Dear Leader (30 page)

I decided that I had to call Mr Shin as he was the only point of
contact we shared. In some corner of my mind there was a nagging suggestion that I knew something relevant. To awaken my senses, I bit my tongue. Out of the throbbing pain, an image gradually formed in my mind: the house of the old man at Longjing, who not only gave us water to wash our faces, but a meal as well. He would surely help me one more time.

I hurriedly tried to raise myself from the ground, anxious to arrive at the old man’s house before dark. But I took a step before I was able to balance myself and fell forward. My legs were unstable, and my feet were no longer under my control. When I picked myself up again, my legs swayed as if trying to hold up the heavens. The distance between each of my steps wasn’t measured by my will. Whether it was because of the dark of night, or because the earth’s gravity had lost its grip, it felt at times like I was sprinting, at others like I was walking on the spot.

In spite of my worries during that three-hour walk, I was able to find the old man’s house without much difficulty. Driven by the belief that I had to knock on his door before he turned in for the night, I staggered to the doorway, where I collapsed in exhaustion.

‘Sir!’ My hands, pounding on the hard, thick plank at the base of the door, had no feeling left in them.

From somewhere inside the house, a small chime sounded. When the old man came to the door and found me on the ground, he bent down to lift me up and support me into his home. It felt like an embrace.

‘Your friend? Where is the young man you were with?’ the old man asked.

‘We lost each other,’ I said, as I crawled nearer the kitchen fire where there would be warmth. I couldn’t feel the heat at first, but gradually, it rushed at me. Then I could feel the current of my blood, flowing through veins thinned by the cold, as it rushed all the way to the ends of my toes. Seeing my state, the old man understood there
was nothing more to ask, and went into the kitchen. He returned with a bowl heaped with rice, a plate of picked cabbage and five boiled potatoes. As the old man turned round to fetch me a spoon, I said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ to his back, but perhaps there was nothing left in me, for no sound emerged.

He watched as I ate, shovelling spoonful after spoonful of rice into my mouth. He smoked one cigarette after another. As I ate, I could not say a word. It was not because I was rushing to sate my hunger after eating nothing for days, but because of my streaming tears. I was so grateful for the old man’s kindness, but tears were my only expression.

‘There are potatoes aplenty here,’ he said. ‘Tell me if you want some more. It would have been nice to see your friend again.’

At those words, I suddenly regained my senses. ‘Sir, please may I use your phone to make a call? There’s somebody whose number both my friend and I know. I want to ask him about my friend’s whereabouts.’

He nodded and showed me his landline. It was an old-fashioned rotary phone, and the numbers were worn with use. Too hasty in dialling the numbers, I had to start again. I pressed the receiver tight against my ear, hoping and hoping I would hear Young-min’s voice at the other end instead of Mr Shin’s. But from the other end, all I could hear was Chinese. The old man listened for a moment and told me that the phone had been switched off. Over the next hour, I told the old man what had happened since we’d left his house. Then I tried to call again. There was only the same recorded message.

When the old man heard that the men at the church in Yanji had attempted to report us to the authorities, he became furious, as if it was he himself who had been insulted. He was extremely apologetic and said it had been his fault to make the recommendation. We sat in silence. He had lived on his own for some years now. He pointed to a picture of his wife on the wall, and the old photograph showed a smiling woman in her mid-fifties. Below that there was a small
television set and the rotary telephone. In the small room beyond, through the open sliding door, I could see traditional wooden furniture and a sewing machine. Just as the old man had told me, his home hadn’t changed since his wife died.

‘Stay at my place until you can contact your friend,’ he offered. ‘In fact, just as you made your way here, he might find his way here too. Then you can be together again.’

‘Thank you. I’m sure we will find each other in the next day or so. Until then, please let me help you around the house. Ask anything of me.’

The next day, I tried Mr Shin’s number again as soon as I woke up. To my great relief, I could hear a ringing tone instead of the recorded message.

Mr Shin picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’

‘Hello, it’s me. I’m calling you because I lost Young-min.’

