The Boy Who Escaped Paradise

by J. M. Lee

  We were to wash dishes, clean up, and bring customers in off the street. Stationed in the street, Dash grinned at me. “We’ve just got on the back of a tiger,” he said. “We should probably be screaming at the top of our lungs.”

  I didn’t know what he meant.

  We woke at four in the morning every day. We took a cart to the market to help ferry vegetables, fruit, meat, and seafood into the kitchen. It would be past ten by the time we finished cleaning the kitchen and washed and trimmed the produce for the day. After a quick lunch, we vacuumed the hallway and wiped down tables. Dash pulled on rubber gloves to plunge toilets plugged with cigarette butts and vomit. “Here we are, cleaning up shit,” he groused. “And to think, we managed to escape!” Even though he complained, he was content. He grew wider and rounder, his appetite insatiable. He stuffed leftover food in his mouth. Was he trying to track down and eat all the meals he had skipped? He didn’t care what it was—bar snacks and food discarded by customers, vegetable peels, cold rice, flat beer—if it could be ingested, it went straight into his mouth. In the first month he gained five kilograms. Two weeks later, he gained another three. Fat plumped his eyelids and cheeks and filled the curve between each rib, the nubs of his spine, and the space between his wrist bones and fingers. He became a completely different person in three months. He was only fifty-three kilograms when we were in Musan, and now he was nearly eighty kilograms. He looked happily at the spot where his ribs used to protrude from his chest. He wasn’t fast or agile like his namesake anymore; he was fat, wiping sweat pooled between the folds on his neck. His quick tongue was the only thing that remained the same. “I feel alive when I feel my body expanding,” Dash announced as he made the toilet sparkle. As the afternoon waned, we hit the streets to coax men into the establishment. While Dash waddled over to our targets and worked his persuasive tongue, I stared blankly into the distance.

  After dark, Dash changed into black pants and a white shirt with a bowtie straining against his neck, and walked the hall, a tray in hand. I wore an apron, washing glasses and plates streaming into the kitchen. When guests left at the end of the night, Dash tackled the dishes I didn’t manage to get to, and we would finish up around two in the morning.

  Dash chomped on the snacks he had pocketed from the tables. “I love it here,” he crowed. “We never go hungry! Do you wonder what it would be like to go to a real capitalist country like America? I’d become rich. I love money.” He took out gold-rimmed glasses that a drunk customer had left behind. “What do you think? Don’t I look like a wealthy intellectual?”

  What did a wealthy intellectual have to do with a discarded pair of glasses?

  Dash took out a one-dollar bill he had secreted in his pants pocket and smoothed it open. He put his nose to it and inhaled, then kissed George Washington.

  I went back to thinking about Yong-ae. Someone would have spotted her if she had gone through this area. She would have spoken to someone. Even an animal leaves footprints.

  Later, we stepped into the streets. Neon lights were turning off, one by one. Dash was at home in the narrow streets glistening with lights and bubbling with female laughter. He politely greeted large men wearing fedoras and black suits swaggering around, calling them “Mister.” Dash looked enviously at their wide shoulders as they roamed the alleys in packs. “I want to be in a gang,” he said wistfully. “I need to get bigger.”

  “Why do you want to be in a gang?”

  “Nobody bothers you if you’re a gang member.” He stared enviously at a group of men who turned the corner and disappeared. He imitated their strut as we walked into a bar at the end of the alley. Wearing a sullen expression, he ordered a bowl of spicy soup and a bottle of South Korean soju in a husky voice.

  The bar was bursting with women in heavy lipstick and short skirts. He appraised the girls over his gold-rimmed glasses. His glasses and girth added five or six years to his appearance. “Hey, Miri!” he called, approaching a neighboring table. “How did you do today? Good tips?”

  Miri downed a glass of soju and waved him off. He jumped back, grinning. Miri laughed despite herself. Women usually liked Dash’s gift of gab and his easy laughter, but they couldn’t be bothered with a boy with no money.

  I looked around. I spotted a woman with tangled hair drinking by herself at a two-person table near the entrance. I brought over Yong-ae’s photograph, which had gotten wet on my journey across the Tumen. “Have you seen this girl?” I asked nervously. “She’s my friend. I’m looking for her.”

