by James Church
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 th
e 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."
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 II 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 down?"
"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?"
This was not said sarcastically. It was with considerable boredom.
He did not strike me as someone who was enjoying his job.
"I was thinking about a room."
"Grandma Pak sent you, no doubt. People don't show up here this time of day, unless she sends them." I waited, but he stayed behind his book.
"She recommended you, said it was better here, more suited to me. Funny thing for an old lady to say to someone she's just met." I looked around the room again. "But she definitely had a low opinion of everywhere else." The closer I studied it, the more I realized that the place was not as shabby as it seemed. It reminded me of Kang's carefully scuffed shoes, like a safe house I had been assigned to watch a few years ago in Pyongyang: barely used, so someone had to kick the dust around and muss up the woodwork to give the place a lived-in look.
"That's good. It means she likes you." The book came down, and the clerk was suddenly watching me closely.
"A room?" I decided to get to the point. That seemed to bring him around.
"Got one. Got one with a view. Overlooks a pine tree. Very evocative."
"Wonderful. I'll take it."
We stood eyeing each other. I broke first. "I believe it is customary at this point for you to tell me how much it is, for me to say that's too much, and then for you to give me a registration paper, check my ID card, and so on."
He shook his head. "Don't have any registration forms left."
I could see four or five of them on the desk. He followed my gaze, then picked up one of the forms and waved it over his head. "These?
These? This paper is pathetic. It's not even good for the toilet. I wouldn't send a form like this in. It's an insult to the nation."
I leaned across the counter and looked directly into his eyes
. "You always so patriotic about not keeping track of guests?"
He stared back. "If a record is what you want, that's fine by me. But if I have it and the special police or a couple of lunkheaded colonels from Military Security come asking, then I have to give them the form, don't I?"
"And what would you know about Military Security?" There was no sense in leaning into his face if he didn't react. I turned to a TV set sitting in the corner nearest the door. If you weren't paying attention, you could miss it when you first walked in, just like I had. It was new, big screen, a South Korean make with the name still on it. An oblong dish aerial perched on the top, nothing you'd need if all you could receive was the central TV channel, but something you'd want if you were looking for foreign broadcasts.
The clerk acted as if the TV were perfectly normal. "First, this is Kanggye, if you were wondering. The place is full of special sites which"-he shrugged his shoulders-"I have heard nothing about.
This means it is full of military security. Second, I'm from Pyongyang myself. I know what I know." He saw me look back at the TV. "Go ahead," he said, "turn it on if you want. This time of the day we can't get much, but in the morning and at night we can pull in Chinese stations.
The game shows are pretty funny, even if you don't understand the language. If that's capitalism, I say it doesn't look too difficult."
"Been here long?"
"Three years. I was in the Foreign Ministry. They asked for volunteers to move out when they took cuts. I raised my hand and was cheered gloriously at the train station the afternoon I left, along with a few hundred others. Here I sit. It's a life."
The book he was reading was in English. It was a paperback, the cover nearly coming off and some of the pages hanging loose. It looked like it had been read and reread plenty. "A gift from a foreigner long ago. Don't worry. It's legal. I'm supposed to keep up my English. No one to talk to, so I read this."
