A Corpse in the Koryo

by James Church

  “Numbers don’t bring luck.” The oversized hat the little man wore might have made him seem taller, but it tipped to one side, so he just looked off balance. He was tired—maybe he had been up all night—but mostly he was wary.

  “Up to you,” I said, and turned to go. He took a quick step and put his hand on my arm, gently, as if he didn’t want to startle me.

  “Don’t turn around.” He had lowered his voice even more, so I could barely catch his words. “Just walk to the corner, over to the right. Stand in the shadow. I’ll be back.”

  He had my ticket, and I didn’t want to let him keep it because I was beginning not to trust him. Maybe things had changed since he and Chief Inspector Pak had last met. Things change. People change. You never know.

  “Go.” His voice had a new tone, urgent, not the voice of this hushed waiting room. The peasants nearest on the floor turned to look and then turned away, not wanting to see, already forgetting.

  I waited in the corner. It was so dark I couldn’t read my watch. And other than coughing and a few snores, the only sound was the slow drip of water reverberating around the walls. Everything was muted, even the sense of time. The train must be delayed.

  “Here is your ticket, Inspector.” He was beside me. I hadn’t heard a thing. I didn’t like this muffled atmosphere. It was unhealthy. “You have a seat on the third car. Everyone will scramble when the train gets here, and it will get here soon enough. You’ll hear it whistle as it pulls into the station. Saddest damn whistle; no reason to sound it so early in the morning, but the engineer says it’s regulation, and I don’t mind. We’ll throw everyone off the third car, or most of them, anyway. There should be three passenger cars, two boxcars, and a caboose. I let army officers stay on your car, maybe a few cadre kids, and anyone who slips me five dollars. The view from the caboose is the best. You can see the countryside slipping away behind, makes you think you’re actually going somewhere.”

  I had a ten-dollar bill ready to give him. He shook his head. “From you, nothing. I stamp your ticket, then I walk away. I don’t even remember your face.”

  I felt the ticket put into my pocket, turned to ask how he knew to call me “Inspector,” and found nothing but still, empty air.

  2

  The train should have been scrapped years ago. The small engine looked too tired to pull the collection of cars hitched behind. The first two coaches were brown, Korean made, but the third car was bigger, huskier, European. It had been bought secondhand, probably in the past year, and rolled all the way across Siberia. There were no lights along the platform; a single light was shining about thirty meters away, in the middle of the empty train yard where it was doing no one any good. Dawn was still an hour away, but already the darkness had thinned enough for me to distinguish some details on the third car. From the manufacturer’s plate beside the door, I saw it was Czech. The instruction placards placed over the passageways at either end hadn’t been changed to Korean, but it didn’t make much difference. If they were meant to inform passengers that the dining car was five cars back and the first seating was at 6:00 P.M., no one needed to know. If they were safety instructions, they weren’t any use, either. Trains rarely picked up any speed on these tracks. Even on minor grades, if you jumped off the rear car and started to walk, you could overtake the engine. Most derailments only resulted in a few bruises, unless the whole train tumbled off a bridge.

  The train bumped once and then started slowly out of the station. Other than a rainstorm or two, the coach I was on must not have seen a washing since it left the Czech border. The original color was hidden under a thick coat of dust, and the windows had so much dirt baked on by the sun along the bottom ledge that they wouldn’t open. There were small signs over every other window. Maybe they said USE ONLY IN EMERGENCY but I couldn’t read Czech and didn’t plan on taking lessons. I banged on the window next to the seat with my fists, trying to force it open.

  An army colonel was slumped on the seat across the aisle, his hat over his eyes, boots untied, trying to sleep. “Enough,” he said and pushed back his cap so he could see what was going on, “enough pounding. Leave it be, can’t you? I’ve got to get some rest.” He looked over at me with a bleary frown. “Once the sun is up, the air outside won’t be any cooler. Why let in the noise from the engine?”

  The young woman in the seat facing me shook her head. “Ignore him. He is always like this, contrary. I need some air, go ahead and open these filthy windows, if you can. I don’t plan to suffocate on this train to nowhere. You don’t smoke, I hope.” She stopped and tilted her head slightly. “You’re not mad at me, are you?”

