A Corpse in the Koryo (11 page)

I shuffled to the window. The sky showed no sign of dawn, so I guessed I'd only been here a few hours. I was on the third floor. In the moonlight I could see we were in an old wooden building. The last time it had been painted it had been white. I didn't hear the door open behind me, which was a surprise because in old buildings like this, the doors usually stick. It's easy to fix, but no one takes the time.

"You want me to close my eyes while you jump back into bed?"

Elena had two pieces of black bread on a plate, a spoonful of jam next to each one. "Your shirt won't be dry for a while. Then it needs ironing.

The girl who does that never gets here before eight o'clock."

It was cold, and a little hammer inside my head was pounding my brain. She put the plate on the bed, then moved to her chair. She didn't look at me, she hadn't done anything wrong, but I suddenly didn't like her or the accommodations. "You don't have to sit and watch me. I won't run anywhere without my shirt."

"This is my room. I've nowhere to go. Believe me, watching you is not paradise. When I'm alone, I can imagine I'm somewhere else. With you here, I cannot forget I'm in this godforsaken land."

"It's not so bad." My headache was getting worse, which made me determined to contradict whatever she said. "Pyongyang is peaceful.

The parks and the trees give the place a sleepy feeling, especially in the summer. You can hear the trolley bells clang in the morning, and the river sparkles on sunny days. From the top of the Juche Tower, you can see the whole city stretched out like a miniature village in a museum."

"God,

what are you, a travel advertisement? Do you know what you are saying? Have you ever been anywhere real?"

"Real?" I forgot my headache. "Real?" I walked back to the bed, my back shrieking at me with every step. It was all I could do not to drag my leg, but I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction. To hell with her eyes.

"Yes, where there are real restaurants, real buildings, real people."

"So. We're not real?" Getting into bed was torture. How could I lift my legs over the side without moaning like an ox? "If that's how we impress you, I must apologize. How rude of us, not to seem human to someone like you." I saw her body stiffen. Good. I pressed the attack.

"We're real, every one of us. Don't forget it. And, yes, I have been overseas.

Some things are good, some things aren't, same as here. Nothing is perfect. This godforsaken country, as you call it, is where I live. This is my home. The little room I have is where I go at night to find shelter from the storms of the day. Maybe a Finn would think it too cramped, not well furnished, lacking blond wood and bright furniture. But I like it fine." My voice was rising a little at the end as I dropped back on the pillow. It was a good thing I was so angry; it was just enough to cover over the pain that nearly strangled me as I remembered, too late, that I was supposed to lie on my side.

"Now you're mad at me. Why do Koreans get angry so quickly?"

"We don't. We just don't hide our feelings." I closed my eyes. "You may not always know what a Korean thinks, but you damn well know what he feels. If anything, we're melancholy more than angry. Listen to our songs. Always longing for something."

"The Russians are like that. Melancholy."

"Any country that produced Stalin has reason to be melancholy."

"And your country doesn't?"

"I just told you, we are melancholy, but it's in our blood, nothing to do with leaders. It goes way back. Maybe it's the mountains. If you can't look off toward the horizon, if there's always a mountain in front of you, you start to brood."

"The Swiss have lots of mountains."

"I know, I've been there. If you ask me, they're cold, not melancholy.

To be melancholy, you have to have blood flowing in your veins.

Have you ever heard them yodel? Depresses the hell out of me. It's an unnatural sound."

She sighed. "Why don't we just stop talking. It's too difficult, finding something we agree on. The silence will do you good."

I opened my eyes and looked at those blue buttons. "Surely you can find another bed." It was a mean thing to say and I said it in a nasty tone, something I find is easy when I'm tired and in pain from having been hit on the head needlessly.

