The Accusation: Forbidden Stories From Inside North Korea Page 4

  And yet, after she’d got off at Seungri station and made her way back up to street level, the same thoughts began to crowd back in. Only when she arrived at Kim Il-sung Square, where an army drill was taking place, did a new realization come to her, one that trumped all her previous worries. Over the sea of heads and fists raised in salute, the window of her apartment was clearly visible, on the fifth floor of their building. All she had to do was cross the square to find herself at home. Today, though, this wasn’t an option. Not because of the drill, but because entering the square would bring her son—already alarmed by the thousand-strong cries of “Long live Kim Il-sung! Long live North Korea!”—face-to-face with the terrifying Eobi.

  “This kid!” Gyeong-hee muttered under her breath, barely aware that she was speaking. “A wet rag just like his dad …”

  Abandoning her usual route home, Gyeong-hee turned instead to a nearby shop which specialized in children’s clothes. Her son really was the spitting image of his father, with a body as feeble as his mind. What else but a congenital weakness could account for a child’s throwing a fit at the sight of a mere picture! If it hadn’t been for her husband, Gyeonghee would have gone to the hospital days ago and demanded some kind of treatment. But no, it had to be kept hushed up. So the child was still a baby—what did that matter?

  He was the son of a supervisor in the propaganda department, and having a tantrum at the sight of Marx’s portrait had serious implications. And besides, now that the preparations for National Day were coming to a head, people were at such a level of excitement they’d be liable to mistake a dropped spoon for a grenade. The event itself would be followed by a strict review, and woe betide any participant who had demonstrated less than revolutionary fervor. No, it wouldn’t do to step out of line just now. There were only a few days left, after all—they just needed to keep their heads down.

  This was all Gyeong-hee’s husband had to offer by way of a remedy.

  The child she was carrying seemed to grow twice as heavy, and the sky, whose clear blue had been such a welcome contrast to the gray clouds of the past few days, began to stir with an unseasonal southerly wind. As they turned out of the alley where the clothes shop was situated, the contrast could not have been greater: from a lonely place where gusts of wind pursued fallen leaves and scraps of plastic lay idle in the gutter, to the vast expanse of the central road.

  There, where the mass celebrations would soon be taking place, the street looked like some fierce wild beast, shaking its mane and roaring. Bristling with posters and placards, strong sharp lines of red writing that made the eye wince to look at them; lined on both sides with innumerable flags, their fabric snapping taut in the wind; pierced by shrill whistles, underlining each new announcement or command; rent down the middle by a dark blue broadcast car, blaring slogans through its loudspeaker, again and again so that the whole street rang with them. Punctuated every so often by a plane looming low in the city’s skies, rising from takeoff or coming onto land; even their engines seemed to explode into an unprecedented roar, agitating the figures who moved below, causing them unconsciously to quicken their step.

  As soon as Gyeong-hee arrived home, she spread her son’s toys out over the floor.

  “Look, my little Myeong-shik, don’t these look fun? How about a little playtime? Beep-beep, ring-ring …”

  Leaving him to his own devices, Gyeong-hee moved quickly to the windows and drew the curtains she’d put up. Their apartment was at the very front of the block, with one window facing south and another west. The south-facing window looked out onto the portrait of Karl Marx hung on the wall of the military department building, while the west-facing window framed a similar portrait of Kim Il-sung, hung near the VIP balcony of the Grand People’s Study House. Gyeong-hee had to keep Myeong-shik from seeing those portraits.

  But the white nylon under-curtain, provided as standard and kept drawn during the day, wasn’t there to block the portraits out, and if anything the hazy shapes created by the curtain’s thin gauze were even more frightening than the solid reality. Myeong-shik’s initial terror had come from a face-to-face encounter with Marx’s portrait, and with his stressed mind and active imagination, the picture loomed larger by the day.

