Stars Between the Sun and Moon (12 page)

Chapter Seventeen

From the day
our great father's son, whom we called the General, emboldened us to take up the mantle of the Arduous March, we mustered our nerve, put aside our worries and dug in deep. We also started receiving information about the rest of the world over the radio and in our newspapers, learning that the
ussr
had become capitalist, driven by greedy oligarchs. We, the people of Chosun, the government told us, were susceptible to the same fate.

“There are black clouds on the horizon. Winds of temptation gush over us,” a radio broadcaster announced. “The capitalists want Chosun to fall.”

These words became part of a song that was played over and over on the radio and at marches held in Pyongyang in support of the Arduous March. Veterans of the Korean War came out into the streets wearing their uniforms. I watched on a neighbour's black and white television set as they saluted while marching past the General. Kim Jong-il praised the soldiers' absolute loyalty and said the veterans would lead the fight against the capitalists.

“If the Americans come, we will be ready,” people shouted in the streets.

A movie called
Nation and Fate
was released in the cinemas. The story was about North Koreans who lived abroad, travelling from one major city to another, only to realize that Chosun was the best place on earth for them. South Korean president Park Chung-hee was shown in the movie to illustrate the evils of capitalism. “Why would anyone want to hurt our dear leader? This leader of the puppet army in the south must be a horrible person,” I overheard people in the train station saying to each other.

Kim Jong-il continually told the people, via the Party, that things would get better. I believed him. But until they did, we had to survive.

One day, during
a planting season in which not much was being planted, I managed to sell all of my mother's tofu by noon. I decided to spend the afternoon visiting a friend from the neighbourhood who had wed and moved to a nearby village.

Rina was younger than I was and taller than most men, with a long neck and perfect white teeth. She spoke gently, like I imagined a deer would talk if it could.

She took me into the back room of her small dark house, which was cool despite the warm temperature outside, and began whispering, leaning in so close I could smell her breath. “I hear if we take seafood to China, we can exchange it for other food. I've heard that if we go to Chongjin we can buy the seafood there. Then we take a train ride to Samjang. We cross the Tumen River into Adong in China, knock on doors and sell the seafood in exchange for corn and white rice. We can get across the river into China and back without being caught. Lots of people are doing it now.”

I gasped, placing my hand over my mouth. I pulled Rina in so close our cheeks touched. “What happens if you get caught?”

“No one has been caught,” she whispered. “You should come with me,” she urged with a nod. “You can feed your whole family.”

The committee leader who oversaw the behaviour of my family and our neighbours in thirty other houses had recently told me that I had to either get married or find a bona fide job. However, my mother was ailing, and there would be very few rations available even if I went to work. Our only chance was if I remained with my mother and helped her to sell what she cooked. She would die trying to do that without me.

There was no way I was going to be with a man again, that much I had vowed. My life was serving my mother and surviving this famine that was taking the lives of more and more people, including my mother's best friend, a timid woman who had left behind eight children. My life was living for the day Sungmin came to look for me, like the fortune teller had said. If I had to go back to a job, I would also be unable to hunt for the roots and herbs I found deep in the forest. Life was terrible in Chosun. Whenever I went to the rural areas, I would see children digging through animal waste for corn kernels or other solid pieces of food, which they would wash in the river and then eat.

I was terrified, but I knew I had to do what Rina proposed.

When the day
came to buy the fish and then head to Adong, Rina was sick. Her breathing was laboured. Her chest, I could hear, was full of liquid. I had brought all the money I had saved from selling my mother's tofu. I felt I couldn't turn back, so legs shaking with fear, I walked to Chongjin alone along the hilltop paths to buy some mackerel. There, I waited for the train to take me to the border town of Samjang.

I waited and waited on the platform under the high spring sun, my clothes stuck to my back with perspiration.

I sat down and placed the bag full of frozen mackerel in my shadow in an attempt to keep it cool. “Fuel shortage,” one of the military guards patrolling the platform said to me. “No coal. The train may not come for days.” He jangled some metal objects in the pocket of his crisp new khaki pants.

My bag was wet by now, the ice melting off the mackerel. I didn't have days to wait. I had hours, or else the fish would go bad and all our money would be gone. My entire family would starve. There was nothing I could do. I went back to the market and sold the fish for half the price I had paid for it. I used the money to buy some sugar, which I knew I could sell for double the price back in my neighbourhood to make up what I had lost.