Her face betrayed no emotion, but the voice changed, much less honey to it, and it wasn't just because she had switched to the Mandarin she learned at home from her mother. "As I told you, I wish I were in Finland, but I'm not, I'm here. What I did not tell you was that I despise this place. I despise this country. And I despise you. This room"-- she looked around it as if surveying a battlefield--"this room is all I have. So you can eat the bread or you can choke on it." She finished off in a language I didn't recognize. She switched back to Russian. "That was Finnish. It's the language of endless forests and lakes so blue you feel it is impossible to drown in them." She smiled grimly. "And what I just said is, 'I couldn't care less.' Only it wasn't that polite. Good night, Inspector." She lit another cigarette and blew the smoke very carefully in my direction.

I started to wonder how everyone knew to call me "Inspector," but then I closed my eyes again and went to sleep.

3

"Why do Koreans get mad so quickly." Richie laughed. "A good question."

"Not coming from an Irishman, it's not," I said softly.

"There's that low voice of yours again, Inspector. Come on, we're alone, you can roar at me if you want. Lei off a little steam."

"I'll tell you a story, Rich
ie.
Take it for what it's worth. One day I was driving down a road in the countryside, and on the slope of a hill, sitting on a rock, was an old woman. In front of her was a small girl. The girl stood with her head bowed, sobbing. Finally, she turned and walked into an empty field, as if she wanted to disappear into the earth itself Why, Richie?"

"Why what?"

"Why would anyone want to make a child so unhappy? Why would anyone who had already lived their life want to grind a child into the dirt?

What possible reason, do you think?"

The Irishman hunched forward, his hands on his knees. "That happens sometimes."

"No, not like this. This wasn't a scolding. This wasn't a lesson. This was destruction, an A-bomb on a dollhouse. That child had nowhere to go, no sun left to shine, no birds to sing, desolation and sorrow in front of her as far as her eyes could see. She had collapsed, you could see it. I cannot imagine she could ever be made whole. Richie, listen to me. That girl had nothing left to hold her together, no tomorrow, no hope. She wasn't really crying. Tears are for the living. She walked into that field like she was already dead."

"Inspector." The color had drained from his face. "Children are like that. They collapse, then they bounce back."

"You didn't answer my question, Rich
ie.
Why would the old woman want to destroy that girl?"

"How can I know? I wasn't there."

"You see? You can't believe it would be done for no reason. And you know what is worse? You can't possibly understand. So don't talk to me about anger."

4

When I woke, the sun was streaming through the window. The curtains were long gone, but the rods remained, as if waiting for the return of better days. The plate with the bread was on the floor. There was no sign of the girl, her perfume, or my shirt. I needed to find the Manpo Inn. I needed to buy a jacket, and I needed some tea. I limped to the window again. Judging by the sound of a train whistle and the rumble of a locomotive, I was not far from a rail yard. It seemed very close. Off to the right stretched a line of hills. The river was nearby; I could smell it on the morning breeze. Probably that was where I needed to start.

Though start what, I didn't know. With luck, Pak would get a message to me explaining why I was here with a throbbing head and an aching back, instead of in Pyongyang. In Pyongyang, I knew, things didn't always make sense, but at least there I was not inclined to care.

I dozed off again, and this time when I woke, my shirt was folded on the chair. There was a note in the pocket, written in Russian. "Perhaps we will meet again, Inspector." It wasn't signed, but it looked like it could be her handwriting, and the hint of perfume was enough to make me fold the paper and put it back in the pocket.

Downstairs, the clerk looked at me suspiciously. "Checking out?"

"I didn't realize I had checked in, but I might need a room for tonight."

"Got

none."

"The place is empty."

"Yeah, so?" I saw him open a drawer behind the counter with his right hand, while his left hand tapped a pencil on the magazine he had been reading.

"Nothing. This isn't up to my standards, anyway. Not even close.

Bread crumbs on the floor. Attracts roaches."

"Well," he said, "it's not the Ritz."

"What would you know about the Ritz, my friend?"

"What's it to you? You Pyongyang people think you are the only ones that know about the big, wide world and the rest of us are just yokels? Time for you to leave. I've got work to do."

"Friendly town. Who says I'm from Pyongyang, anyway?"

He started thumbing through the magazine. "Door is behind you.

