Gyong-ho was rooted to one spot, suddenly a witness rather than a participant. She was an unnecessary accessory to the odd ritual, and felt awkwardly exposed in her pointlessness.
Il-sun finally reached the young man and they exchanged greetings. Gi could not hear what they were saying, but she could see that Il-sun was tossing her hair often, laughing easily with her breasts held on offer. She was reminded of the cover of
John and Daisy
: She could imagine Il-sun—her head back, lips parted, her uniform blouse unbuttoned and falling off her shoulders—wrapped in the muscular arms of the young man. Jealousy stabbed at her. She wanted to be the one holding Il-sun, supporting her as she arched her back, offering the berries of her lips and the delicate mounds of her breasts.
The young man was a cockroach, Gi decided. His suspicious sunglasses were altogether too buggy, especially with his funny hat squashing his face. He looked like the kind of man who would eat bites of other people’s food, leaving his droppings in their cupboards and drawers.
Il-sun and the young man finished their conversation. She turned toward Gi and was suddenly a girl again, running playfully toward her friend, smiling. It was amazing how quickly she could vacillate from girl to woman and back again.
“I’m going to go with him, Gi! He’s taking me to meet some of his friends. You’ll cover for me with the mistress, won’t you?” Her eyelids batted, cheeks flushed pink.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Gi, please. This is important.” She sounded almost childlike in her pleading.
Gyong-ho knew that she could not say no. She wanted to very badly, but the word would never come; not to Il-sun. Never to Il-sun, who was sunshine itself, who only ever played and never took anything very seriously.
“Okay,” was all she said.
“Thanks, Gi!” Il-sun replied, almost squealing. She turned around with a bounce and ran back toward the young man. Halfway there she recomposed herself and was a woman again, full of restraint and grace. She glided to the young man, sat sideways behind him on the seat of the scooter and put her arms around his middle. She pressed her cheek into his shoulder, and the scooter sped away.
T
HE
BRILLIANT
LIGHT
of the sun began to fade into shades of blue as shadows grew longer. Gyong-ho walked in the direction of the setting sun feeling the temperature rapidly drop, a reminder that summer had not yet arrived. She felt hollow inside, as if there had never been any substance to her at all. In an attempt to fill the void that was usually filled with Il-sun’s girly chatter, she thought about the turning of the planets around the sun. The cosmos was an enormous equation whose numbers were so large even her uncanny mind could not conceive them. But then she thought about “yes” and “no,” positive and negative. She remembered playing a game where Il-sun was thinking of an object, and Gi had to guess what it was by asking only yes-or-no questions. For Il-sun it was just a way to pass the time, but for Gi the concept was profound. She thought of it numerically, so that yes was represented by the number one and no was represented by the number zero. In a flash she could see that all information could be represented using various combinations of yes and no, positive and negative, one and . . .
It was no use. She could not distract herself from her jealousy by getting lost in abstract ideas. She felt an uncomfortable churning in her stomach. Who was this young man to steal her friend away? How could Il-sun be so callous as to abandon her for this man she barely knew? She felt anger condensing out of her jealousy. She was betrayed and alone, and the cockroach was the one holding Il-sun. She began punching herself in the arm. At first she merely tapped, but then the strikes came harder and harder. The pain she was causing her flesh gave an outlet for the pain she was feeling in her heart. Tears welled up in her eyes, but they never rolled down her cheeks. She could not bring herself to sob. She did not want to release her anger and indignation yet. She wanted to hold on to it for a while.
She reached the orphanage and made the necessary prostrations to the photographs of the Great and Dear Leaders in the foyer. There was a light smudge on the glass just below Kim Jong-il’s left eye. She went to the cabinet, took out the special cloth for cleaning the portraits, and polished the glass until it was again glistening. She then went in search of the mistress. The mistress’s bedroom door was closed, and Gi knocked lightly.
“Who is it?” came the mistress’s voice from inside.
“It’s Gyong-ho. We’re back from work, miss,” she replied through the door.