Night fell as I walked past the train station. Just then a train pulled up. I was so tired my body sank into the seat, and I dozed off.

“I know your mother and sister,” I heard someone say. I opened my eyes to see the wrinkled face of an older lady. I had never seen this woman before, with the bald spots on her head and her scalp bleeding in places. But then again, everyone looked so different from how they had appeared before the Arduous March began.

The woman smiled, revealing missing teeth, and started naming off my siblings. But she was no friend. I got up to go to the washroom as the train jolted its way into the first station. When I got back, I discovered that the woman had departed, taking with her my backpack and my sugar.

I couldn't go home with nothing to give my family. I had to find some food with the tiny bit of money I had left in my pocket. I got off the train and headed back to Chongjin on foot, my head throbbing, my body shaking from nerves and fatigue. I wanted to pull my own hair out for letting everyone down.

I slept in an alleyway that night. The next morning, I bought some rice. I sold the rice for corn, then bought an egg that I sold for a pepper and so on. The market was full of people with dirty fingernails and dirt stains on their faces and who smelled of sweat and urine. Desperate, I had to keep going for as long as it took me. My only food was a bowl of noodles at the end of each day. All I had to drink was the broth in which the noodles were cooked. But I was driven by my goal to barter and trade until I made up for my family what I had lost.

One afternoon, after about a week of this, I felt a hand on my shoulder as I was trading some turnip. I turned and looked into the worried eyes of my mother.

“I thought you had died,” she said, a tear streaking her dirty cheek. “Come home.”

“I lost everything,” I confessed. I wanted to collapse but I held myself steady.

“No, you didn't. The old woman you met on the train brought your sugar to us. She said you got up from your seat and never came back.”

“That's not true,” I said wildly. But part of me was uncertain of my words. I had heard that lack of food sometimes played tricks with the mind. Perhaps I had not gone back to the right train compartment?

“Come home,” my mother whispered.

The next morning,
I packed the sugar in my backpack and headed to the market.

“What are you selling?” a woman about my mother's age asked as I turned the corner. I shook my head, indicating I had nothing. The woman wasn't carrying anything, and I suspected she had nothing to trade. I tried to push past her to get to the market, but she blocked my way. Beside her stood a younger woman holding a baby.

“What are you selling?” she asked again.

My hands started to shake. I was fearful they wanted to rob me. “Sugar,” I said, placing my backpack on the ground and undoing the fraying string I had used to tie the top.

“I'll buy the whole bag,” the woman said. My eyes grew wide.

“I know people in Adong,” she continued. “I'll sell it there and give you the money when I get back—double what you would make at the market.”

“No,” I replied, grabbing the sugar and stuffing it back in the bag. The woman stepped closer to me, her hand on the bag. “Please don't take my sugar,” I pleaded. “It's all my family has.”

The woman stared at me, her eyes cold. The younger woman with the baby stepped toward me, too. There was no one else around. We were on a deserted part of the road.

“Fine,” I said in a shaky voice. “But only if I go with you.”

I was so
nervous I urinated in the river as we crossed over to China. My steps were as heavy as if I was walking in cement. But in the dark of the night through which we travelled, I knew I would lose the women if I didn't keep up with them. So I lifted my feet, time after time from the muddy bottom of the Tumen River.

When we reached the shore on the other side, I followed the two women out. Under a tree, we slipped off our pants and wrung the water out, then did the same with our shirts. After we had dressed again in damp clothes, we knocked on the doors of some houses the women said belonged to ethnic Koreans, people originally from Chosun who had lived in China since before the revolution. I was no longer afraid. I felt greedy as I watched the women exchange my sugar for white rice. We returned when the night was the blackest, wading back across the river to Chosun.

A few days later, Myungsook, a teenager who travelled from the rural area where she lived to sell eggs at the train station, told me that you get as much as a kilo of white rice in trade for one puppy in China. That was nearly triple what I had got for my sugar. “And one kilo of white rice, you can sell for 1,000 won,” Myungsook said, smiling like Pumpkin would when sharing stories of boys and forbidden romance.