Beyond that, the street. Watch where you walk, the jeeps are murder."

"Just one thing." I figured if he wanted to get rid of me so badly, maybe he would answer a simple question. "A restaurant."

He didn't even look up. "Too early. Plenty of vendors. They take cash, foreign currency, none of those lousy food coupons."

"One more thing, where is the Manpo Inn?"

He looked quickly in the drawer, which was still open, then shut the magazine and examined his fingers. When I didn't move, he glanced behind me. "Like I said, the door."

As I walked out into the street, I turned briefly back to see if the clerk was using the phone. He wasn't. The magazine again had his full attention. The sign over the door said new manpo inn.

At this time of year, there were another fifteen hours until sunset, when I was supposed to meet Kang. It was likely he was already here.

Driving would have been quicker than the train, even over bad roads.

Hell, for all I knew, Kang had ironed my shirt. I wondered if Elena worked for him.

The streets were already filled with traffic, mostly small trucks. All of them were heading toward an area some distance away, on the other side of the train station. It was a peculiar layout, making the town seem split in two. The Inn was in a run-down section, the usual ramshackle buildings on narrow dirt streets that dissolved into narrower alleys. On the main road there were a few tall trees, a building that had the air of a local party office, and further on, a large shed with a rusted metal roof that sagged badly in the middle and looked as if it would collapse but probably wouldn't. In the other direction, about two hundred meters this side of the train station was a one-storey wooden building. It stood pretty much alone, almost aloof. There were no windows along the front, just a blank wall right on the street, with four wooden steps that stuck out into the traffic. The building must have been there a long time, even before the road was built, maybe before the Japanese took over, but not longer than the hills, which it faced on the back. Beyond the old building was a cleared area, where a market had been set up, and a few more trees.

Walking toward the new section, I could see it was laid out carefully, though not by someone who had studied urban planning. Every detail followed a single imperative. It was meant to be brutally practical, and it was. Five narrow roads, all packed dirt, fed into a traffic circle. The roads served lines of warehouses and several other low buildings I couldn't identify from where I stood. Only one way, a new two-lane paved highway, led out. To get to the highway, the trucks had to stop at a guard station in the middle of the circle. There was already a line of trucks waiting. As each stopped, the drivers stepped out for a document check and a cargo inspection. It didn't look like a cursory check, either.

Every driver disappeared into a guardhouse for several minutes. No effort was made to move those trucks to the side; they sat blocking traffic until their drivers reemerged. None of the trucks were waved through.

That meant the bribes were all paid inside, recorded, credited, and enforced with a tidy discipline that made the whole thing run like clockwork.

There

were no uniforms in sight at the checkpoint; the guards, big men with broad shoulders, all wore civilian clothes. No one slouched.

The guard station wasn't the normal shack. Two stories, solidly built, it had large tinted windows all around so whoever was inside could see 360 degrees and a blue tile roof with radio antennae on the top. A line of saplings stood on either side of the walkway leading up to the front door. Someone thought this operation was going to be in business for a long time.

Two women walked past me on the opposite side of the road. One wore a pale green long-sleeved blouse with a lace collar and white pants that ended just above high-heeled brown leather boots. The other was dressed more simply, a white silk blouse with black pants tied at the bottom with ribbons. Around her neck she wore a scarf, dark blue with vivid red flowers linked by a golden chain. Her boots were soft leather.

Their clothing was not what you'd see in Pyongyang--not on the people I pass on the street, anyway--but more than what they wore, what attracted my attention was how they moved. People in Pyongyang walk intently, pumping their legs and swinging their arms to put their energy into getting somewhere. These women walked with a nonchalance I had never seen, bent back slightly at the waist so their hips seemed to be leading them. They walked without effort. Their shoulders barely moved; their long legs swung so slowly that you could imagine the scenery was being rolled past them. I stood and watched the other pedestrians.

No sneakers, no plastic boots, no canvas shoes. Only leather.

There were no children, no girls holding hands, no boys chasing each other into the street. Then it occurred to me. No one was born here. No one called this place home.