“Why are you so early?”
“Our class was cancelled.”
“Il-sun?”
“She went upstairs already, miss.”
The lie nearly caught in her throat. She went up to bed alone.
21
T
HE YOUNG MAN’S BODY
was firm, and Il-sun wished she could press herself fully into him. He fired up his scooter and they peeled away down the street. The spring air felt refreshingly cool on her face and bare throat as they zipped across the city. Il-sun felt important being on the scooter as they passed the throngs of people having to walk and ride bicycles. The young man used the horn to scatter the people who were walking in the middle of the road. It was a rare thrill to ride fast through the city on a scooter.
They sped through intersections and Il-sun smiled at the pretty girls in uniform who were standing in the middle, directing traffic. She marveled at their expressionless faces and rigid choreography as they conducted the scooter through the crossroads. In truth they seemed superfluous, considering the lack of traffic, but she liked seeing them all the same. As she made fleeting eye contact with them she squeezed the young man tighter as if to say, Look at the man I have; aren’t you jealous? The girls were hired specifically for their beauty. And loyalty, of course.
Maybe one day I will get a job directing traffic,
Il-sun thought.
After a time they pulled up to an apartment building near the university. The young man stopped the motor and lit a cigarette. The sun was getting low in the sky, but he kept his dark glasses on. Il-sun liked the way he looked in them—powerful.
“So, who are these friends I’m going to meet?” Il-sun asked as she hopped off the back.
“Just some associates. Some guys I work with.”
“If they’re friends of yours, I’m sure I’ll like them,” she said, smiling at him.
He didn’t respond, and Il-sun wondered if perhaps that comment was too intimate. She would have to remember to play it a little cooler.
The young man opened a compartment at the back of the scooter and withdrew two bottles of whiskey and a carton of cigarettes.
“I can’t stand the acorn liquor they usually serve,” he said. “It gives me a headache.”
He led her to a set of stairs at the side of the building and took her to a second-floor apartment. She was surprised that no one stopped them to check their papers on the way in. Maybe the
inminbanjang
was out. Voices could be heard through the door, laughing and talking loudly, as well as faint music. The young man knocked out a rhythm on the door which Il-sun assumed to be a secret knock. The deadbolt clicked and the door opened a crack. Part of a face appeared and looked from the young man to Il-sun and then back again. The face disappeared and a voice boomed out, “Hey everybody! The party has arrived!” The door flew open and they were ushered inside.
The air in the apartment was thick with cigarette smoke, and Il-sun had to control herself to keep from coughing. The music playing in the background was not like anything she had ever heard, and she was sure it must not be Party approved. She could see that it was coming from a portable music player of a kind she had never seen before. It was a marvel of a contraption and she would have liked to have inspected it more closely, but she did not want to appear rude or unsophisticated. Eight people were sitting on the floor of the apartment, all men except for one, and the young man introduced Il-sun around. Most of them went only by unusual nicknames, like Rooster, Pistol, Wart, and Pepper. The young man explained that they had all met in the army several years ago, and the names just stuck. Glasses were handed out and the whiskey bottles were opened. The young man distributed packs of cigarettes to everyone.
Il-sun had a hard time concealing her nervousness. Not only was she the obvious outsider in a group of close friends, but the whole scene felt conspicuously illicit. This was not a safe place to be if the police decided to come looking, or if the
inminbanjang
were to come to check people’s papers. The young man noticed her hesitation and put his arm around her.
“Relax, Il-sun. These are all my close friends. Nothing will happen to you here.”
“I’m just a little nervous, I guess. I mean, what if the police come, or one of the neighbors reports this?”
The young man chuckled patronizingly. “Let me tell you a little secret: Everyone has a weakness. If you can figure out a man’s weakness, you can own him. Let’s just say that I have a talent for knowing people’s weaknesses. I happen to know that one of the head Party cadres has a weakness for foreign films of a certain variety. I also happen to have a source for those films and can deliver them to him. He is grateful for my service, and he keeps the dogs away. He knows if he doesn’t keep the dogs away, then I talk, and my downfall leads to his downfall. You might say I deal in self-preservation. And he is but one of my clients. Really, I have the best job security of anyone in the city. So have a whiskey! It will help you relax.” He filled a glass and handed it to her. It burned going down, but it also calmed her nerves.
