A knock at the door startled Mr. Choy from his reminiscing. In walked the beautician, with the three Northerners in tow.
44
CHO HAD NEVER EXPECTED to amount to much. She went to all the meetings, prostrated to photographs when it was appropriate, gave the rote adulations and self-criticisms, but she never really tried to advance herself. Why bother? Her songbun had been bad to begin with, and to even think about overcoming it she would need some exceptional, nearly superhuman skill and connections to someone important; she had neither. Her grandmother was Japanese, and though she had been considered loyal enough to avoid the purging of suspicious persons, her family continued to bear the mark of shame. As a girl, Cho had all the usual fantasies: She would marry an officer high in the ranks of the Dear Leader’s army, have a baby, or maybe two, and do something great for the glory of Chosun. Early enough, however, it became clear that that life was not meant for her. Her parents discouraged such hopes, believing it was better for their daughter to know the truth—that she would marry a factory or farm laborer, that she would always be under greater scrutiny because of her ancestry, and she would always be passed up by opportunity.
Food had been scarce for almost as long as she could remember. She and her mother often foraged for hours in the hills; and almost as often came back empty-handed, having found only enough to sustain the effort of looking. In the worst of times they ate unimaginable things, and suffered bellyache as a result. The outcomes of their desperate experimentations were nearly more lethal than the hunger that eroded them day after day.
Cho learned, at the dawning of her teenage years, that she did have a single asset, and that asset could provide at least something to abate the hunger. She was blessed with regular features and flawless skin. Her teeth came in straight and white, and her eyes were well set and proportioned for her face. She was not the prettiest of the pretty girls, but she knew how to be cute; and cuteness, she learned, could be leveraged for food. A disarming smile well timed could yield a dumpling, or a bite of kimchee, or a piece of fruit. It was not enough to put extra flesh on her skinny frame, but at least it kept her from eating grubs.
Cuteness in a girl gives way to something else as her body matures, and there came a time when a smile was no longer enough for the dumpling man to give up one of his precious morsels. A feel. Just a feel. You’ll like it, too. And then just a feel, too, became not enough. The day Cho lost her virginity to the dumpling man, he gave her three whole dumplings—one for each member of her family. In that moment she felt the remaining ember of the girlhood fantasy of the soldier, the baby, and the glory of Chosun smolder and go cold inside her. This path of survival, and that path of happiness, did not cross.
Cho was able to provide a little bit for her family this way. They never asked, and she never told. She brought home scraps of food and everyone lived—not happily, but with hearts that beat and lungs that drew in air. She did what she did gladly, because it meant beating death. But one day, a friend of her father’s happened upon her in an alley when she was working for a small bag of flour. She begged him not to tell, but he went with the news to her father anyway. To save face, her father threw her out. She was only seventeen.
Cho hardened like steel around the deep ache of her excommunication. She had nowhere to go, but shamed and outcast, she could no longer stay in her parents’ village. She risked going into the city without having the proper papers, and when a soldier threatened to arrest her for it, she bought her freedom with the only “currency” she had. The man was a dealer of identities, his position as a railway guard granting him access to the pockets of the hundreds of unclaimed corpses that collected in train stations, and he set her up with papers he had taken off a dead girl of the same age. Cho Soo-yun was an orphan who eventually succumbed to hunger on the street. Her family had all perished as well, so there would be no one who would know the difference. It felt wrong to use the girl’s personal name, Soo-yun, Perfect Lotus Blossom, as if she might come back from the dead to reclaim it; and besides, she could not live up to such a name. She decided to go only by the family name instead.
Cho was able to slip seamlessly into the girl’s “official” life, joining her Party Youth organization and taking over her ration cards. No one had seen the girl for several years, and the story she gave of having survived a prolonged sickness was plausible. There was never any plan for the future, only a plan to live until the end of the day. She worked in the alleys and slept wherever. She ate. Never much, but enough to stay alive.
She met Gianni through the usual channels. Spending time with his crowd always led to extra scraps and crumbs. He had an endless supply of cigarettes, and he sometimes brought her exotic makeup and clothing. He was good looking, more because of his confidence and abundance than because of his features. Sometimes she fantasized that one day she and he would—
But she always knew that that was what it was. Pure fantasy. Still, she had never expected this kind of betrayal from him. She thought she had become immune to this kind of hurt. The street had hardened her, but maybe not enough.
Living is to go forward. Shed the past as easily as you would shed a coat.
These were her mottos. She knew she could withstand anything.
45
MR. CHOY SAT BEHIND his desk appraising the new girls from the North. They had cleaned up very well, even the skinny, twisted one—she was almost pretty. Having them professionally made over was a tactic to distract them from their fears and misgivings about their new living and working arrangement. It gave them a sense of luxury and abundance that they most certainly never felt before, which would soften their resistance to their new life. It also enabled Mr. Choy to assess their maximum earning potential. He had to come up with a value for each woman, and that value was based mostly on how she looked.