‘Make it quick,’ he replied. ‘Where are you now?’

I didn’t understand why Mr Shin was speaking in such an urgent tone. ‘I’m in Longjing. Do you know if—?’

He cut me short. ‘Listen to me now. You have to leave there at once.’

‘Why? Has something happened to Young-min?’

‘Trust me, you have to get out of there. If you’re at that house you went to with Young-min, hang up and call me from somewhere else.’

I said, ‘I can’t call you from anywhere else, and I don’t have any coins. Please, tell me what happened. I need to know before I try to make my way alone.’

Mr Shin explained: ‘Young-min came to me two mornings ago. It must have been several hours after you’d both parted. The authorities suddenly arrived and began to search the village, so he had to run. He came all the way here to Yanji, and do you know what he said to me? You won’t believe it. He asked me to take him to his cousin’s house!’

I replied, ‘So, you said no, right? Where’s that stupid boy now?’

He said, ‘I had to take him back to my place, because he said you would call my number. At my flat, he kept demanding that I take him to his cousin’s house. In the end, I was able to make contact with Young-min’s uncle through my friend who works at the local broadcasting station.

‘The uncle was much more sympathetic than the cousin, perhaps because he’s a closer blood relative. He said his nephew would never murder anyone, and that he really wanted to see Young-min.

‘When Young-min heard the news, he left the house and didn’t come home even when it’d turned dark. Then yesterday, around four in the afternoon, I received a call from Uncle Chang-yong’s wife. She said that the authorities had come and taken Chang-yong away, claiming that you two had just been arrested.

‘That got me scared, so I turned my phone off and packed. We’re ready to move. I switched the phone back on briefly this morning and that’s when you called. You’ve got to get out of there. If Young-min really has been arrested, it’s only a matter of time before they work out where you are.’

My hands were clammy with sweat when I put the receiver down. I was sure that the door would swing open at any moment, and that soldiers would come rushing in, just as I had feared when Young-min and I were hiding together.

The rays of morning sun that pierced the windows looked as sharp as silver blades. Where could I go from here? I had no money and the snow outside came up to my ankles. There was no way I could survive away from the village. For a fleeting moment, I was too frightened even to open my eyes, and I thought that surrender was the best option. I opened my eyes when a thought occurred to me – Chang-yong had received $700 from us. I had given that amount to him not merely to transport us a couple of miles, but because I had mistakenly believed that the road to South Korea would be easy
after coming into town. Of course, it was embarrassing to ask for the return of money I had already given someone, but what did that matter in my current situation?

First, I called Mr Shin to find out Chang-yong’s phone number. When his wife answered, I said, ‘Hello. Is Chang-yong home yet?’

At first, Chang-yong’s wife, in a terrified voice, asked who I was. When I explained that I was the one who had given him the $700, she began to complain, almost in tears. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked. ‘The officers said he’d be back home by morning, but he’s still not home. If you’re going to escape, you should have gone far away from here! Why on earth have you been sitting round in Yanji?’

I asked, ‘Did the officers really say that my friend had been arrested too?’

‘That’s what they said yesterday. Why would they drag away my poor husband without any evidence? It’s all right if they interrogate him, but if they fine him, we’re ruined! They’ll ask us to pay back twenty times the amount we received, and we’ll be left out on the streets with nothing!’

I wanted to curse at her. So preoccupied was she with the fine she might have to pay that she’d volunteered not a single word of concern for my friend, whose life was in jeopardy. As I struggled to compose myself, I realised that I had an excuse to sink as low as I needed to resort to blackmail for survival. ‘Hey, listen to me,’ I told her. ‘My friend doesn’t know that I gave your husband any money, because I was the one who gave it to him. So you don’t need to worry. But if
I
were to be caught,
I
can’t guarantee that I’ll keep my mouth shut. So that I can escape far away, promise Mr Shin that you will give him $100. Tell him you will transfer the money to him right away.’

She didn’t hesitate for a second and promised to do as I’d asked there and then. When I checked three times that she would keep her
word, she said she would swear by her entire family wealth, which consisted of two oxen. That was enough.