She found herself sitting next to the other woman at the party, whom everyone simply called Cho. Il-sun did not ask about her first name. Cho had long, straight hair pulled back in a barrette. Her lips were painted bright red and her eyelashes were thick with mascara. Makeup was a luxury item that Il-sun may have enjoyed were she not an orphan, and it was a wonder that Cho could afford to use it so heavily. She was wearing a short skirt that defied conventional propriety, and her shirt was revealing of small breasts that were pushed up and inward in an attempt to make them seem larger. Her age could have been anywhere between twenty and thirty-five. She was casually ignoring the taboo against women smoking, cradling a cigarette with a raptor’s hand, her fingernails impossibly long and painted to match her lips. She looked down her nose at Il-sun, her eyes swimming with whiskey.
“You know, he likes it when I call him Gianni,” she said, slurring her words almost unintelligibly.
“What?” Il-sun asked, confused.
“Gianni. Your friend. He likes it when I call him that. He heard it in a movie once. Thinks it makes him sound tough.”
“Oh,” replied Il-sun, still confused.
“You’re pretty. What do you do, teacup?”
“I’m a seamstress. At the White Butterfly.”
“Seamstress?” She laughed a wheezy, alcohol-laden laugh. “I could help you make a lot of money, I bet, with your looks.”
“Thank you,” Il-sun said, uncertain if it had been a compliment. Then, to be polite she asked, “What do you do?”
Cho laughed again, but her eyes were hard and calculating. “I am what they call a flower-selling girl.” Several of the men nearby who had been listening chuckled and winked at each other.
“But what do you do in the wintertime?” Il-sun imagined that it must be difficult to make a living selling flowers in the wintertime.
Cho slapped her thigh, her laughter becoming more of a cackle. “What do you do in the wintertime?” she mocked. “That’s the best joke I’ve heard in a long time. Did you hear that, Gianni? I told her that I’m a flower-selling girl, and she asked me, what do I do in winter?” All eyes were on Cho as she cackled uncontrollably.
“You have had enough to drink, Cho,” the young man said.
“To hell with you, Gianni, or whatever your name is.”
Il-sun felt like she had just been the butt of some inappropriate joke, and she was embarrassed not to have understood it. She was also grateful to the young man, who seemed to be standing up for her. The only person laughing now was Cho.
The evening wore on and the last of the whiskey was poured into glasses. Conversation was getting more and more brash. One of the men in the group, a gaunt young man who went by the name Wart and was missing one of his front teeth, lifted his glass and said, “To the Dear Leader!” His tone was irreverent, to the point of being sarcastic.
“To the Dear Leader, and his dog! Waaaaoooooo!” replied a drunken voice.
“You are the Dear Leader’s dog,” said another man, thinking he was being more clever than he really was.
“No, Cho is the Dear Leader’s dog. She’s his bitch,” said another, and the room erupted in laughter. Cho and Il-sun were the only ones not laughing. Il-sun was uncomfortable with the blatant disrespect she was hearing. She had never before heard anything but praise and adulation for the Dear Leader. Though she herself had thought such things, and only the night before had spit on his image when no one was looking, she knew that to say such things in public could have dire consequences.
But the horrors were not over yet. As a coup de grace, the young man, her young man, stood up clumsily and grabbed the photo of the Dear Leader off the wall. He then unfastened his trousers, pulled them down below his buttocks, bent over, and rubbed the image of the Dear Leader against his bare backside. The room went silent. That went too far, even for the ill-mannered group. Coming out of a stupor, seemingly oblivious to the offending gesture, Cho remarked, “I haven’t seen those fine haunches for quite a long time, Gianni.” She then slumped and passed from consciousness.