  “We haven’t even met. Why should I be mad at you?”

  “You look mad.” She squinted at my face. “Maybe it’s your eyebrows. Close together. People with wide foreheads and broad faces tend to be happy. Haven’t you noticed? Lots of room to smile. But your forehead”— she shook her head—”with those eyebrows. You don’t smile enough. When you get older, all your wrinkles will go the wrong direction.”

  She was in her late twenties, not very pretty, or maybe it was the way her hair was done in a permanent that made her head seem about to swallow her face. For this early in the morning, she had on plenty of makeup, more than most girls I knew wore any time of day. It looked like she was going to meet someone, or had just left.

  I tried to find a comfortable position. It was too hot to sleep, and still too dark to see much scenery through the grime. I’d made sure to sit on the right side of the train, so that I could watch dawn find the hills.

  “This side of the coach is going to roast, but there might be a view.” The girl had a habit of raising her voice at the end of each sentence, making every statement into a question. It was a sure sign she had spent time overseas. They didn’t do that in China. She must have been in Europe, doing what I couldn’t guess. “Are you going to open the window or not?” This, at least, was a real question.

  From across the aisle, the colonel groaned and rubbed his eyes. “Open it or she’ll go on like this all morning. And there’ll be more about foreheads, I guarantee.” He turned to look out his window, and as he did, the sun rose over the mountain tops. I watched the light touch each peak separately, and each, as it emerged, marched jagged and saw-toothed along the edge of the day, nothing like the smooth, caressed hilltops only a morning ago.

  “It’s already stifling in here. Open the window, and I’ll give you some tea.” The girl pointed at the small canvas bag that served as my suitcase. “You wouldn’t seem to have any in there.”

  “I’m going to murder her if she doesn’t shut up,” the colonel muttered, but he looked hard at the jar of tea she’d removed from a plastic carry bag. With no warning, the train lurched and the jar flew from her hands, shattering on the floor at my feet. The colonel rested his head against the seat back and closed his eyes. “Someone please remind me why I even bother.” He growled to himself, and the next moment, he was asleep.

  The girl stared mournfully at the broken glass. “This is a bad beginning.” She turned toward the window, almost in tears. “A journey ill begun finishes badly.” It sounded like something she had read once but never had the chance to say out loud.

  “Pretty gloomy for such a young person.” I brushed away the tea that had splashed on my trousers. “And much too gloomy for so early in the day. We’ll find some tea at the next station.” The train lurched again and shuddered to a stop. From outside the car came shouts. Two railway police had a small boy by the collar, though because of the long shadows and the dirt on the windows, it was hard to tell how old he was. They dragged him to an embankment and gave him a shove.

  With the train stopped and the sun climbing, the air in the car became even hotter. The windows on the colonel’s side were still shut, but I finally managed to tug the one at my seat open just as the taller of the railway policemen shouted, “And don’t let me catch you again, or I’ll shoot.” He turned to his companion. “Or I would if I had any
ammunition.” He waved to the locomotive, and the train inched forward. A trio of goats alongside the tracks looked up as we moved by. The smallest scampered away; the other two watched without interest, then turned back to a row of newly planted fruit trees, which they were slowly stripping bare of leaves.

  The girl was starting to perspire. I could see her makeup was already suffering. She leaned toward me. “Go ahead,” she said, “open the window on his side.” She nodded toward the colonel. “Don’t worry about waking him.”

  “You two know each other?”

  She sat back and smoothed her dress. “We are acquainted, yes.”

  The colonel opened one eye. “I want that window shut. Even if this car reaches the boiling point, the window stays shut, understood?”

  I stood up. “Makes no difference to me. Broil if you want to. I’m going to get some air.” I opened the door to the platform between the cars. It was crowded with people, most of them dozing, a few hanging off the side. The one nearest me moved slightly so I could step around him. “This is reserved space.” He turned his head, and his left eye looked past me, into the sky, while the other searched my face. “Moreover, it is illegal to ride between the cars of any train, at any time.”