That afternoon, we each purchased a puppy in a nearby town. Mine was black with a white foot. Myungsook's dog was mud brown. This time we crossed the river halfway between two towns as the sun was setting. I waded more confidently. The rocks on the bottom of the river were slippery, though, and I stumbled a few times. I was afraid I would lose the puppy, which I had concealed in my backpack with its head poking out so it could breathe.

When we reached the other side, we wrung our clothes out. Then we followed forest paths along the river to a different town than the one I had visited before. Whenever we saw lights coming our way on the town streets, Myungsook whispered for me to duck behind a garbage bin or down an alleyway. “Patrol cars,” she told me. “If they get you, they will send you back across the bridge to Chosun and then to prison.”

Just as we had finished knocking at the tenth house, a voice announced over a PA system that it was dinnertime. The streets cleared instantly, and everything turned quiet.

Myungsook rapped her knuckles on the door a second time. We were turning to leave when we heard footsteps. A fat man opened the wooden door and beamed from ear to ear when he saw the dogs' heads peeking out from our bags. He waved for us to follow him into the kitchen, where his wife and two young daughters were eating noodles.

I licked my lips as I handed my puppy to the man. But when he snapped his fingers, his wife took her bowl, which I saw included rice and peppers, and placed it on the floor for the dog to eat.

I couldn't hide my shock. All of Chosun was starving, yet in China ethnic Koreans fed dogs with food right from their tables. Myungsook and I filled our backpacks with soybean paste, peppers and white rice. We left the house without eating, since no food was offered.

Chapter Eighteen

“I'm going to
leave,” I said to my sister one night during the harvest season.

We were lying on the ground under a bridge in Chongjin, covered in plastic tarps to protect us from the cold. Sunyoung had come with me to trade tofu for some pollock, if she could find any. Her daughter, who was almost five, was in size no larger than a toddler, her legs bowed with the rickets that afflicted so many children in the country now. I had bought my niece a little fabric doll with one eye missing in China. I was travelling there at least once a week now to trade food.

“For good?” Sunyoung asked.

“No, just for a few months. I am going to find Father's distant relatives, who have been living in China since before the revolution, and collect lots of food and money from them. You should see how people eat, how they live, on the other side!” I said enthusiastically. “The children are fat. The women have hips. The men have stomachs, and the dogs eat food from the table.”

“But we don't know where these relatives are. We've only ever heard rumours about them,” she said. When I didn't reply, she continued: “When are you going to go?”

“Soon,” I said.

After that we lay in silence, listening to the heavy snores of the men and women who had crowded under the bridge like us, finding refuge at night in places that in the past would have been unthinkable. People slept there and sought food by day, however they could, even if that meant stealing.

To travel out of town for more than a few train stops, you needed to get a permit from the government office at work. It had always been difficult for us to acquire the proper papers to visit our grandparents in Hoeryong or family friends who lived elsewhere because each workplace was only allowed to issue a certain number of permits. But we eventually received them. Now, so many more people were applying for permits to travel to trade things secretly and find food. Unless one bribed the issuing official or had connections, it was becoming almost impossible to get a permit to travel at all.

By now, I was trading our old shoes, pants and sweaters in the rural areas for turnip and cabbage. There was little food left in my own town, so we had no choice but to sneak onto the trains. Train stations that had once had two guards inspecting permits now had four. But the guards usually started by checking the permits of passengers at the back of the train.

There were dozens of us illegal passengers. The men and women who still worked for the government tried to maintain their appearance, smoothing down their brittle hair with oils and washing and ironing their uniforms. Some others, who had connections or money and could regularly obtain travel permits even though they were travelling to sell things illegally like me, were also on the train, neat and confident. But those of us who were travelling illegally stood out. Our dirty feet and fingernails, our tangled hair and our large backpacks sewn from old clothes were easy to spot.

We would huddle together, one train away from the guards. As the guards moved forward to the next carriage, so did we. When we reached the final carriage, we would run back along the platform as fast as we could and scatter ourselves throughout the other carriages. The guards would always catch one or two of us—never me, so far. The culprit would be jailed and made to pay fifty won to be released.

Before I left
to seek my father's relatives, I wanted to make sure my parents had enough food to last them for a few months, both to eat and to trade. I boarded a train heading to Chongjin, my arms full of the white rice I had picked up on my last trip to China. I planned to trade it for fish and vegetables.

