CHAPTER Three
Tree sap smells sweet, even after a hundred years. Not like blood. When a piece of wood burns, it burns clean. Fire is pure because of the wood. Where do you think flames come from, if not from the wood?” This did not sound scientific to me, but I never said so, because when I was small and standing in my grandfather’s workroom, there was no sense asking questions. Best to wait; best to listen closely because he might not alight for more than a moment on the main point. He sometimes spoke carefully, and when he did I knew I was to listen and ask nothing, nor repeat it to others. “Blood has a stench, like death. We are blood; we bleed, all of us. People talk about pure blood. No such thing. Blood stinks; it is filled with what is impure. It carries what is foul and stinks of everything that would kill us. We carry our own poisons around inside. A pure heart, people say? No, a heart is soaked in blood, every day, every minute. It is filled with what is impure, and it pumps that throughout your being. Sap is pure, wood is pure, fire is pure. You’ll never walk into a forest and gag at the smell of dead or dying trees.”
I didn’t know what he meant then, though I listened carefully because he was speaking in a low voice. When he wanted me especially to pay attention, his voice became soft and the accent of his mountain village came out. It was hard to understand, but the worst thing I could do at such times was ask him to repeat something.
“They’ll tell you about the glory of sacrificing your blood.” At this I became especially alert. The reference to the ubiquitous “they,” never defined, never brought into focus, it meant I should listen closely. “They have made blood glorious. The more they wade in it, the better things will be; that’s what they believe, or they want you to believe.” He turned away, and when at last he looked at me, I could barely sit still in the fury his look contained. “Your father, your mother—how much blood does it take?” He began to bellow like a wounded ox. “Get out! Go and walk somewhere, off by yourself, away from me. Are you going to sit there like the rest, are you going to listen with your mouth slack and then walk in line, following the one in front over the cliff? Will you bend in the wind, like some damned grove of bamboo? Don’t you know the story? The prince was slain by Japs, they put his body in a room and his blood dripped to the ground, and from there grew bamboo. Is that what you want to be? Bamboo that has fed on blood, even the blood of a prince? Get out! Out! Don’t come back until you find the answer. Not on your lips, but deep, deep inside where there is no one else but you.”
This scared me to death. The neighbors had heard, I was sure. How could anyone not have heard for a kilometer around? They would be watching from windows and doorways, listening from where they sat under the trees. My grandfather had told me to go away. They would know what he said. I would be an orphan, no home, no family. And where would I go? What would become of me? No one would take me in, I would wander until I dropped from hunger, and then my vile blood would pollute the rice fields. I ran outside, and didn’t stop running until I knew that I would never be like bamboo, never, no matter what anybody said.
2
I’d been back more than a week, and had convinced Pak I needed to go out and look around my sector. Jen? was safe in the Koryo, tired of waiting for a meeting that never seemed to happen. I was standing on a corner, looking at the willow trees along the street. It was quiet; once in a while a car went by, but even the engines seemed muffled. Most of the buildings on the main street were empty. The apartment houses that stood the next street over showed a little more life. Someone had a window open, and the lace curtains billowed in the March wind. Two women walked by, neither one a resident in my sector unless they had slipped in while I was away.
“I don’t like seeing corpses on the sidewalk,” the first one said.
“Sorry they offend your sensibilities.”
“No, it isn’t the bodies, it is the reason they are there.”
“They’re there because that’s where people are dying these days.”
“They’re dying because of decisions.”
“Careful.” They both looked around.
“The South Koreans say we are their brothers,” said the first, lowering her voice as they walked past me. “It was on a piece of paper my cousin found on the ground.”
“I never pick up those things. They might have poison on them.”
“It didn’t seem to hurt him. But it wouldn’t surprise me. The South Koreans want us to go hungry. They are willing to let the children starve. More than that, they want the children and the babies to starve. They think that will push us under.”
“Have you noticed? There are hardly any babies being born.”
“No one has the energy.”
“No one has the will.”
“Did you eat today?”
“Did I? I don’t remember.”
They turned and walked toward the river. I went the other way, for fear of what else they might say.
3
The phone call had come Tuesday morning saying that the meeting would take place that afternoon. I had to drive fast, but Jen? didn’t complain. There was still a little sun left when we pulled up to the rickety bridge. The gaunt guard studied my ID for a long time. He paid no attention to Jen??s. As soon as we entered the hut, Jen? said to the general, “I’m sorry about your brother-in-law.” The major wasn’t present, and there was no coughing coming from the back room.
“His brother-in-law?” I stared at them both.
“Sohn, the general’s brother-in-law.” Jen? sat down at the table without being invited. He relaxed.
“Always go with the cigarette butts,” I said.
“Do you think you’re standing here right now because I trust you?” The general shook his head. “Not a chance, Inspector. Sohn thought I should meet you. Otherwise, you would have been turned away at the gate the first time. Maybe shot.”
I looked at Jen?. “How did you know Sohn’s brother-in-law was in charge of this place?”
“I didn’t, not until Sohn told me. He thought the military might go along with selling off the missile program if there was money in it for them, turning the production sites like this one into moneymaking enterprises.” He stood up and strolled slowly around the hut. On the wall was a map of the site. He stared at it intently. “I have no idea what this place could be. It would have to be leveled. There’s certainly nothing worth saving.”
“Nice line of trees along the road,” I said. “Poplars.”
“Too bad they’re not much taller than matchsticks.”
The general cleared his throat. “If there is nothing else …”
“Somehow, you didn’t strike me as a field officer.” I smiled at him.
He smiled back. “Insufficiently crazed?”
“No, you move too much like a panther.”
“Meaning?”
“Unerring sense of balance.” I waited to see if he took that the wrong way. He didn’t. “So what happens now?”
“Now?” It was my question, but the general was speaking to Jen?, as if I had disappeared from the room. “Now, we’re almost out of the woods. Nothing changes, nothing stops. We test what we need to test. We spend what we need to spend. I hear something is planned for the summer in Hwadae.”
“Things will get better until they get worse again.” I listened to the sound of my voice. Neither of them seemed to notice. “No one understands that things can’t go on like this?” It wasn’t good, staying invisible too long in these situations. The trick was rematerializing in the same form that you were when you were last seen.
“I need some air.” The general opened the door. “Things can always go on, Inspector. It’s our curse. There is always a break in the clouds, always. Sohn knew that. It’s what worried him.”
“He was in a hurry,” Jen? said.
“In a terrible hurry.” The general stood in the doorway with his back to us. “He thought this might be the only chance.”
“For what?” I remembered what Pak had said about the theory of the “only chance.”
“To change course. He told me he’d move heaven and earth this time.”
Jen??s right hand gripped the left. “That was his mistake. It’s always fatal. He shouldn’t have run out of patience.”
“You can drown in patience,” the general said. “Sohn didn’t want to drown.”
“And you?” I asked.
As the general turned to me, he adjusted his jacket. Military and police, I thought; when they get uneasy, they tug at their clothes. “It’s quiet out here. None of those crazy plans going across my desk. The winds sing through the ruins. I write poetry and count the days of my life. When spring comes, I’ll be transferred. The azaleas are nice in Yongbyon in April, isn’t that what they say?”
“And this site?”
He shrugged. “It’s not police business, I can tell you that much.”
“I may see you in Pyongyang, then.”
“Or in Seoul.”
“Keep your balance, General.”
“And you.”
“If we move enough piles of dirt,” Jen? said more to himself than to either of us, “sooner or later someone might notice.”