  “Strictly forbidden.” An older man beside him spoke into the hot wind. I stood silent; the others turned to me, one or two expectantly, the rest with blank faces.

  I took out my notepad and flipped it open. “All right, I shall have to arrest each of us, once we get back into my jurisdiction.” Just then the door to the car behind me opened, and the two railway police stepped through.

  The first one, the one without any ammunition, glared at the group. “Not one of you has a ticket, and it is strictly forbidden …”

  “… to ride between the cars,” the man with the roaming eye muttered, and his older companion finished, “of any train.”

  “I’d push you off here, but it’s not worth my time.” The second policeman, smaller, with a cap that went over his ears, meant to sound tough but only managed to be shrill.

  The first one eyed me suspiciously, taking in my clothes and the pack of cigarettes in my shirt pocket. “Looks like we’ve got a comrade here, riding with the masses. You know the regulations, brother?”

  I pulled three cigarettes from the pack, handed one to him, one to his small partner, and crumbled the third into the wind. He knew what it meant: You and the breeze, my friend, have equal standing as far as I’m concerned. He shook his head. “From Pyongyang, sure enough. Terrible wasteful, you people are. Not all that smart, either.” He had the accent of someone from the tiny valleys buried among the mountains of Yanggang, close to the Chinese border. Whenever these people slipped into Pyongyang, it meant trouble. They were all crooks. The security patrols in the city complained that it was hard to deal with them because you couldn’t understand their accent, and they always had long, complicated stories to tell about the loss of their travel permits, or why they were wearing so many watches.

  “That’s enough.” The man with the bad eye addressed the policemen, whom he obviously knew and certainly didn’t fear. He was much taller than he seemed at first. Tall and thin, with a crooked eye but a straight back. “You stand around, he’ll crumble another, all to loss, and we’ll none of us be better off.” This was no peasant; he spoke with an elegant, learned cadence that had no connection with his worn appearance.

  The conversation tailed off as we passed through the next station, a wilted place with a deserted platform. There was not even a signboard. You either knew where it was and got off because you had no choice, or you didn’t bother. I could see the stationmaster slouched in a chair in his hut; he didn’t even wave at the train as we crept by. The two policemen puffed on their cigarettes; the others went back to watching the countryside pass. I smoked part of a cigarette but tossed it away into a ditch running along the tracks and spent the rest of the journey chewing on a rice cake I’d bought at the Pyongyang station. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the piece of persimmon wood, smoothing it in time to the sound of the wheels clacking over the tracks. I didn’t want to think about how long it had been since I’d had any tea.

  3

  The Irishman reached over turned off the tape recorder. “All stop. I’m not paid to go on any train trips. I told you, we’re supposed to be talking about Kang.”

  “Relax, Richie. I’m getting you there.”

  “I’m relaxed. You’re the one whose fingers are drumming on the table.”

  “I didn’t know the Irish were so observant.”

  “I hadn’t heard Koreans were so transparent.” He stood up from the couch and stretched. “Seems like a lot of people in your country talk quietly.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Any special reason? Fear, maybe? Must be a quiet place.”

  “I realize some cultures see a virtue in being boisterous. We don’t. Public decorum has a lot to recommend it.”

  “Especially if you need to be invisible.” The Irishman pointed to the wall. “See that clock? It says 2:40. Know why? After a while, they figure maybe you won’t realize how much time has passed. They figure you won’t be checking your watch. But I know you already did that, twice. Maybe you have an appointment, planning on meeting someone?” He waited, but I didn’t respond, so he went on. “Psychologically, it’s supposed to be a good time for this sort of meeting—2:40, I mean. Midway to nowhere. You ever awake at that time of the morning? Gives me the shakes.” Moving to the clock, he reset it to 11:15. “That’s better, huh? You might say it’s not long until lunch, or about time to cuddle, depending on your a.m. or your p.m.” He sat down again, this time at the other end of the couch. “Tell me about your chief inspector, Pak. I’m guessing he knows Kang better than you do.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. Pak is dead.” I felt the coffeepot. It wasn’t even lukewarm. “Anyway, Pak is not your business.”