  It was getting on toward evening the previous Saturday when it had first happened. A citizens’ rally was taking place in Kim Il-sung Square, with the aim of encouraging people to be ever more energetic in preparing for the celebrations. Everyone was pushed for time, so the rally had been organized at an hour when most workers would normally be heading home for the day. Myeong-shik had had a cold, and as Gyeonghee, reluctant to leave him in that state, couldn’t very well absent herself from the rally, in the end she’d strapped him to her back and gone into the square. Myeong-shik was prone to colds, seemingly a product of his weak constitution, but this was something different—his tiny body was burning hot against her back, telling Gyeong-hee that his fever wasn’t to be dismissed as a mere sniffle.

  Her group had been at the head of the square’s far-left column, directly beneath the glowering gaze of Karl Marx. In the haze of dusk, before the square’s electric lighting was switched on, that reddish-black face with its great swath of hair would have sent shivers down the spine of even the most stolid Party cadre. Perhaps it was that which accounted for Gyeong-hee’s unwonted recollection—a line from the first passage of The Communist Manifesto, which she’d read at some point during college.

  “A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism.”

  Had Marx inadvertently been writing his autobiography? The phrase was a mysteriously fitting description of how his portrait had appeared just then: closer in form to some spectral presence than an actual human being, plucked from some ghastly legend. Gyeong-hee’s practical mind would never have normally entertained such speculations, but she was already anxious about Myeong-shik, worrying that he might somehow disturb the rally.

  These fears had soon proved to be well founded; his nerves already set on edge by the mass of people around him, when the opening address boomed from the loudspeaker the boy was so startled that his vague snuffling transformed into harsh, desperate sobs. Gyeong-hee was sure she could hear people scolding her for bringing a bawling child to such an important rally, hissing at her to shut him up. She’d hastily swung him around to her front and rocked him gently in her arms, making soothing noises as loudly as she dared. But the boy just kept on crying.

  Glancing around her, as a last resort she’d brought her face close to his. “Eobi! Eobi! The scary Eobi will get Myeongshik if he’s bad,” she muttered. Still no luck. And then an idea struck her. This time, she held the boy up so that his gaze would fall directly on the portrait of Marx, muttering “Eobi!” in his ear all the while.

  Myeong-shik had abruptly swallowed his sobs, and Gyeong-hee let out a sigh of relief. But the very next moment, the little lump of fire in her arms, who was pressing his face into her chest as though trying to tunnel inside her, became racked with the most extraordinary convulsions.

  “Myeong-shik, Myeong-shik, no! This child …”

  Gyeong-hee had been appalled. The corners of his mouth were flecked with foam, and his eyes were glassy and unfocused. Had a doctor happened to be at hand, the incident might well have ended in disaster. In the past week, Myeongshik had had similar fits on two other occasions, terrified by the Eobi as seen through the apartment window. These convulsions could have been easily prevented if Gyeong-hee had been more scrupulous in her care—she’d drawn the double curtains only over the west-facing window, when she should have known to cover both. Myeong-shik was shaken from his senses by that initial terror; in his eyes the portrait of Kim Il-sung had worn the countenance of the menacing Eobi.

  Now, though she had ensured that both sets of curtains were fully closed, Gyeong-hee was far from reassured as she watched her son find what little amusement he could in his toys. At any moment, she was expecting to hear the words “Fifth floor, apartment No. 3!” rapped out from the
street below, in the chilling voice of the local Party secretary. If it happened, it would be the third time, and this time, she knew, he would not be fobbed off with an excuse and an apology.

  “Fifth floor, apartment No. 3!”

  Had she imagined it?

  “Fifth floor No. 3!”

  “Ah, yes.” Even after she admitted to herself that the voice was real, it took Gyeong-hee a few moments before she was able to get the words out, and her casual tone sounded forced in her ears.

  “Please come down.”

  So this is it. … Gyeong-hee lifted Myeong-shik up and carried him out of the apartment, descending the stairs with heavy feet.

  “Again, Comrade Manager? After everything I’ve told you?”

