by James Church
I sat up. All of a sudden, existence was awash in Israelis. A few weeks ago, I'd never met one in my life. Now they had me surrounded on, of all places, an airplane. I wondered if they were planning to hijack the plane. These were the people who had carried off Entebbe. They were larger than life, tougher than nails. I didn't like traveling by air in the first place; I hadn't wanted to go on this assignment to Beijing; and now I was being poked relentlessly, surrounded by a commando flying squad. "I'm not going up to first class," I said. "I never walk on an airplane when it's aloft. It's not right. Movement could disturb the balance, or the trim-whatever it is."
"You don't go to the toilet?"
"I make it a point to take short flights."
"How about standing? Can you at least stand?"
"Standing is possible, as long as it is done gently," I said. I stood up carefully and looked back at the trio seated three rows behind us. Business suits, European, but slightly off. They were reading papers in an alphabet I'd never seen.
Jeno reached over and tugged at my jacket. "The papers are in Hebrew. They think no one can understand. Classified documents, I'll bet."
I sat down again. "You know these people, I take it. And the ones up front, too?"
"Not personally, I don't know them." His eyebrows went into the first few steps of a gavotte and then stopped, as if the orchestra had abruptly gone out for a smoke. "I heard them talking while we were in line at the check-in counter. They're from the Foreign Ministry, apparently. Chatting away, making snide comments, convinced no one could possibly understand Hebrew. Can you believe it? What are they coming for, do you think?"
"How should I know? And if I were you, that would be the least of my concerns. You're in enough trouble. The real question is not why they are on the airplane." Actually, that was a real question, it just didn't bear on my immediate problem. "The real question is, why are you coming back? And why the hell didn't you let on before that you knew Korean? It would have saved me having to translate through frozen lips when we were in that hut in the mountains." I shut my eyes again. There were two questions that loomed, and I had no doubt that if I ever found the answers, they would be intertwined. First, exactly what I asked him-why was he coming back? And second, which was my problem more than his-who approved the visa after the trouble we had keeping him safe from the special section last time? A normal person wouldn't want to come back. A normal visa request after what had happened would have been turned down instantly. It would have provoked gales of laughter before being stamped: DENIED. This return trip wasn't normal in any respect. It even went beyond abnormal. So where did that leave me, other than accompanying a foreigner on the wrong side of unfathomable?
Jeno unleashed the familiar smile. "No games, Inspector. I appreciate your coming to get me, but it was unnecessary. I don't need an escort; no one is going to touch a hair on my head." The pitch of the engines changed abruptly again, too abruptly for him, because he paled and gripped the armrest. Apparently, he hadn't been at Entebbe.
"Don't let it worry you," I said. What happened to his hair would get sorted out after we landed. "Probably just some dirt in the fuel line. It usually clears." I watched him pale a little more before poking his shoulder. "Look, would I be here if I thought there was any danger? Don't worry. This plane is indestructible. If it hasn't crashed by now, it never will-that's what you have to keep telling yourself. Don't pay so much attention to sounds. You have to train yourself not to hear things sometimes. Like the thudding of Cossack hoofs."
"Very stoic." His voice was a little strained; maybe he was low on those silk pills he took every morning, or whatever it was that kept his voice so damned smooth. He craned his neck to look out the window.
"Do you want to switch seats?" I said. "You'll feel better if you don't have to look at the earth. It confuses the horizon, makes you dizzy when we bank or go bump."
"Not at all. I just hate landings. Do you mind if I shut my eyes and sweat for the next twenty minutes until we're on the ground?"
"Suit yourself." The landing gear made a loud thump, and the pilot pushed the plane into attack mode. I checked to make sure the wings were attached, and spent the rest of the way down wondering how big a crowd from the special section was already assembled on the tarmac.
5
The next morning, Pak sat at his desk and pulled his ear. "This is complicated. No, I'm wrong, it's not complicated. That's too simple. It's unbelievable, completely unbelievable." He shook his head. "I still don't believe it. Tell me you are joking, Inspector."
"I stick to facts, and the facts are these. The first group, in the front of the plane, didn't know the second group was in the back, and vice versa. They come from separate parts of the Israeli government. They don't communicate, very secretive; one hand doesn't know what the other is doing, if you can believe that sort of thing happens."
"So what are we supposed to do? Keep them apart? Bring them together? Put out name cards in the hotel dining room so they don't get mixed up and share a table with each other?" Pak motioned for me to sit down, but I didn't want to. If I sat, we'd start talking about things we shouldn't be discussing. Inevitably, the subject of how bad things were in the countryside would come up, people moving without permits to find food, bodies on the side of the road, trains with old women riding on the roofs of the railway cars and falling off. We'd talk, one thing would lead to another, and we'd both be depressed for the rest of the day.
"I'm not going to worry about their seating arrangements," I said. "Let whoever signed for them at the airport clean up the mess. We have one visitor to look after, and that's enough for me."
"Even one is too many. I don't have the manpower for visitors of any stripe. I don't have any manpower at all. You're supposed to be putting together a file on that woman. It should have been ready a week ago. I haven't even seen a draft, not a word."
