Your Republic Is Calling You (12 page)

"What's wrong? What's going on?"

He didn't answer. Jong-hee drew Ki-yong's face deeper into her stomach, holding him. His face was buried in his vomit on her school uniform, the blood from his hands dyeing her clothes.

"It's not my fault. It's really not my fault."

"Okay, okay. What's wrong?"

"Mother. I think Mother is dead." Ki-yong's speech was garbled, so Jong-hee didn't catch "is dead." But she did hear "Mother." Dancing candlelight illuminated the apartment windows across the way.

"It's all right, it's all right. It's all right now," Jong-hee soothed. She led him back slowly to the hallway. Perhaps she was worried that he would jump from the railing. People were still gathered in the dark hallway, murmuring. Like ghosts wandering around subterranean cemeteries, their faces and candles floated in the air.

"What's going on? Hey, aren't you...?" The man who lived across the way from Jong-hee pushed a candle in Ki-yong's face and his eyes widened in shock as they registered the dark blood covering the boy. He took a step back. All the candles rushed toward Ki-yong, like a horde of moths. Ki-yong's bloody body and face glowed in the darkness, as if he were a Caravaggio painting.

Ki-yong tried to say "in the bathroom," but it came out "uhhhaahhhuhh." He pointed weakly toward his home. As soon as they heard the women scream, the men rushed into Ki-yong's apartment without bothering to take off their shoes. Candles paraded into his apartment. The hall was dark again. Jong-hee was still holding Ki-yong's hand, but nobody noticed.

Only later was Ki-yong overcome by an intense anger—after agents from the Ministry of People's Security came by, took the body, and sent telegrams to Myohyang Mountain and Sinuiju, and after Ki-yong changed into clean clothes provided by the neighbors. Why did she have to cut her wrists on his sixteenth birthday? Did she hate him that much? Why did she have to do it on the one day Father wasn't around? Ki-yong wanted to ask her these questions. After some time passed, a clinging guilt tempered his anger. If he had listened more attentively to Mother's complaints, if he had come home a little earlier instead of playing basketball with his friends, no, if he had never been born ... Uneasy thoughts dogged him, tormented him.

Father was brought back to Pyongyang and underwent an investigation conducted by the Ministry of People's Security, and the records kept in Mother's store were searched. But nobody found anything. It was the kind of situation that rendered Communists helpless. Suicide meant you left the socialist paradise of your own free will, for no good reason. Officially, their society didn't have suicides; without known statistics, nobody knew what the suicide rate was. In the end, the Ministry of People's Security found evidence of Mother's insanity. In a cabinet in the store, they found meaningless statistics and accounting books that she had been compiling in the few months before her death. The records didn't match the items in the storeroom or other records held by agencies that provided the goods. Transactions that existed solely in Mother's head filled more than twenty books. Nonexistent people bought made-up items in great quantities, and these imaginary transactions were meticulously recorded. Nobody had thought twice about her, a hardworking woman who never made a mistake, because so many books were created in such a short time and there was no problem in the actual circulation of items.

Later, when he arrived in Seoul, Ki-yong saw Stanley Kubrick's
The Shining.
Watching Jack Nicholson go crazy in a
cabin in the snow-covered Rockies, he remembered his mother, which he hadn't done in a long time. As Jack Nicholson typed, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," over and over on several hundred pages, he imagined Mother, sitting alone in her store, tittering like an idiot. He couldn't finish watching the movie. From then on, Ki-yong kept a safe distance from
The Shining
and chicken stew. But now, almost thirty years later, he wondered if she would have killed herself if there hadn't been a power outage and she could have continued to write in the books like she did every day. Maybe Father's business trip, the sudden blackout, and his birthday—three unusual events—merged and broke her rhythm, unfastening the safety latch located somewhere in her brain.