  Though well past forty, the local secretary’s lips still bore the flush of youth, and her white-framed glasses contained no prescription. Her voice, on the other hand, was cold and colorless.

  “The thing is, Comrade Secretary–”

  “That’s enough. Do I really have to spell it out for you a third time?” This appeared to be a rhetorical question, as the woman launched straight into her usual speech before Gyeong-hee had the chance to question its necessity. “Comrade Manager, do you have something against the white nylon undercurtain with which the Party has been good enough to provide you? Provided, indeed, as a special consideration for the houses in our street, which have the honor of being at the city’s heart, a place where many foreigners will soon be visiting to see the celebrations. Do you perhaps resent the fact that they were not donated free of charge?”

  “That’s not it, it’s just—”

  “Look. Every other house has those same curtains, so the street can look neat and uniform. Which it would, if it your apartment wasn’t sticking out like a sore thumb!”

  Jabbing a rigid finger in the direction of the offending curtains, the secretary scowled first at them and then at Gyeong-hee herself.

  “Well, as I said, it isn’t that I—” Once again, Gyeong-hee found herself interrupted.

  “It’s the same story every time. Why do you persist with this obstinacy, Comrade Manager? You might throw your weight around in your job, but collective life is another matter!”

  “You go too far….”

  “Too far?” the secretary thundered, though Gyeong-hee’s protest had been couched in the mildest terms. She began to flip through the red notebook she’d had tucked under her arm.

  “Given your family’s loyalty to the Party, I’ll tell you frankly how things stand. I received a report, dated the sixth of September. ‘In apartment 3 on the fifth floor of Building 5, every day from around six in the evening until the next morning, blue double curtains are drawn in both windows. I find this extremely suspicious. It could be some kind of secret code, to communicate with spies.’” Clapping the notebook briskly shut, the secretary glanced sharply up at Gyeong-hee. “Such a report will have reached other ears than mine, Comrade Manager. And you dare to tell me that I’m the one who is going too far?”

  Gyeong-hee’s eyes were wide with shock—at first. Almost immediately, she felt something bubbling up inside her, moving through her body with real heat and substance. Those who have boldness—who are undaunted, even, in their endurance—know how to hold themselves in check when they have to. But there comes a point when that endurance reaches its limit, and when it does, the full force of their character will manifest with double intensity.

  “‘A secret code? Spies?’” Gyeong-hee’s laughter finally burst forth, a hearty guffaw that she could not control. She laughed so long and so loud that Myeong-shik whimpered in alarm, and the secretary began to look somewhat cowed.

  “Okay,” Gyeong-hee said, still chuckling to herself, “I’ll tell you.” As she drew herself up to her full height, and shifted Myeong-shik higher in her arms, her imposing stature was matched once again by a dignified, commanding air. The laughter had acted as a coarse sieve, straining out her niggling concerns until all that was left was sheer brazen nerve. What could she possibly have to fear?

  Even when she trotted off to school as a child, with her bowl cut and satchel, the red armband awarded to those whose character and comportment marked them out for a glittering career in the Party was a near-permanent fixture of her uniform, and it stayed on her arm through to her college days. After graduating and securing an enviable position, she steadily maintained her rank as a Party cadre and was entrusted with ever-greater responsibilities. Having a father who was martyred in the Korean War meant her standing was sufficiently secure to not be threatened by the minor slipups that were inevitable now and then.

  Her husband, though the graduate of a distinguished revolutionary academy, lacked her confident, decisive outlook. Congenital timidity was the only reason to quail before the business of a child’s nervous disposition! So their son found Marx’s portrait frightening; did it follow that his parents opposed the man’s ideology?

  “After all,” she continued, her voice made husky by a rumble of amusement, “can the full story be worse than what you think, that I should be denounced as a spy?” Beginning with the incident during the rally, Gyeong-hee rattled through the whole history of Myeong-shik’s condition, ending with the business of the double curtains.

  The secretary frowned.

  “But why cover the window on this side, too? Marx’s portrait isn’t visible from there.”