  “That so?” Lines creased his forehead, then went away. “Let’s review, shall we? Kang is dead. Pak is dead. Everyone who touches you dies, is that it? Anyone else I should cross off my list?”

  “Since when do you have a list?” I stood and wandered around the apartment. It was sterile; no one ever lived here. My little room back home had more character, though this one had the advantage of a lamp.

  “Go ahead, get the urge to ramble out of your system. Feel better? Alright. Forget Pak.” The Irishman fiddled for a moment with the tape recorder. He sighed and pounded his shoulder a few times. “Kim, give me something on Kim. You don’t like him, I got that much. I take it he is still alive.”

  “A sad state of affairs, Richie, when men like Kim are left standing.” I sat down again and poured myself half a cup of coffee. It looked cold. “Kim is a problem in search of a solution.”

  “Couldn’t tell by me. So far, his only sin is a bad haircut.”

  4

  The Inn of the Red Dragon in Kanggye was a two-story building that had given up the struggle with the weather. The roof sagged, its windows were cockeyed, and the exterior cement facing was chipped and cracking where it wasn’t streaked with water stains. A few blocks east of the train station, the inn sat alone, across from the burned wreck of what used to be a clinic, according to a sign on the boarded-up door.

  I had asked at the station whether there was an inn nearby. There were several, according to an old lady who leaned against the wall with a blanket spread in front of her, selling cigarettes stacked in two small pyramids—one Korean, one foreign—a circle of rice cakes, and a few pieces of fruit. A pile of party newspapers sat beside her; the one on top was old but in remarkably good shape, an edition for Kim Il Sung’s sixtieth birthday, dated April 15, 1972. She also had four or five children’s books in English, brightly colored, one of them with a duck in pants and a hat on the cover.

  “Buy an apple,” she said. “You look hungry.”

  “Grandmother, I need to wash my face and go to sleep. Do you know where a poor boy can put his head do
wn?”

  “You want a girl?”

  “Grandmother, look at me,” I said. “First you offer me an apple, then a woman.”

  “Yeah, biblical, ain’t it.” She smiled, and her eyes disappeared in the wrinkles. I must have looked surprised, because she suddenly stopped smiling. “Don’t worry, this isn’t Pyongyang. Bibles around here come as thick as flies. Decent paper. Some people use it to wrap fish.”

  “And you?”

  “I can read, can’t I?”

  “An inn, Grandmother.”

  “I know. There’s three. Five actually, nearby, but two’s not for you. One of them, the White Azalea, is only for military, which you’re not. Then there’s the Lotus. Very elite, for fine gentlemen from Pyongyang and foreigners.” She looked at me. “Not you. Anyway, just between us, it’s a dump. The party lets them charge through the sky, and for what? The food stinks. The cook is crooked and only buys spoiled goods at a discount. They caught him once, but his uncle is someone important up there”—she pointed a finger into the air—“and he got let off with a warning.” She laughed. “Big deal. A warning. They should have broiled his ass good.” She paused and looked thoughtful. “You, you try the Red Dragon. Nothing fancy.” She paused again. “I’m surprised you don’t know much about Kanggye.”

  “Why would that be?”

  “You look like one of General O Chang-yun’s boys. Same eyes.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t know any such man, but we’ve all got to have eyes, don’t we, Grandma?”

  As I walked up the hill to the inn, I tried to calculate the odds of the first person I met in this sorry city knowing my grandfather, General O, “Hero of the Struggle and Beating Heart of the Revolution,” as they called him on the radio the day he died.

  5

  The clerk behind the desk at the Red Dragon did not move. I stood for a moment taking in the cluttered counter and the spare furniture against the walls, trying to decide if this place would keep me out of Kang’s sights. The man finally stirred but kept his face in a book. He worked his lips a few times to check if they still functioned, and then his voiced slipped up over the top of the pages into the room. “You needing something, or just here to observe?”