  The woman glanced at the photograph and kept drinking. “A pretty girl like that? She would have left this place already. This city is crawling with guys who’ll do whatever it takes to make some money. You think they’d leave a pretty young thing like that alone? I bet she got sold off somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “How should I know? It’s a big country.”

  As I suspected, Yong-ae had left her traces in town, at a small bar, as well as at a dance hall and a lounge. Her name changed at each establishment, but everyone remembered her clearly. Men recalled her bad accent and charming smile, smiling with a faraway look in their eyes. One bar owner showed us an IOU Yong-ae had written, insisting that we pay her debt. Dash reassured the owner that she had ripped us off too, which was why we were looking for her. The owner handed over a crumpled thousand-yuan note. “She probably went to another club. Come find me when you get her. I swear I’m going to put her in prison.” Dash reiterated our trustworthiness. I watched him, realizing he could never be a menacing gangster; he smiled too much.

  THE PROBABILITY OF ONE MAN AND

  ONE WOMAN FALLING IN LOVE

  Late one night, on the 128th day since we crossed the river, Dash took me to a bar. He had heard that the owner of this bar was a madam who had been very powerful at one point. Everyone called her Mama. When we got there, we found a chubby woman in her forties in a red polka-dot blouse and a dark purple skirt. I showed her Yong-ae’s photograph. Mama studied it with sleepy eyes. “Must be an old picture. She’s in a school uniform. Their faces change quickly here. Anxiety takes away a girl’s beauty.” Her lashes looked heavy.

  I tried to imagine Yong-ae wearing fake eyelashes and red lipstick like Mama. “She came across the Tumen,” I confided. “I have to find her.”

  “This place is crawling with girls who came over,” Mama scoffed. “They stay around until the SPSD catches them. If they’re lucky, they hide out somewhere, but they’re often sold by human traffickers. Don’t moon over a girl,” she advised. “Concentrate on how you’re going to survive.” She drank a cup of cold soju.

  Where could she have gone? I hunched over and covered my ears.

  “Don’t be discouraged,” she said gently. “You’ll find her, I’m sure.”

  I removed my hands from my ears. “How?”

  “Of all the possibilities, the likelihood of a boy and a girl meeting and falling in love and the chances of them parting are the lowest. And a boy and a girl are most likely to fall in love, fall out of touch, then meet again, apparently. I don’t know how that’s possible, but there you have it.”

  Mama didn’t relate the theory accurately, but I recognized the idea. After all, I had told Yong-ae in Gilmoese about these probabilities and we had worked on long, complicated calculations to prove them. “You know Yong-ae!” I leaned forward. “Where is she?”

  She waved a hand. “I don’t know any Yong-ae.”

  “This girl.” I shoved the photograph in her face.

  She snorted and topped her glass. “That’s not Yong-ae. It’s Songhua. She was small and seemed so vulnerable. Everyone wanted her, but she came right into my arms. Only for a little while, though. She told me she was twenty, but I think she was lying. I think she must have experienced things most twenty-year-olds don’t, so that’s probably why she seemed older. She left soon enough.” She emptied her glass. A black smudge from her eyelashes shadowed one eye. “She’s lucky she was able to cross, but her beauty is ac
tually a burden. Men were drawn to her, and she knew how to sell what she had at the best price. And she came to me, because I had the best, priciest girls in Yanji. She was the most beautiful of all my girls. But if you’re that beautiful, you don’t have to stay anywhere or listen to anyone.”

  I stared down at Yong-ae’s crumpled face.

  Mama glanced at me. “She left about six months ago,” she finally said. “Songhua thanked me one day and headed out.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “I didn’t ask. She probably went toward more money. Shanghai, probably. That’s where money gathers.”

  “Shanghai,” I murmured.

  Back at Changbaishan, I got on the computer and looked up Shanghai. The Internet took me to glass-sheathed buildings, the red Oriental Pearl TV Tower, and streets filled with foreigners in crisp white shirts. I searched for her in those pictures.