  “No, but the Great Leader’s is.”

  “So?”

  “You know the saying: The child who fears turtles will flinch at a manhole cover.”

  “What? Your son is frightened by the portrait of our Great Leader?” The secretary’s gaze seemed to sharpen suddenly behind her glasses, but Gyeong-hee was past being deterred by such things.

  “In any case,” she finished, “now that I’ve explained everything, I’d appreciate your understanding. I can’t shut my child up in a cupboard, or watch him every minute of the day, so what else am I to do? But tomorrow, during the ceremony, I promise I’ll keep the curtains open.”

  “That is not acceptable,” the secretary insisted, her clipped tone rising as she delivered her final remarks. “This isn’t some petty quarrel over home furnishings. The review due to take place after the ceremony is intended to weed out any deviance from Party ideology—you are aware of this, Comrade Manager? I’ve nothing more to say.”

  By the time Gyeong-hee had come up with a response, the secretary had vanished around the corner of the street, like a black hawk flying away with its prey.

  Less than two hours later, both sets of double curtains were taken down in apartment No. 3 on the fifth floor of Building 5, though not by Gyeong-hee herself.

  She was in the kitchen getting dinner ready, with a great banging of pots and pans and a slamming of cupboard doors, remembering the contempt that had laced the secretary’s words. So when her husband entered the apartment, she didn’t even realize it—he wasn’t due home for another hour.

  “Why have you drawn the double curtains?” Startled, Gyeong-hee looked up to find her husband standing there in the kitchen doorway, still clutching the handle of the door, as though reluctant to commit himself to entering. His eyebrows, two vivid black slashes that contrasted with his pallid complexion, curved up toward the middle of his forehead like the character for the number eight. “Well? Why have you drawn them again?”

  Three vertical furrows appeared in Gyeong-hee’s forehead as her hand paused in chopping the aubergine, producing the character for “stream” to match her husband’s “eight.”

  “Answer me!”

  Watching her husband dash over to both sets of windows and tear down the double curtains, Gyeong-hee left what she was doing and came out of the kitchen, picking up Myeongshik from where he’d been playing on the floor.

  The curtains dealt with, Gyeong-hee’s husband turned back to her.

  “I’ve told you time and time again to get rid of those damned curtains. As far as I can see, it just goes in one ear and out the other. If
you were still a new bride fresh from the provinces then perhaps you’d have an excuse, but you’ve had more than enough time to get to know Pyongyang by now. How can you still not understand the way things work in this city?”

  Suddenly deflated, he slumped down in his usual spot near the wall, still staring at Gyeong-hee in apparent disbelief.

  “Wasn’t I telling you only yesterday about the ‘Rabbit with Three Burrows’? Like the rabbit who keeps three burrows to hurry into as needed, you can never be too careful. That’s the moral of the story. Always stamp on a stone bridge before crossing, to check that it will bear your weight. Those are the rules for living in Pyongyang. So what on earth possessed you, today of all days?”

  When no answer was forthcoming, Gyeong-hee’s husband fished his cigarettes out of his pocket, stuck one between his lips, and lit it. He drew on it several times in quick succession, with a noisy smacking of his lips, released a lungful of smoke as a long sigh, and roused himself, somewhat revived.

  “What’s the most important theory in all of Marx’s thought?” he asked, raising his arm to point to the man himself.

  “Oh! First you talk about how long it’s been since I was a new bride, and now you expect me to go back to the classroom?”

  “The dictatorship of the proletariat. To which the theory of capital and the construction of scientific communism are both related, of course, but secondary. If capital is the weapon of capitalism, the weapon of socialism, which governs all our lives here, is the proletarian dictatorship. A dictatorship of the people! Yes, the people of this city understand all too well the reality of that idea. That’s why they live according to the principles of the ‘Rabbit with Three Burrows.’ But you go about without a care in the world, thinking your martyred father puts you beyond reproach. What do you think that will be worth, the day you slip up and find the people against you? You think the Eobi is just a fairy tale?”