Ki-yong saw Jong-hee again in 2001, in Seoul. He was sitting in a subway car, on the northbound Line 3, crossing the Han River. A woman was staring at him, sitting across the aisle. He glanced at her too, but couldn't place her. He tried to remember. Who was she? She was wearing a neat slate-colored skirt that came to her knees, and looked to be in her late thirties. Although she had faint lines around her eyes and on her neck, she was a beauty, with symmetrical features. Her hair was tied back, secured with pins and an elastic band. Her wrists were thin, and she had narrow shoulders. There was something old-fashioned about her makeup. Her eyebrows were thin and drawn in, her lips were red, and she wasn't wearing mascara. She was gripping the handle of her purse as if her life depended on it, looking frightened out of her mind, or maybe sad. It was an expression he couldn't decipher. He looked away, and she looked down at her lap hastily. But soon, they were staring at each other again.

A subway car is laid out awkwardly, forcing people to stare at each other from across the way. The aisle's too wide
to say hello, but it's too narrow to just ignore someone, so it's always difficult to decide where to look. Ki-yong squinted and studied her face again. The more he looked at her, the more it convinced him that he knew her. But he couldn't remember where he'd seen her. She wasn't someone in the movie business, and she didn't seem like someone he went to school with. If it had been someone who did publicity for movies, she wouldn't have stared at him like that, making him uncomfortable. He wanted to ask, Who are you? But if he had gotten up from his seat and walked over, people would have stared. He couldn't go up to a woman whose name he didn't know and ask, "Excuse me, who are you and why do you keep staring at me?"

Her gaze was testing Ki-yong's patience. The train was still clattering across the Han River. She twisted her lips into a wry smile. There was something unnatural about her expression, revealing a tragic plea. That's when he realized who it was. He never imagined that he would see her in Seoul. Jong-hee. He whispered her name to himself, but his voice was so low that the sound evaporated as soon as it escaped his mouth. But she was reading his lips. Her expression stiffened, and when the car stopped at Yaksu station, she bolted up and hastily left the car. Ki-yong followed her out. She was walking briskly toward the transfer station, toward Line 6. He dodged the sea of people coming toward him and followed her. She kept looking behind her, frightened. Finally, stumbling like she would fall over, she started running. Ki-yong started running too. Why was she here? And why was she so desperately running away from him?

Finally, he caught up to her, close enough that he could grab and stop her. She backed up against a wall and her breath came out in rasps, her shoulders tense. People walked by, glancing at them. She was crying. "Please, please."

"Jong-hee, what's going on? You're Jong-hee, right? Right?" Ki-yong asked.

She kept repeating the same words. "Please, please," she said, seeking his generosity, hands clasped and bowing her head in supplication.

"All right, I'm sorry. I won't do anything. I'm going to go, so you can get up, okay?" He tried to help her up, as she was sliding down the wall, but she shrank away as if she had touched a snake.

Ki-yong raised his hands, palms open, and stepped back.

She got up with difficulty. "Thank you. Thank you."

Ki-yong turned toward Line 3. Only after she saw him leave did she start walking toward Line 6, with cautious steps. Ki-yong looked back after a while, but she was already gone.

A while later, he learned that she and her husband had escaped the North via Macau and Bangkok. He looked it up online, which revealed their route and reasons for escaping. In the twenty-first century, leaving North Korea had become a nonevent, something that wasn't all that shocking. People he used to know in Pyongyang might be living in Seoul, and he might even bump into them on the street.

Jong-hee was the last person he saw before he was selected to go into Liaison Office 130. She was a member of the most renowned dance troupe in the North, Mansudae Art Troupe. He told her they wouldn't be able to see each other for a long time. She knew exactly what Liaison Office 130 and Office No. 35 entailed, and that he would be sent down south as an agent. He realized why she had looked so terrified when she saw him on the subway. She must have thought he had orders to kill her. It wasn't a ridiculous thought. In 1997, Lee Han-yong, a nephew of Kim Jong Il's wife, was shot to death in front of his South Korean apartment by the Operation Department assassination squad, which then went back north, evading capture.

Ki-yong heard later that Jong-hee's husband, who had managed North Korea's overseas slush fund in Macau, opened a restaurant in Seoul, specializing in North Korean cold noodles. Jong-hee, who used to be the best dancer in North Korea, made a living serving cold noodles with her husband. He did want to go say hello, but he never went. He didn't want to scare them when they had finally managed to lead a peaceful life. It was also possible that, if he appeared, they would call the policeman helping them settle in South Korean society. But he sometimes thought of her, and remembered the warmth of her belly, where he had briefly rested his head.

