m sure of one thing.”
“And what is that, Inspector?”
“I’ll bet we haven’t seen the last of him.”
2
Winter was never busy. In bad weather, people stayed off the streets if they could. The worse the weather, the more they stayed indoors, even if they had no heat. We may have been the only ones in the city who were glad when it snowed heavily. Fewer people outside, less chance for trouble—everybody knew it. Anything that happened on the street pretty quickly got thrown our way. But if something went wrong in an apartment, it was rare for us to be called. Even if people phoned, Pak’s inclination was to tell them to settle it themselves. Have the neighborhood committee deal with it, he’d say and hang up. The neighborhood committees liked that sort of thing; it bolstered their sense of importance and gave them another reason to meddle. Occasionally, one of them would write a nice note to the Ministry pointing out Pak’s “good judgment.” The note would be put in his file, and that would keep the Ministry off his neck for a few months. That was fine by me. If the Ministry was off his neck, it was easier for him to keep them off mine.
Just to keep a hand in things, I’d walk through my sector a couple of times a week in winter, even on icy days. Mornings, there would often be a street gang out clearing sidewalks. At least a couple of people would be working; the rest liked to loll around and chatter. The girls fixed their scarves when they saw me. The boldest ones sang out, “?lo, Inspector, it must be quiet in your office today.” In years past, their eyes would sparkle. Their cheeks ruddy with cold, they would whisper among themselves for a moment, and then one of them, the boldest, would walk up and say, “We’ve got tea across the way. Stop by and we’ll bring it down to you.” She’d wave toward an apartment house on the corner. “Or you can wait inside,” something that always brought more laughter.
“No. Thank you, but no,” I’d say. “These sidewalks need more work, don’t you think?”
And one of the men, sweating with exertion, would look up and shout, “What are you girls doing there? Get your shovels working, why don’t you, instead of standing around bothering the police. Let him go about his business, you hear?” He’d nod to me and then go back to chipping the ice. None of them would pay any attention to him.
But this winter things were different. The work gangs were smaller, and nobody spoke when I walked by. Sometimes, one or two would follow me with dull eyes, too weak or dispirited to move their heads. I had the feeling I was moving past ghosts.
On rare occasions, I drove over to the university. I didn’t like being there. Schools belonged to another security unit, not even to the Ministry, and in those days it made me nervous to be on someone else’s territory. But Pak had worked out an understanding to let us peek in from time to time. When Pak needed an understanding, he could usually get it. We should have access to the campus, he’d say, just to keep an eye on things. Just in case the situation started drifting toward some unknown event, a potential trigger. No one would talk about it openly, and the Ministry wouldn’t put anything on paper, but we all knew what was happening, and we all knew that the students might get in front.
“I don’t think I should be over there,” I said to Pak.
“Don’t worry so much. It’s all arranged, just keep a low profile. If anyone asks, you’re thinking of going back to school, technical training, something.” Especially now, when classes were held only sporadically, with so many teachers too weak or tired to lecture, and the students too hungry to concentrate, Pak was keen on our keeping up good contacts on campus. I dodged as best I could, but I always ended up going.
“Get to school and check in with the ears, Inspector.”
“Busy day, Pak, not sure when I can make it. Send someone else, why don’t you?”
“All you’re doing is staring at the molding on the ceiling. You’re not going to paint it, so leave it be. I need you over at the campus. You’re good at it; you give off the right vibrations. Students don’t clam up when they see you coming.”
“Yes they do. If looks could kill, I’d be scattered to the winds by now. They hate our guts, and you know it. Things haven’t calmed down from when they chased that SSD fool off of the campus.”
“Served him right, trying to break into a student meeting like that. Don’t worry. As long as you stay in the shadows, they won’t bother you and we can keep away from Tiananmen. Just check in with that kid you have on a string.”
“She’s not on a string. Why don’t I do it off camp
us somewhere?”
“The whole idea, Inspector, is to show the flag.”
“In the shadows?”
“You don’t have to wave the flag, Inspector, just unfurl it a little. Stroll around, sit on a bench, rattle a doorknob, let them know you’re there.”
3
The room was frigid. It hadn’t been heated since the last time the sun shone directly in the windows, and that had probably been in September. The girl was young; she might be pretty one day, but it was far too soon for that. She kept her hands in the pockets of a thin blue coat that couldn’t have done much against the cold. She shivered once or twice.
“I thought you weren’t going to come here anymore, that’s what you promised.” She kept her voice toneless, though it was with some effort. She was holding back. “The last time you showed up, someone almost saw us. If anyone catches me talking to you, I’ll be ordered to leave. You say it’s all been worked out, but that’s not true. Local security will report me, and then I’ll be sent home. You know I’m only supposed to talk to the assigned security people. Why can’t you stay away from campus, like you promised?”
I considered this for a moment. It was gutsy of her, telling me off. Maybe that’s why I picked her to begin with. Her file said she was always outside the group. She’d only been accepted at the university from a nowhere village near Hamhung because she was good with languages, and because she was considered an exceptional pianist. Where she found a piano to play out there in the countryside, I couldn’t imagine. “You like Rachmaninoff?” I looked around the room. The walls were bare. The instructor’s desk had been moved to one side, and there was a three-legged easel with a piece of gray cardboard on it standing at the front. The cardboard had several names printed on it. The last one was Rachmaninoff. I figured she’d like whatever was listed last.
“I do. I want to play his music someday.”
“Which piece?”
“What’s it to you?”
“You think I don’t like music?”
“Do you?”