On the last part of the journey, which I made on foot, I bumped into Myungin on the street. We stared at each other, speechless. He seemed to have aged twenty years. He was so thin I could see his ribcage through his thick sweater. He seemed inches shorter and his eyes popped out of his angular face. He smiled, revealing rotting teeth. He, too, was on his way to market, trying to sell produce.

“I'm married again,” he told me.

I said nothing as I scanned his face for signs of remorse or guilt.

“We never registered our marriage, you know, you and I.”

“I remember,” I replied, uncertain why he was disclosing all of this.

“I couldn't have divorced you so easily if our marriage had been registered,” he then said as if it was his atonement. “You wouldn't have had your life back.”

I was surprised both at his admission and at the lack of care I felt for him. I had no love left but no hate for him, either. I was neither happy nor sad about his declaration. I discovered something in that moment: I had never loved him. By contrast, my feelings for Sungmin, the bond of eternity, was a love that would never be broken, an invisible rope connecting us always.

I thought of asking Myungin if he knew anything about our son but decided against it. I didn't want to know the answer. If he had been in contact with Sungmin's new family, I would feel rage. Sungmin belonged to me, not him. Myungin had never cared about him. But if he had not been in contact, then I would fear for Sungmin's safety. I liked this new experience of not having emotions. I avoided asking questions that might bring pain. I had learned to live as a ghost.

“My father heard you had been arrested and were in prison again,” I said, changing the subject.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I stole a pig from a farm with four friends. I traded it for 3,000 won.”

I gasped. There was very little livestock left in Chosun.

“One of the men I was caught with told the police that I was the leader. I was tortured and beaten.” His words trailed off.

“I would forgive you your crime.”
I surprised myself with the thought. I saw Myungin's vulnerability as he shifted from foot to foot, wringing his scarred hands. He no longer seemed the monster I had married but a small, frightened boy, suffering the way we all were.

“That man had several children at home to feed,” Myungin went on, “whereas I only have a small daughter. My wife sells tofu. I did my time in prison to save my friend.”

Myungin had wronged me. I waited for the words “I am sorry” to come from his mouth. However, it was not to be.

“I must go,” he said. He limped off down the dirt road. I watched until I could no longer see his back, his body sinking down the hill.

I needed to
find out, without telling my mother my true intentions, the names of my father's relatives rumoured to live in China. I broached the subject with her one afternoon as she mended a hole in one of my father's few remaining cotton shirts. I had helped her thread the needle, since her eyes were too weak to see the needle's eye.

“Do you ever wish you had met your grandfather and uncle?” I began. “The ones who went to China? What are their names?”

My mother gave me their names. “But they didn't go to China. They went to South Korea,” she said, falling right into my plan. “They went where they were not supposed to go.”

Getting into South Korea was impossible now; that much I knew. Heading south meant travelling through militarized land, skirting landmines and guards who would stand me in front of a firing squad if I were caught. “But your father has relatives in China,” my mother said, just like I had hoped. “They left long, long before the revolution. They live in a place called Hadong Orchard.”

“What are their names?” I asked in a timid voice.

“I don't know,” she said.

I struggled to hide my disappointment.

A few days later, I announced to my mother that I was going to travel to the countryside for a while, trading food. I told only my sister where I was really going, reassuring her that I would be fine. I had travelled across the river to China many times by now.

“You're never going to find these relatives,” my sister said. “China is a big place. You don't know their names.”

I couldn't allow her words to discourage me. “I have to try.”

When I made
it across the river, soaking wet, I pulled myself up on the banks of a small town, ducking into an alley just as a Chinese security guard rounded the corner. It was dinnertime, usually the best time to cross into China, since most of the guards took a break to eat. But the Chinese were cracking down on illegals like me entering the country now, and there was more security than ever.

I stood with my back flush against the clay wall of a house and held my breath as the guard walked past. I could see his rifle when he was in front of me, and I nearly let out a scream, because my footprints and droplets of water on the sandy road were still visible. But he did not look to the side, just straight ahead. He did not see me.

When he was gone, I snuck down the alley and climbed over a few fences. Night had fallen, and the harvest moon was low, casting a dull orange light over the road. I rapped my knuckles on the door of the only house I knew: the man to whom I had sold the puppy. After that, he had repeatedly bought the fish and other goods from Chosun I brought to China.