"I'm not the one who okayed the orders for me to fly to Beijing in the middle of everything."
That was unfair; Pak hadn't wanted me to go. "People do write on airplanes, you know, Inspector. They have those little trays that come down. I've seen them."
"I thought you didn't like to fly." I started edging toward the door.
"I don't. I had to board a plane at Sunan once to search for something." He turned the memory over in his mind. "Never found it."
"Maybe some people can write on airplanes; not me. I can't even think on a plane. Something about the noise and that sense of being disconnected from the earth. I'm not one of those people who likes to hurtle through the air."
"You sleep?"
"Sleep? Don't be crazy. I concentrate." Pak looked dubious. "The engines need a lot of attention. Sometimes I concentrate on the wings, but mostly the engines. At that height, you don't take anything for granted. There's no way I could work on finishing up the file. Besides, the stewardesses are always interrupting, going up and down the aisle."
"Brushing against you, I suppose. You got an aisle seat, naturally."
"They're assigned." Pak's face indicated he was dubious. "I could keep better control of him from the aisle seat." Pak remained silent. "Okay, yes, the stewardesses are friendly girls."
"I leave such things to you, Inspector. Now, when do I get that report?"
"After someone tells me what to do with our visitor."
"He stays with you. That's why you were sent to get him."
"Did you know that no one from the special section was around to meet us at the airport? They weren't even lurking in the shadows. The dogs have been called off. Even the immigration people didn't blink twice when he came through. Don't tell me they hadn't been alerted."
"Apparently not."
"So you are going to try to convince me that this is all normal?"
"No. I don't know what normal is anymore. Do you?"
Discussions about normality were out of bounds as far as I was concerned. I didn't care about normality right now. My priority was to get rid of this foreigner. I needed to hand him
off to some other section and then get out of the way before they knew what hit them. For that, I needed some facts, not the least of which was who had approved the reentry visa. I didn't care if Pak wouldn't always tell me what was going on, as long as he knew. But in this case, he didn't know. The news about the two Israeli delegations had surprised him. If Pak was surprised, it meant we didn't know where we were going, how far away from the edge of the cliff we might be.
"By the way, our visitor has a long list of places he wants to go," I said. "He gave it to me while we were waiting for the bags. Some of his requests are way over on the east coast. And I don't mean places for sightseeing. He doesn't care about Kangwon and snowy peaks. He's interested in North Hamgyong. He asked if I knew anything about Hwadae county." As soon as I heard myself say that, I knew where the edge of the cliff was.
"Really?" Pak also sensed a cliff. "How interesting. Is there anything else we can get for him? Caviar, perhaps? A harem? Do you think he knows he has to pay double for a car this time of year, and that he can't drive himself anymore? A driver will cost more than the car. Assuming I can even get him a car. Assuming, of course, I can get him a driver from somewhere for a car that probably doesn't exist. Believe me, he's absolutely not getting our last and only duty driver, not if I can help it. And you can be sure he's not going anywhere near Hwadae county."
For some reason, I decided to ask a completely pointless question. "Something going on up there?" Of course something was going on, why else would anyone want to go to North Hamgyong, especially in January?
"Nothing either of us needs to know about."
"But he does?" Another pointless question, but one that, I had no doubt, would eventually need an answer.
"I'm not going to start guessing about his agenda," Pak said, "and neither should you. Don't let me hear that you've started checking around, either. Stay away from the subject. Our visitor isn't getting out of the city, not unless he can pay off a lot of people. I don't care who he has behind him." He stopped. That was all he wanted to say about what or who we couldn't see. "At the moment, the man is not a police matter. We are assigned to wipe his nose if he sneezes, that's all. Anyway, the roads are piled with snow and no one is around to clear them these days, which for a change is a blessing. If he asks again, tell him about the bad road conditions."
"None of that will worry him. He can pay off whoever he needs for permission and still have enough left to pay his own road crew. He has plenty of money, a wad of dollars. I saw it, and I don't think he declared it all when he came through customs."
"How much has he offered you?'
"Nothing. I think he's waiting for me to ask."
"So ask."
"Maybe later, not yet. I still have some dignity left."
"That's good. Dignity is good. See how much rice your dignity will get you."
I kicked myself for standing around and talking. The conversation had just lurched onto the subject I most wanted to avoid. Pak frowned. "You know, this morning I ran across an old friend in the Ministry, someone who has been stuck in the mountains in Yanggang for the past year. He looks like a skeleton."
"That bad?" I could sense huge cloudbanks of depression looming over us.
"It's worse than bad."
"Construction unit?"
"Not anymore. The unit was so depleted they had to disband it. Everyone was out looking for food. He told me that the countryside…" Pak shook his head again. "It's bad. Very bad."
I sat down. We were in the thick of it; there was no sense trying to avoid the subject anymore. "Are you alright? I mean, the family?" Pak had a young son. His wife was sick, and his mother was getting weaker by the day.