The beautician had done well in choosing outfits for them. The pretty one with the heart-shaped face was stunning, with her hair clipped up in the back and several well-placed rogue strands framing the sides of her face. The makeup erased the childish softness that was still in evidence on her teenage face, giving her a maturity that was not really there. Her lips were painted in a seductive, dark red kiss. She was dressed in a black, ankle-length gown held delicately on her shoulders by thin satin straps. Her full bosom filled in the top of her dress, the inner slopes of her breasts rising out of the garment, as tempting as low-hanging fruit. The dress tapered at the waist, and then flared with the natural curves of her hips. It was slit up both sides all the way to the upper thigh, and exposed, in moments, the tantalizing shape of her legs as she walked. It was a view that promised much but revealed little. She was adorned with black high-heeled shoes made of straps that crisscrossed elegantly over her feet and around her ankles. She teetered a little as she walked, obviously needing more practice walking in them. Her toenails were painted a dark red to match her lips and gave Mr. Choy the sense that she might be edible from floor to ceiling. She would be a good earner.
The one with the long fingernails was wearing a royal blue velvet dress that came down just above her midthighs. It fit loosely, but suggested the shape of her body well when she moved. The beautician had outfitted her with a padded bra to augment her shape, to great effect. As she moved about the dress lifted up, revealing the tops of her black thigh-high stockings, clipped to an unseen garter belt above. It was the perfect touch of provocateur to an otherwise classy look. Her shoes were closed at the toe and squared off, with tall, blocky heels and square buckles attached to straps in the front. Her face was clean and pretty, the sides of her hair pulled back and braided.
The smaller girl with the crooked body was the most transformed of the three. Her hair was styled with flourish, countering the length of her face, which was too long. The makeup did wonders for her color and brought attention to her eyes, which sparkled. One would not call her pretty, but she had an interesting face that grew in appeal the more he looked at it. She might do well on the Internet, from selective angl
es, he thought. She will probably look better in two dimensions. The beautician had cleverly concealed the girl’s stick-like proportions by outfitting her in a peach colored, floor-length Chinese dress with a high collar and half-length sleeves, and a subtle pattern woven into it with silver threads that glinted in the light. The dress was slit up one side to the knee, showing just enough skin to make a person curious. It did a pretty good job of hiding the girl’s asymmetries. On her feet she was wearing simple flat-soled black slippers. On second thought, she might do better entertaining drunk sailors and college kids at the club, he thought. Where it’s dark.
The women looked nervous.
“You ladies look wonderful!” he exclaimed, spreading his arms. Now was the time to be charming. “Turn around so I can get a better look at you.”
The women looked at each other timidly.
“Come, now. I won’t hurt you.”
The pretty one stepped forward awkwardly in her shoes, pale with terror, and turned around.
“Very nice!” Mr. Choy complimented. “You look just like a movie star! Now you,” he nodded at the sassy one with long fingernails.
She did not move, but cut him a fierce look. His face darkened suddenly.
“I’m not asking, I’m telling. Turn your ass around,” he said through gritted teeth. He swallowed to keep from becoming irate. His temper tended to flare.
The sassy one stepped forward, more confidently than the pretty one had, but no better in her heels. She spun around quickly. Then the crooked girl did the same. Mr. Choy composed himself again, putting on a mask of absolute civility.
“I want to show you something,” he said to the women. He dismissed the beautician with an impatient hand gesture. The girls watched with uneasy expressions as she left them. “I promised that I would show you the Internet today. Get behind me and watch.” He sat down again at his desk and turned on a computer. The girls crowded in behind him, more from fearful obedience than curiosity. “Just about anything you can think of is on the Internet, and you can access it instantly. You see this blinking line? All we have to do is type something there and hit the Enter key, and bang! Ten thousand related articles will come up. What do you want to look up?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“The Great Leader, Kim Il-sung,” responded the crooked girl as if by reflex. It was the same response all the girls from the North gave. Mr. Choy had the sense that it was the “correct” answer.
“Alright. Watch me type it in. See? Now hit that button,” he said to the crooked girl. She reached forward hesitantly, as if the keyboard might bite her, and pressed the Enter key. “Now look, see how fast that was? Each of those headings links to a web page. And see here? That is the total number of pages that contain some reference to Kim Il-sung. Well over one million.” The girls were impressed, but not convinced. “So we use the mouse—that’s what this thing is called—and choose the heading that seems most likely to give us the information we want. You see, there is quite a variety. Let’s just go to this one, ‘Kim Il-sung: A legacy of failed Stalinism?’ ” He clicked on the link.
The page changed, and had both Korean and English words. Mr. Choy was sure that the girls could not read English. The web page read, in Korean:
In the half century since the birth of North Korea, what has become of the Worker’s Paradise? A country riddled with famine, oppression, concentration camps and corruption, it is little wonder that there are signs that the world’s only remaining Stalinist state is beginning to collapse. North Korea, home to the world’s fourth largest military, is controlled by a single dictator, Kim Jong-il, the son of the country’s founder, Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-il maintains absolute control of his people through fear, propaganda and persuasion in what is perhaps the world’s most bizarre and dangerous personality cult . . .
