The bed faced a large window that displayed the darkness of Pyongyang. She left the lamp burning on a side table. The children slept on a pallet at the foot, the dog between them. On the mantel above, out of the children’s reach, was the can of peaches Comrade Buc had given them. In the low light, they undressed, stripping to their undergarments. When they were under the sheets, Sun Moon spoke.
“Here are the rules,” she said. “The first is that you will begin work on the tunnel, and you will not stop until there is a way out. I’m not getting trapped again.”
He closed his eyes and listened to her demand. There was something pure and beautiful about it. If only more people in life said, This is what I must have.
She eyed him, to make sure he was listening. “Next, the children will reveal their names to you only when they decide.”
“Agreed,” he said.
Far below, dogs began baying in the Central Zoo. Brando whimpered in his sleep.
“And you cannot ever use taekwondo on them,” she said. “You will never make them prove their loyalty, you will never test them in any way.” She trained her eyes on him. “Tonight you discovered that my husband’s friends are happy to hurt you in public. It is still within my power to have one person crippled in this world.”
From the botanical gardens down the hill came an intense blue flash that filled the room. There’s no arc quite like a human meeting an electric fence. Sometimes birds set off the fence in Prison 33. But a person—a deep-humming blue snap—that was a light that came through your eyelids and a buzz that entered your bones. In his barracks, that light, that sound, woke him up every time, though Mongnan said after a while you stop noticing.
“Are there other rules?” he asked.
“Only one,” she said. “You will never touch me.”
In the dark, there was a long silence.
He took a deep breath.
“One morning, they lined up all the miners,” he said. “There were about six hundred of us. The Warden approached. He had a black eye, a fresh one. There was a military officer with him—tall-brimmed hat, lots of medals. This was your husband. He told the Warden to have us all remove our shirts.”
He paused, waiting to see if Sun Moon would encourage the story or not.
When she didn’t speak, he went on. “Your husband had an electronic device. He went down the rows of men, pointing it at their chests. When held up to most men, the box was silent. But for some, it made a staticky sound. This was what happened to me, when he aimed the device at my lungs, it crackled. He asked me, What part of the mine do you work in? I told him the new tier, down in the subfloor. He asked me, Is it hot down there, or cold? I told him Hot.
“Ga turned to the Warden. That’s enough proof, yes? From now on, all work will focus on that part of the mine. No more digging for nickel and tin.
“Yes, Minister Ga, the Warden said.
“It was only then that Commander Ga seemed to notice the tattoo on my chest. A disbelieving smile crossed his face. Where did you get that? he asked me.
“At sea, I said.
“He reached out and held my shoulder so that he could get a good look at the tattoo over my heart. I hadn’t bathed in almost a year, and I’ll never forget the look of his white, buffed fingernails against my skin. Do you know who I am? he asked. I nodded. Do you want to explain that tattoo to me?
“All the choices that came to me seemed like bad ones. It’s pure patriotism, I finally said, toward our nation’s greatest treasure.
“Ga took some pleasure in that answer. If you only knew, he told me. Then he turned to the Warden. Did you hear that? Ga asked him. I think I have discovered the only damn heterosexual in this whole prison.
“Ga took a closer look at me. He lifted my arm and noticed the burn marks from my pain training. Yes, he said in recognition. Then he took hold of my other arm. He turned it so he could study the circle of scars. Intrigued, he said, Something happened here.
“Then Commander Ga took a step back, and I could see his rear foot go light. I lifted my arm just in time to block a lightning-fast head kick. That’s what I was looking for, he said.
“By resetting his teeth, Commander Ga made a piercing whistle, and we could see that on the other side of the prison gate, Ga’s driver opened the trunk to his Mercedes. The driver pulled something out of the trunk, and the guards opened the gate for him. He came our way, and whatever he had, it was extremely burdensome.
“What’s your name? Ga asked me. Wait, I don’t need it. I’ll know you by this. He touched my chest with a lone finger. He said to me, Have you ever seen the Warden set foot in the mine?
“I looked at the Warden, who glared at me. No, I told Commander Ga.
“The driver came to us, carrying a large white stone. It must have weighed twenty-five kilos. Take it, Commander Ga told the Warden. Lift it up, so everyone can see it, and with much difficulty, the Warden worked the stone up to his shoulder, where it perched, bigger than his head. Commander Ga then pointed the detector at the stone, and we all heard the machine go wild, ticking with energy.
“Commander Ga said to me, Look how it’s white and chalky. This rock is all we care about now. Have you seen some rock like it in the mine? I nodded. That made him smile. The scientists said this was the right kind of mountain, that this stuff should be down there. Now I know it is.
“What is it? I asked him.
“It’s the future of North Korea, he said. It’s our fist down the Yankees’ throat.
“Ga turned to the Warden. This inmate is now my eyes and ears around this place, he said. I’ll be back in a month, and nothing will happen to him in the meantime. You’re to treat him how you’d treat me. Do you hear? Do you know what happened to the last warden of this prison? Do you know what I had done to him? The Warden said nothing.
“Commander Ga handed me the electronic machine. I want to see a white mountain of this when I return, he said. And if the Warden sets this rock down before I get back, you’re to tell me. For nothing is he to let go of that rock, you hear? At dinner, that rock sits on his lap. When he sleeps, it rises and falls on his chest. When he takes a shit, the rock shits, too. Ga pushed the Warden, who stumbled to keep his balance under the load. Then Commander Ga made a fist—”
“Stop,” Sun Moon said. “That’s him. I recognize my husband.”