Pak stared out his window. The view was enough to depress anybody, especially in the middle of winter. "Two meals a day, very healthy. Isn't that what they say on the radio? If two is healthy, what do we call one meal a day? Or does hot water count as nourishment now?"
"I hear that the radio doesn't operate in the provinces most of the time. Not enough fuel for the generators. Not enough technicians left to fix the transmitters that still have fuel."
"Careful what you repeat, Inspector," Pak said quietly. Then even more quietly, "Most of the time, neither do the trains. Almost nothing moves out there these days."
"And?" The situation in the countryside was not a secret; the local security offices had stopped trying to prevent the stories from circulating. One Ministry officer who was in town to plead for backup support told me it was like trying to blot out the sun with a rat's turd. When I told him to come up with a better image, he grinned quickly. "It's a joke, Inspector. We've eaten all the rats. There aren't any rat turds left."
"And?" I repeated the question.
"And, and we do what we do," Pak said. His voice was back to normal. "That's all there is to it. A couple of the other districts in Pyongyang are running short on people; some of the shifts have been lengthened." I'd heard officers were disappearing for days at a time without notice, looking for food, sick from the cold, but there was no use mentioning it. Pak cleared his throat and looked away. "You going or staying?" He didn't want to ask because he didn't want to make me answer. Just posing the question was an admission of where things stood.
"I'm here, aren't I?"
He nodded slowly. I didn't say anything else, and neither did he. In the silence, there was no doubt we were both thinking the same thing. I knew better than to mention it, but I kept wondering. Suddenly, I realized Pak was looking at me in horror, because I had just said it out loud.
"Is he going to make it?" The words hung in the cold air. In summer they might have vanished quickly, but in the cold they lingered, fed on each other, grew like a wave that swells until it swallows the sky.
Or maybe I didn't really say the words; maybe it was just that my lips moved. "Is he going to make it?" Even if it's just your lips moving over that question, it booms around the room. Loud enough to rattle the windows, and paint itself on the walls so that anyone who comes in a week later will see it.
He. Him.
With a slight lifting of the eyebrows, say "him"-no one had any doubt that you meant the new leader, still mourning his father as the rest of us drifted. We all knew that we were drifting, and we knew where. A nation of shriveled leaves floating on a doomed river toward the falls. A winter of endless sorrow.
The horror on Pak's face dissolved again into weariness. I knew his body was soaked in fatigue, functioning on momentum, getting up each morning with regret that morning had come at all, not knowing why each new day arrived, unbidden. Each night he fell asleep while he posted the signs on the four corners of the darkness, "Tomorrow is canceled, please, no more. No more." But dawn ignored the pleas, dawn brought nothing, no hope, no light, nothing but a selfish insistence that it would inflict itself, empty-handed, the burden of new hours grinding down even the strongest until they imagined death itself had abandoned them, taking friends and family but leaving them.
I lived alone, but loneliness was no burden, not like people sometimes imagined. It was a matter of indifference to me if a new day came. Dawn brought nothing, but I didn't care. If the new light of day had ever meant anything, I had forgotten what it was.
"How is your mother?" I asked Pak. Once, that was a simple question, a question from normal times, when the answer was normal, in a normal conversation. It wasn't simple now, but if I didn't ask it, it would mean there was nothing left for us to hold from before. It used to be a simple question because the answer was simple. No more.
Now, Pak might tell me to mind my business. If he was as weary as he looked at this moment, he might simply walk out the door, down the stairs, and never come back. I waited, and the waiting spoke to how far from normal we had drifted. He sat and didn't answer, not with words, not with a gesture, not with his posture. That void told me what he didn't have the will to say. No, he wouldn't leave. He wouldn't leave, though there were people we both knew who had done that, leaving family, leaving everything, walking i
nto the cold and disappearing. A query would come down from the Ministry once a month-"Where is so-and-so? Anyone with information about so-and-so should report immediately to the chief of personnel," which was almost funny because the chief of personnel had disappeared. Someone had been assigned his job but not given the title lest that person disappear, too, and the job have to be filled again.
"She rarely eats." If he was going to stay, he had to speak. He knew it. He had to talk to other people and read his files and draw one breath after another. "She says her food should go for the boy. We've argued until I can't say the words anymore."
"I have more than I can use."
"No, Inspector, you don't. I need you healthy."
"Just let me know." He nodded. That meant the subject was closed, and it was time to move things back to business. If you had to breathe, you might as well get back to business. "That background report may be delayed a little more," I said. "Some of the people I have to interview in order to finish it aren't around."
There it was again. I didn't say where they had gone. I didn't have to. Pak knew what I meant. I could see in his eyes what he was thinking. He was imagining what he would never do, being one of the gone. Leaving everything, avoiding tomorrow.
6
After a session like that with Pak, I wasn't going to my office and stare at the walls. A long walk would do me good. If it got cold enough as the sun went down, it would drive everything from my mind. I could get back to the office after dark, finish a little paperwork, and then go home.
"Don't take my car," Pak said. "I need it later to get to some meetings. Take the duty vehicle. It's back from repair, guaranteed to start. Just in case, don't go too far."