  “We’ll be even freer and richer in Shanghai,” Dash said excitedly. “Let’s go. Let’s get rich.”

  Mama introduced us to Old Man Yong-gyu, who was actually only around fifty, a longtime dealer and friend of Zheng Hanmo. He came to Yanji for a couple of weeks each month. We heard that he frequented Beijing and Shanghai, as well as Hong Kong, Singapore, Pyongyang, and Seoul, and that he tipped generously in renminbi, U.S. dollars, Hong Kong dollars, yen, and won. When he met us, he understood immediately that we had fled the North, and perhaps took pity on us; instead of waiters who were better and quicker, he requested us to serve him. He had been the president of Kangdong Group, which distributed North Korean products in northeast China and imported Chinese industrial products for the republic, and he maintained friendly relationships with high-level officials in the Party.

  “We’re set now,” Dash said, grinning. “If Old Man Yong-gyu takes us under his wing, we’re safe, even if the SPSD catches up to us.”

  A month after the introductions, Old Man Yong-gyu called us in. “Would you like some whiskey?”

  Dash bowed and took a glass, and Old Man Yong-gyu filled the glass to the brim. Dash turned away politely and downed the entire glass.

  “I’ve been watching you two. You aren’t opportunistic like the others. Would you be interested in doing an errand for me? I need two bags delivered to Shanghai.”

  Dash nodded eagerly.

  Old Man Yong-gyu sucked on a cigarette and took an envelope out from his inner jacket pocket. He tossed it on the table. “This should be plenty for travel. You’ll receive a generous payment once you deliver the bags. Can you do it?”

  Dash kneeled on the floor. “We would be happy to do anything you want,” he said solemnly.

  “I’ve already talked to Zheng. Be ready to leave tomorrow morning.” Old Man Yong-gyu got up and left.

  Bodyguards came in, and one of them placed two booklets on the table. Chinese identification cards. Dash opened them. Our photos were inside. We had taken these pictures a few days ago. I had taken a picture with the two chefs just outside the kitchen and Dash had taken one with the large guard stationed at the entrance and the woman who managed the girls.

  “What’s your name?” a bodyguard asked.

  I looked at my identification card. “Jiang Jiajie,” I mumbled.

  “Where were you born?”

  “Yanji, Jilin Province.”

  “And you?”

  Dash looked down at his card and hesitated. I read his new name for him. “Kai Ludu, born in Changchun, Jilin Province.”

  On the train the next morning, Dash kept looking at his ID card, grinning. To him, it didn’t matter that it was fake. It showed that he was a Chinese citizen, and that was all he cared about. The undulating train screamed along the tracks. Villages, roads, and people gushed past. Dash—no, Kai Ludu—took out his gold-rimmed glasses and put them on. A fraying copy of Newsweek was on the luggage rack above. I took it down and began to read a fascinating article.

  North Korea’s Export of Drugs:

  An Underground Economy Encourages Drug Trade

  December 16, 2002

  Fifty miles from the northern border of China lies Yanji, a bustling center for refugees, smugglers, prostitutes, which has become the most important distribution center for North Korean drugs, particularly methamphetamine, in the last fifteen years. Since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the drug trade at the border between China and North Korea has boomed. The North Korean government has weakened from decreased overseas financial assistance and severe famine that has killed hundreds of thousands of citizens. These difficult circumstances have led to the escape of thousands of North Koreans.

  Officials believe that a majority of drugs circulating in China are coming from North Korea. Last year, Chinese border patrol arrested six North Koreans smuggling in illicit substances. According to sources, in North Korea one gram of methamphetamine sells for ten times the price of rice, which goes for $15/kg; in China, the price is even higher, and selling “ice” is often the easiest way to make money. Chinese officials believe that abandoned factories near Hamhung, North Korea, built during Japanese rule, have been churning out methamphetamine continuously.

  The drug trade in North Korea dates back to the 1970s with the cultivation of opium. One defector, who escaped from a prison camp, stated that opium was one of the many crops grown by inmates, and that the government allegedly exported the drugs in secret.