“Imperialist rubbish!” shouted the pretty one.
“Well, I always say, ‘don’t believe everything you read on the Internet,’ ” replied Mr. Choy. He always enjoyed how the Northerners responded to that article. “Anyway, that’s just one example.” He typed rapidly on the keyboard and another page came up. “This is our website.” This one had a light pink background and pictures of women in risqué outfits striking suggestive poses. Music began to play in the background as soon as the site loaded, and the girls looked around, mystified by the source of the sound. Mr. Choy pressed a button that led to a special area of the website that he had designed specifically for training day. He did not want the girls to see anything explicitly sexual at first. The page showed thumbnail images of the faces of beautiful women, and Mr. Choy explained that the thumbnails were a gallery of videos that a customer at the website could pay to download. He showed that by clicking on the thumbnail image, a video of the girl shown would begin to play. The videos were of young women strutting and making eyes at the camera. All the women remained fully clothed, though they ran their hands up and down their bodies in a sensual manner.
“This is the kind of thing that I want you girls to do. No problem, right?” The girls did not respond, their faces like stones. He showed them the entire gallery of ten videos. “So let’s try it. You can start working off your debt right now!” Mr. Choy brought excitement into his voice, hoping that it would help them feel more enthusiastic. “How about you?” he asked, looking at Il-sun.
“My name is Park Il-sun,” she said, looking offended.
“Very well, Il-sun, how about stepping in front of the camera? You saw how easy it was.”
It looked as if she might refuse, but then she cast a look toward the girl with the fingernails, remembering how Mr. Choy responded when she was slow to do what she was told. After a moment she nodded.
Mr. Choy led the women into the next room. It was long and narrow, with light blue walls. At one end was a camera on a tripod, a video monitor on the wall, and a computer on a small table. Mr. Choy stood at the camera and told Il-sun to stand at the other end of the room.
“Alright, Il-sun, look at the camera for me. You should be able to see your face on the monitor.”
“Gi! I’m on the television! Look at that!” exclaimed Il-sun, pointing at the monitor. Seeing herself, she momentarily lost her apprehension. To Mr. Choy it was a good sign that she would be one of the compliant ones.
“Okay, so when you have a client on the Internet, you will see yourself in the monitor, and he will write instructions, which you will be able to read at the bottom of the monitor, like this . . .” Mr. Choy typed on the computer, and the word smile appeared on the screen. “All you have to do is follow the instructions. It’s that easy. So give me a big smile.”
Il-sun forced a smile.
Mr. Choy zoomed the camera out so that all of Il-sun was in the frame. He then typed “Turn around.” Il-sun spun around awkwardly.
“No, no, no. Not like that,” Mr. Choy corrected. “Turn around like it’s the best feeling in the whole world, like turning around is your very favorite thing to do. Do it slowly. Remember, you’re not turning around for you, you are turning around for the camera; and the camera wants to look at you. The camera thinks you’re beautiful. Now try it again.”
Il-sun turned around again, this time more slowly.
“That’s right, now use your hips. That’s much better. Look directly into the camera now and blow a kiss. Great! You’re a natural! Now watch.” Mr. Choy punched a few keys on the computer and the video of Il-sun turning around replayed on the monitor. She was fascinated watching herself. Mr. Choy recognized the look of a girl with vanity, and he knew how to work with that. “Okay, let’s try again. Remember the videos I showed you? Do you remember the attitude that those girls had? That’s what I want you to do. Can you do that for me?”
Il-sun nodded.
“Great. Alright, now turn around again, but use your hands on your body. Pretend that your hands are really a man’s hands touching you. Just like the other videos, okay?”
“Am I paying off my debt right now?” she asked.
“Sur
e. Now turn around.”
“Okay,” she responded. Il-sun looked at the monitor and a change came over her. She was a temptress, looking coyly at the camera. She smoothed her hands up and down her body as she slowly turned around, exaggerating the swing of her hips. She kept her face to the camera as she turned, flirting with her eyes. She even seemed, for a moment, to be enjoying herself.
“Great!” Mr. Choy hit a few buttons and replayed if for her. She watched it intently. “Okay, let’s let the other girls try it. You,” he pointed to Cho.
“We call her Cho,” said Il-sun.
“Right. Okay, Cho, show us what you’ve got.”
Cho stepped nervously in front of the camera. Even though she was no stranger to the sex trade, she had never worked in front of a camera before. She giggled to hide her embarrassment, even though her face showed a deep strain of fear.
“Don’t be shy. Look at the monitor. See? You’re beautiful!” Mr. Choy had focused on her face. He typed “Dance for me” on the screen, and then zoomed out to show her whole body.
All Woman and Springtime Page 17