‘Sir, I’ll come back to repay you if I make it to South Korea,’ I said to the old man as he walked me all the way to the road out of the village. Then I put my sunglasses back on.

A few hours later, I met Mr Shin at Yanji Station. He took out 800 yuan, the equivalent of about US$120, and handed it to me. I wasn’t sure how much two oxen were worth, but Chang-yong’s wife had kept her word. He looked at me awkwardly as he said, ‘I know my uncle and his wife very well. She’s not the kind of woman to just hand over a large sum of money like this. You know, I was born with a knack for getting hunches right. I’m sure you’ll make it to South Korea.’

I put 400 yuan in my pocket and placed the rest of the money back in Mr Shin’s hand. I said, ‘If Young-min comes to find you, please deliver this money to him. And please, keep your phone switched on!’

I got on a bus to Shenyang and collapsed onto the furthest seat at the back. The bus was half-full, but most of the passengers were sitting near the front. So much had happened in such a short time. I wanted to close my eyes and rest my mind for just a few minutes, but everything I had seen and heard in the past few days rushed into my head. Young-min’s face was the strongest image, and it took me completely by surprise. Why was I planning to run away when my friend had been captured? We had crossed the river together with a resolve to kill ourselves if we faced repatriation. What had gone wrong? Why was Young-min so set on going to his cousin’s house, when he knew it was surrounded?

I went over everything Mr Shin had told me from the very beginning. Chang-yong had been taken by the authorities, who claimed that the pair of us had already been arrested. They’d said that he would be returned home after a night of questioning. But they had
made no demands for the fine Chang-yong needed to pay, although there would have been no stronger grounds for his arrest than their knowledge about the money. In fact, Chang-yong’s wife had returned $100 to me so as to send the secret of the other six hundred far away from her and her husband. And I was sure that Young-min would not have been so reckless as to go to his cousin’s house. He would have first kept watch on the house from afar – he had that sort of introverted patience.

Out of the bus window, I could see enormous fields and large heaps of grain piled here and there. As we passed each one, I repeated to myself how everything would turn out well, and how we would be reunited. When the bus crossed a wide river, I stopped repeating my prayer and experienced a moment of relief. I looked up at the blue sky, where there was the silhouette of a bird. Seeing the speck, I dearly wished for a bird’s eye view and a bird’s heart too, so that I might look down on the earth and all its trivial suffering with indifferent contempt, and soar on through the air.

Only then did I become curious about the contents of the small bag that the old man at Longjing had given me when we said goodbye. Inside were six wheat rolls. Reasoning that an empty stomach would only exacerbate my anxiety, I put a piece of bread in my mouth, and decided not to use any of the money that remained after purchasing my bus ticket. How long could I survive on the remaining five wheat rolls? One week, perhaps. I would have to make it to South Korea in that time in order to stay alive. And, to do that, I needed to get some sleep.

When I opened my eyes at the sound of a loud Chinese voice ringing from the bus speakers, I was shocked to find myself on another planet altogether. Outside the window was a sea of city lights. This world, brightly lit up by electricity, made me reflect on the boldness of mankind in defying nature’s darkness. In the blackness of North
Korea, the only places that had electricity twenty-four hours a day were the areas around statues of Kim Il-sung.

In North Korea, light was power, and this display of power was most evident at night. Changwang-dong of Joong-gu Area in Pyongyang, where I worked, along with the military buildings and residences at Seokchong-dong of Seoseong Area, were literally the beacons of the city: if they remained unlit for more than three hours, then the other areas of Pyongyang could not expect to have any electricity the following night. I could not comprehend how Chinese reforms could lead to a daily increase in the country’s prosperity when they were even wasting electricity in such an obvious way. The overwhelming world of lights made me feel that I had the whole expanse of China’s wealth before my eyes.

Speeding towards the centre of all this made me excited, as if I were entering into a bold new world. Yet I also wished I had waited a little longer for Young-min, so that he might see these lights with me. This regret pulsed through me.