“Please,” I begged when he opened the door, his small black eyes scanning the street. “I have nowhere to go. I want to find some relatives in China. I want to stay. Can you . . . ” I stopped, seeing that his eyes were fixed on my torso. I swallowed hard, hoping my fears would go down with my bile. I had no choice but to continue on with my plan. “Could you house me until I am dry and give me clothes to wear so I will not be recognized?”

The man's Korean was different from my own, the ends of his sentences tilting up instead of down. He used language that was very traditional and incorporated words I had never heard before. But we understood each other well enough. He nodded. “Come in.” He shut the door and handed me a rag to wipe my feet, which were covered in sand and small pebbles.

“We can help you,” he said. He guided me down the long corridor into a room at the far end of the house where five women were seated on the floor, their legs folded underneath them. They were from Chosun like me; I could tell by their loose dark clothing, their darkened and dirty faces and their pale, vacant eyes. Koreans in China wore bright-coloured clothing and skirts, pants and tops that were tight-fitting, like Chinese outfits. The women from Chosun greeted me with a slight bow of the head, relaying to me, through their lack of eye contact and slow movements, their hopelessness.

The man who owned the house circled the women slowly. They put down their bowls of rice and lowered their gazes. They seemed afraid of him. I shook off my fears and chalked up my apprehension to his appearance. Blue veins pulsed on the sides of his forehead when he spoke, and he was fat. Everyone in Chosun had shrunk, but this man was even larger than when I first met him, solid, like a walnut tree.

He waved for the other women to leave the room. I waited, standing in the corner, not knowing what to do. “Even if you find your relatives,” he said, stepping toward me after everyone had gone, “they will not have enough food for you to take back to your family.”

My upper lip began to quiver. My mind raced. “I don't know what else to do,” I said, biting my lip to stop myself from crying.

“You could marry a Chinese man,” the house owner said, his tone of voice eager. I shivered. He reminded me of a tiger I had once seen while visiting my grandparents in Hoeryong, its breath steaming in the cold midwinter air as it lifted its strong legs in and out of the snow. “Your husband,” the man continued, “will help you send money to your family. I can arrange it.”

“Marriage.” I inserted the word into my heavy thoughts. I had vowed never to let love touch me again after losing Sungmin. But marriage without love? Marriage that would provide my family with food? Marriage that would allow me to keep my own money to clean myself up and to reclaim Sungmin?

“Yes,” I said quickly before I could change my mind.

The homeowner curled his lips into a smile. I could smell his sweat. Like the other women from Chosun, I was afraid of this man. I was afraid of what he was proposing. I was afraid he wanted me for himself. I began to feel dizzy but I steadied myself. I wanted the man to see any beauty that remained inside of me, making me deserving of a husband.

The women from
Chosun were surly for the rest of the evening, holding their conversations in whispers. They moved as a group to which I did not belong. Instead, I was placed in the care of a young woman, an ethnic Korean, who wore a tight-fitting red Chinese dress and whose mannerisms were gentle, like a house mouse. She helped me prepare a bed in a darkened room at the back of the house, fetched me a meal of noodles and tofu, and then took me to the stone bathhouse out back to wash.

“Are those women getting married too?” I asked.

The slim woman nodded. I was still wearing my soiled and torn clothes from Chosun. “Don't be shy around me,” she said, unbuttoning my shirt. I let her take my clothes off until only my underwear remained. The woman took a sponge and some white soap and began washing my body.

It took three scrubs with a wiry brush and many rinses to remove the mud that had caked in every fold, crevice and line on my body. I had not washed my hair in more than half a year, and strands came out in big handfuls when the young woman massaged oil into my scalp.

When I was finally clean, the woman wrapped a rose-
coloured robe covered in tiny violet flowers around me. Once I was seated on a low white stool, she combed out my hair and trimmed the split ends. She then massaged sweet-smelling oil into my feet and legs. “I have new clothes for you, too,” she said. “Come with me.”

The woman led me back into the house. In another room at the back, she turned on an overhead light. A lime green shirt hung from a peg on the wall. On the floor was a matching pair of pants, along with some white sandals. “Try these things on,” she urged.