She was quiet a moment, as if digesting something. Then she turned to him in the bed, bridging the space between them. She lifted the sleeve of his nightshirt, fingered the ridges of the scars on his biceps. She put her hand flat on his chest, spreading her fingers across the cotton.
“It’s here?” she asked. “Is this the tattoo?”
“I’m not sure you want to see it.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid it will frighten you.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You can show me.”
He pulled off his shirt, and she leaned close to observe in the low light this portrait of herself, forever fixed in ink, a woman whose eyes still burned with self-sacrifice and national fervor. She studied the image as it rose and fell on his chest.
“My husband. A month later he came back to the prison, yes?”
“He did.”
“And he tried to do something to you, something bad, didn’t he?”
He nodded.
She said, “But you were stronger.”
He swallowed.
“But I was stronger.”
She reached to him, her palm coming lightly to rest on his tattoo. Was it this image of the woman she once was that made her fingers tremble? Or did she feel for this man in her bed who’d quietly started weeping for reasons she didn’t understand?
I ARRIVED home from Division 42 tonight to discover that my parents’ vision had become so bad that I had to inform them night had fallen. I helped them to their cots, placed side by side near the stove, and, once settled, they stared at the ceiling with their blank eyes. My father’s eyes have gone white, but my mother’s are clear and expressive, and I sometimes suspect that maybe her vision isn’t as ruined as his. I lit a bedtime cigarette for my father. He smokes Konsols—that’s the kind of man he is.
“Mother, Father,” I said. “I have to go out for a while.”
My father said, “May the everlasting wisdom of Kim Jong Il guide you.”
“Obey the curfew,” my mother said.
I had Comrade Buc’s wedding ring in my pocket.
“Mother,” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes, son.”
“How come you never found a bride for me?”
“Our first duty is to country,” she said. “Then to leaders, then to—”
“I know, I know,” I said. “Then to Party, then to the Charter of the Workers’ Assembly, and so on. But I was in the Youth Brigade, I studied Juche Idea at Kim Il Sung University. I did my duty. It’s just that I have no wife.”
“You sound troubled,” my father said. “Have you spoken to our housing block’s Songun advisor?” I saw the fingers twitch on his right hand. When I was a boy, one of his gestures was to reach out with that hand to ruffle my hair. That’s how he would reassure me when neighbors went away or we witnessed MPSS men pulling citizens off the subway. So I knew he was still in there, that despite the distemper of his patriotism, my father was still my father, even if he felt the need to hide his true self from everyone, even me. I blew out the candle.
When I left, though, when I stepped out into the hall and closed the door and turned the lock, I didn’t walk away. Quietly, I placed my ear to the door and listened. I wanted to know if they could be themselves, if they could let down their guard when they were finally alone in a dark and silent room and could speak as husband and wife. I stood like that a long time, but heard nothing.
Outside on Sinuiju Street, even in the dark, I could see that troops of Juche girls had chalked the sidewalks and walls with revolutionary slogans. I heard a rumor that one night an entire troop fell into an unmarked construction pit on Tongol Road, but who knows if that’s true. I headed for the Ragwon-dong district, where long ago the Japanese built slums to house the most defiant Koreans. That’s where there’s an illegal night market at the base of the abandoned Ryugyong Hotel. Even in the darkness, the outline of the hotel’s rocket-shaped tower stands black against the stars. As I crossed the Palgol Bridge, pipes were dumping sewage from the backs of pastel housing blocks. Like gray lily pads, shit-streaked pages of the Rodong Sinmun newspaper slowly spread across the water.
The deals take place around the rusted elevator shafts. Guys on the ground floor arrange terms and then yell up the shaft to cohorts who deliver the goods—medicines, ration books, electronics, travel passes—with buckets on ropes. A few guys didn’t like the looks of me, but one was willing to talk. He was young, and his ear had been notched by MPSS agents who’d picked him up for pirating before. I handed him Commander Ga’s phone.
Real quick, he opened the back, pulled the battery, licked its contacts, then checked the number on the internal card. “This is good,” he said. “What do you want for it?”
“We’re not selling it. We need a charger for it.”
“We?”
“Me,” I said. I showed him Comrade Buc’s ring.
He laughed at the ring. “Unless you’re selling the phone, get out of here.”
Several years ago, after an April Fifteenth ceremony, the whole Pubyok team got drunk, and I took the opportunity to lift one of their badges. It came in handy every now and then. I pulled it out now and let it gleam in the dark. “We need a phone charger,” I said. “You want your other ear notched?”
“Little young to be a Pubyok, aren’t you?”
The kid was half my age.
With my authority voice, I said, “Times change.”
“If you were Pubyok,” he said, “my arm would already be broke.”
“Pick the arm, and I’ll oblige,” I said, but even I didn’t believe me.
“Let me see this,” he said and took the badge. He studied its image of a floating wall, felt the weight of the silver, ran his thumb against the leather backing. “Okay, Pubyok,” he said. “I’ll get your phone charger, but keep the ring.” He flashed the badge at me. “I trade for this.”