Four questions in a row. With her, I could keep it up all afternoon, all questions. It would be interesting one day to see how long she could play the game, until she slipped and actually said something. This afternoon, though, I didn’t need anything from her. I just needed to be here. It bothered me a little that someone might see the two of us together. Sent back to the east coast, she might not survive, or she’d leave for China and end up selling herself. I moved away from the window. “This may surprise you, but I have been known to listen to music. More than that, I’ve heard some Rachmaninoff.”
She took one hand out of her pocket, her left one, and looked at her nails. They were broken and dirty. She flexed her fingers. She was aching to get out of the room, but her hands were important. If she took them out for me to see, it was a gesture. She might not know it, but that’s what it was. It wasn’t trust, exactly, but it was coming close.
“Which piece? You have a tape? I like him a lot better than Shostakovich. That’s mostly what we listen to. I think he’s overrated.” She said it as a challenge, but I didn’t pick it up. She sighed. “We had a German conductor here a couple of months ago. All of a sudden he appeared, like he dropped from the sky. He brought some music for us to play, tapes for us to hear. One of the pieces was Rachmaninoff. I cried when I listened to it. How could anyone imagine anything so beautiful? How could he have heard something like that in his head?” Her voice wasn’t toneless anymore. “I want that, I want to know something that beautiful.” She stopped suddenly and looked at me intently. “He left Russia, you know, after the revolution. Do you know where he went?”
That’s my girl, I thought. Smoldering like a pile of juniper branches. If I didn’t say something to cool her down, she might burst into flames right here in front of me. Maybe she would survive after all. “Musicians are strange,” I said. She frowned, and I hurried to cover my mistake. “What I mean is, they aren’t moored to one place. Art is universal, isn’t that what they say?”
She hummed something.
“Rachmaninoff?”
I was rewarded with a quick smile. “You guessed that, didn’t you? It must be your security training.” The smile disappeared. “Well, you left your spoor. That’s what you wanted to do, wasn’t it? You see, Inspector, I’ve figured you out.” She pulled her hands out of her pockets and walked to the door. “I have, you know.”
“I know.” I waited until she had left the room and I could hear her footsteps in the cold hallway. “I’m betting on it.”
Both hands out of her pockets—maybe not trust, actually; maybe defiance. It came down to the same thing.
4
It wasn’t a long drive back to the office, but I needed some time to think. I could think in my office, except for Pak coming down and asking if everything was fine. I couldn’t think when he did that; I couldn’t think once he left because I knew he would be back. If I drove around my sector, I could keep the car heater on. There wouldn’t be much to see, the streets were almost deserted, but at least it would be warm.
No one had mentioned the subject of the Swiss visitor again, a silence that had nothing good to recommend it. No one at the Ministry raised it when I went by to look for a file on an old case. The special section team stayed away from our office, though every day we expected them to pay another call. Pak was sure so they’d be back, he gave me explicit orders not to clean the cups. Most disquieting of all, during our brief meeting at the Sosan Hotel, Mun hadn’t raised the subject even once. Out on the street, he had hinted he knew quite a bit about the visitor, but at the Sosan, he clammed up. He’d repeated the warnings about how much trouble I might be in, but didn’t let on any more about what he knew. From the way he had asked me if I still had contact with anyone from our operational days, I didn’t think that’s what he really wanted to know. It seemed more like he was trying to figure out what I remembered from the past, and what I was willing to talk about. I told him I didn’t remember anything, and hadn’t seen anyone, which was mostly true. I didn’t like his sneer, but paid for his drink anyway. I figured if he went away and never came back, it was worth the investment. Not that I thought he’d go away. It wasn’t, as I’d told Pak, a good bet that we wouldn’t see him again.
That still left one burning question mark hanging over us—why the Swiss visitor had become a nonsubject. Pak seemed to think that the subject was something being discussed somewhere else and that it would eventually crash down on our heads again. This wasn’t like Pak, to be so jumpy and off-key. Pak was the polestar, the fixed point. If he started to wobble, there was no telling what would happen to the rest of us. I didn’t blame him. The situation was bad. Pyongyang was awash in rumors, most of them true, about how conditions in the countryside had fallen apart. We were ripe for something, I just didn’t know what.
Chapter Three
“Life, existence, whatever you want to call it these days—it’s all made up of layers, am I right? People speak in generalities. They constantly sum up existence, apply a necessary shorthand. They say ‘one’ but they actually mean ‘many.’ If you say ‘morning,’ Inspector, what do you mean?”
I was standing in Pak’s office, wondering what had brought this on. “I mean morning, like now. This is morning, which is when I generally come in to report what happened the day before. So here I am. I came in to give you a report on the meeting I had yesterday with the student. Yesterday afternoon. This”—I pointed out the window at the darkness—“is morning.”
Pak waved away the idea of the report. “No, you don’t mean morning. Morning is shorthand. What you really mean is that the sun is at a certain spot at or below the horizon, the sky a certain shade, the early breeze bringing the smell of earth, someone groaning after not enough sleep. It’s the same with happiness, or sorrow, or boredom, isn’t it? All layers, everything layers. Layers and intersections.”
I could never fathom what set Pak off like this, climbing to these philosophical heights. When
ever it happened, the only thing to do was to follow along and try not to fall too far behind. “Intersections,” I said and nodded, but he wasn’t waiting for my reaction. He was already on the ledge above me.
“If you start to strip things down too much, get at their ‘essence,’ what do you suppose happens?”
This time I didn’t bother to nod. It wasn’t a real question. Pak pointed a finger at me. “I’ll tell you what happens. If we aren’t careful, things that matter disappear because we reduce them to bits and pieces, smaller and smaller, to the point where they become nothingness. Abstractions take over. Pretty soon, we start thinking that the only difference between day and night is the amount of light. ‘Essence is everything,’ people start thinking. So they keep searching for essence, some sort of first principle, but essence isn’t anything. Sometimes, it’s nothing.”