  Dash looked out the window, cradling his exposed belly. “Gilmo, I can’t believe we’re going to Shanghai!”

  I take my old calculator out from under my pillow. Does my math teacher miss this device? I press the numbers gently and see my beloved numbers appear on the screen. Black numbers twinkle against the gray screen. I recall what he told me the last time I saw him. “Gil-mo, the world is a beautiful place.”

  I hear Angela approaching in 4/4 time. She raps on my cell door. 4/3 time. I don’t answer, but she comes in anyway. She rips out the first page in her file and holds it out.

  I study it for a long time before turning to her. “Is there only one truth, do you think? Could there be two or more truths?” She tilts her head. “What do you mean?”

  I start drawing on the sheet of paper. “This sequence starts from two. Since it is the first number you add one to get the next number in the sequence. Three is the second number, so you add two to that. And so on until you get this.”

  “But these aren’t all prime numbers.”

  “I like symmetry, too. And just because I like prime numbers doesn’t mean this isn’t correct. There’s one problem, but there isn’t just one answer.” I draw three more symbols underneath.

  The first sequence is 8, 12, 17, and the one below is 8, 13, 21. They are nearly identical but follow entirely different rules. “The Fibonacci sequence,” I explain, “is an infinite sequence that adds the previous number to the number before that. So: 2 / 3 is 0.66666, 3 / 5 is 0.6, 5 / 8 is 0.625, 8 / 13 is 0.615384, 13 / 21 is 0.619047, and so on. The ratio between the two numbers comes closer and closer to the golden ratio of 1:1.618.” I think of all the beautiful things that form the golden ratio, from the spiral of a pine cone to the arrangement of petals on a flower to a shell of a nautilus to Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings to a sonata to Yong-ae.

  Angela stares at my shapes.

  “How can you say that the one answer you know is correct when you don’t know all the answers?” I ask.

  “Well,” Angela finally says, “if you know at least one answer that’s correct, you know that it’s accurate.”

  “Not knowing everything can be the same as not knowing anything. A little bit of knowledge can be dangerous.”

  Angela is about to say something else but gives up and sighs. She shakes the sheet of paper she’s holding. “Did you read this? Interpol confirmed that you were involved in money laundering in Shanghai. Tell me what happened.”

  Re: Jiang Jiajie,

  Chief Financial Manager of Shanghai Drug Ring

  —Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Public Security

  From 2003 to 2004, Jiang J
iajie worked as an accountant for Shanghai-based Kunlun Corporation. Though his exact date of birth and birthplace are unknown, Jiang gained the trust of Cheng Xiaogang, the head of a Shanghai drug ring, and oversaw drug trade funds and money laundering. In 2004, during the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Public Security’s war on drugs, Kunlun Corporation was disbanded and Cheng was assassinated. Jiang served one year in prison. His whereabouts are unknown upon release.

  60481729—THE NUMBER OF LOVERS

  WHO ARE NO LONGER TOGETHER

  Shanghai was a whirl of dizzying lights. People walked faster here; I floated along the river of people coursing through the streets, reminded of being tossed in the black Tumen. Where was this colorful cacophony taking me? We made our way to a three-story white mansion in a luxurious residential area not far from the river. We gaped up at the house as men in dark suits and sunglasses let us in through the wrought iron gates. A sprinkler misted the manicured lawn dotted with junipers and exotic fruit trees. We stepped into the marble-clad entrance and were shown into the living room.

  It smelled like cinnamon. A guard was stationed at the door and another by the window. A man in his forties studied files at a desk in the middle of the room, peering over his gold-rimmed glasses and tapping a calculator. I found myself drawn to the calculator and inched toward the desk. The man was working on a ledger, his eyes shifting from the page to his calculator. I peeked over his shoulder.

  “Thirty-two thousand eight hundred ninety-seven,” I murmured.

  His head shot up. He looked back at me then threw a look at one of the guards, who came over and pulled me aside. The man went back to his calculations. Eventually he looked up at me suspiciously. “Hey, you,” he hissed. “What did you say?” “Thirty-two thousand eight hundred ninety-seven.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “That’s the sum of all the numbers in the right-hand column,” I explained.