K
I-YONG ORDERS AN
Americano at the café at the theater and sits down in a black metal chair that resembles the body of an ant. A few people from the Film Forum office greet him. How are you? Did you come to see a movie? What movie are you importing next? A torrent of polite words pours onto him. All the men are wearing the same hip uniform of black, horn-rimmed glasses. Ki-yong takes out his cell phone and presses a speed dial number, but he doesn't hear a ring. A recorded voice tells him that the subscriber is unavailable. He enters the phone number manually.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is Mr. Han there?"

Silence. The woman raises her tone a little. "Who's speaking?"

"I'm a friend."

"Mr. Han is abroad on business?"

Ki-yong recognizes her voice. Whenever he goes to Jong-hun's office, she sits there, typing away on IM. She always
ends her sentences with a question mark. He decides to pretend not to know who she is.

Ki-yong asks, "Abroad? Where? That's sudden."

"I don't know. I'm not sure either?"

Ki-yong swallows. He's never heard of an owner of an automobile parts franchise leaving for business overseas this urgently. After a moment of silence, the woman on the other end asks, clearly annoyed, "Hello? Who is this? Are you really a friend?"

"Okay, thank you." Ki-yong is about to hang up without answering her question when she says, quickly, "Is this Mr. Kim?"

"Yes, you recognize my voice."

"Of course."

Ki-yong is surprised; he thought she had only been focused on her instant messenger.

"I actually don't know where Mr. Han is. Two days ago he ran in, took some things, and left right away. And there were so many phone calls today. Mrs. Han came by, too. She was worried out of her mind; she said he hadn't come home in two days. Do you have any idea where he might be?"

"Has he ever done this before?"

Her voice grows louder, indignant. "No. I've been here four years, and he's never even been late!"

"Was he in debt? Did he get calls from creditors?"

"Debt? You're asking the same things as the cops. We have no debt."

"The cops came by?"

"I think Mrs. Han filed a missing persons report. They came by a while ago and turned the office upside down."

Ki-yong knows he has to hang up. "I'll ask around, too, but I'm sure he's fine."

"If you find him, can you call Mrs. Han?"

"Sure." Ki-yong hangs up. Something is definitely happening. Maybe he just didn't notice the signs of change in the past few days.

Ki-yong and Han Jong-hun entered Liaison Office 130 the same year, both stationed under Lee Sang-hyok. Lee Sang-hyok groomed them and sent them south, along with two others. When Lee Sang-hyok was purged, the four of them were the only agents who were stranded in the South. When it became clear that the lines of communication were severed, one agent left Seoul to study in Seattle. He received a PhD and became a professor, and later became an American citizen. Ki-yong doesn't know what happened to the fourth. He kept in touch with only Jong-hun. But they didn't rely on each other or maintain a close friendship. When the power that united them disappeared they reverted to their true natures. They were like astronauts who were once connected in outer space, but returned to their separate lives back on Earth. Ki-yong and Jong-hun had to survive on their own in South Korea, where they didn't know another soul, and support their newly forming families. They met up sometimes for a drink, but their conversations were as mundane as the small talk at any South Korean high school reunion. How are you? Do you think Roh Moo Hyun will become president? Will the economy fare better next year? How's the wife? I can't believe I have this potbelly. Sometimes they stopped by a karaoke bar to sing along to pop superstars Kim Gun Mo and Shin Seung Hun. They never talked about the possibility of receiving Order 4. Fear always circled them, making it difficult for them to fully enjoy their time together. Afraid that voicing the unmentionable would make it come true, they stuck to dull topics. But now, the very thing they dreaded has become reality.

In 2002, Ki-yong bought a forty-inch television. It was
right before the World Cup, but that was just a coincidence—he didn't buy it for the games. Ki-yong invited Jong-hun to his apartment for the group qualifier match between South Korea and Portugal; he probably had the tiniest unconscious urge to show off his new TV and apartment. Jong-hun was still living in a twenty-pyong rental, but Ki-yong was the proud owner of a thirty-pyong condo.

"Nice place," Jong-hun said, handing Ki-yong a six-pack of beer.