Dear Leader (18 page)

I despaired to hear him ask us the question we were about to ask him. The air was bitter and cold. Should we plead with him and offer $200 more? I put my hands into my pocket and was feeling for the money, when Chang-yong exclaimed, ‘Hey! I know. Come on.’

He explained that his mother-in-law had an outbuilding across the street from her house. He would secure the door with a padlock after we had hidden inside.

‘What? Soldiers are looking for us and you want us to hide near her house?’ I retorted.

Young-min added in a trembling voice, ‘I’d rather go deeper into the mountains. I don’t care how far we have to go.’

Chang-yong interrupted him, saying, ‘Just listen to me. You guys are murderers in the eyes of China. That’s right, murderers! You won’t be safe, even in the mountains. Besides, what are you going to do for food? And it’s risky to be outdoors after dark. Anyone can be stopped by the night patrols for an identity check. If you get caught, that’s it for me too. How are you going to explain how you got to Yanji? Are you prepared not to implicate me? How am I supposed to trust you two? You know the saying, “It’s darkest under the torch”? However much they are feared, even soldiers can’t enter someone else’s locked shed. Do you hear what I’m saying? I’ll bring you the rest of the beef stew and some blankets. And the wine too.’

We had no choice but to comply. The shed was actually a small shack that might once have been used as a home, although it looked to have been abandoned for years. There was a space where an old-fashioned kitchen fire had been. The smallest of the three ‘rooms’ in the shack had a hole in the roof and the stars could be seen in the open sky. It was not much better than being out in the cold, but at least we would be sheltered from the worst of the wind. In the kitchen area, there was a heap of dry pine needles for kindling.

Chang-yong took a long time to return to us, perhaps because he was arguing with his mother-in-law. Although this was technically part of Yanji city, it seemed as remote as the countryside. In our hut there was no sign of habitation, and certainly no heating or calendars depicting bikini-clad models, but the solitude of the place gave me hope that we might live here in hiding as long as we needed to.

My daydreaming was disturbed by the barking of dogs, and it sounded as if they were coming closer. The barking must have drowned out the sound of traffic, because I then heard engines being turned off and car doors opening. My hair stood on end.

There was a chaotic stamping of heavy military boots, and then the voices of several men. My worst fears were confirmed when I heard Chang-yong’s voice among them, speaking in Chinese. The
glow of the full moon shone down on us through one of the shack’s dirty windows, like a spotlight intent on revealing a criminal’s whereabouts, and we squatted in a dark corner away from the light. The rucksack was still on the other side of the hut. I was afraid that Chang-yong would be frightened into revealing our whereabouts to the authorities, and even the short dash over to the rucksack seemed too much to risk. We remained like this, on tenterhooks, for over half an hour.

Then all at once, the sound of heavy footsteps was followed by car doors being shut, of engines starting and of vehicles pulling away. I was so grateful for the silence at the end of it. But Young-min and I remained in our corner, stuck to the wall as if we were a part of it.

A few minutes later, I could hear Chang-yong muttering in the yard. The familiarity of his voice was welcome, but part of me feared that soldiers might secretly be following him. When the door to our shack opened, I was relieved to see that farmer Chang-yong was alone. He was carrying a large blanket and a package.

‘I told you!’ he exclaimed. ‘I was right – it was that bitch who snitched on us. But I kept my mouth shut, said I didn’t know anything about you. Fucking bitch!’

‘Please, calm down.’ As I waved my hand to quiet him, Young-min peered outside to check that no one else was there.

But Chang-yong spoke even more loudly than before. ‘Don’t worry, they’ve gone. They were looking for you, saying you’re a pair of murderers. They even showed me photographs of you.’ He put the package on the ground. ‘Here. Some dumplings. Eat this and stay here till morning. I already called my nephew – you know, the one who knows South Korean spies. He says he’s some distance away, and he asked me to look after you for five more days. He says there’ll be a large reward if I hide you well! What a good lad. Anyway, I’ll bring you a day’s worth of food every day. Just sit tight and everything will be fine.’

Torn between our fear at the thought of our photos in the hands of the authorities, who were parading us as murderers on the run, and the hope that Chang-yong’s nephew would come to our rescue, we waited one day, then another, each day stretching before us like a decade. Chang-yong continued to bring us food each night.

Once or twice, after the loud barking of dogs at dawn, Chang-yong circled our shack to check the area, and then disappeared again. Young-min, saying he would probably die of a heart attack before we were caught, asked several times a day whether it would be better for us to go straight to his relative’s house. Each time, I shook my head. Finally, I lost my temper and raised my voice.

‘Think about it,’ I snapped. ‘We’ve already been caught once by the border guards in North Korea. That’s why the Chinese authorities have our photographs. We’ve been in China for a few days, and by now the authorities here must have been sent more evidence from North Korea. These soldiers were able to track us down to Chang-yong’s mother-in-law. Do you not think they would know about your relatives? They’ve probably got the place surrounded. So forget it. We’re going to wait for Chang-yong’s nephew.’

Even in his sleep, Young-min let out big sighs and managed to get on my nerves. I had to muster all my patience to keep myself quiet. If I complained, it might provoke him even more and I didn’t want an argument to betray us.

On the third night, I fell asleep quite early after drinking the wine Chang-yong had brought us; he had told us it might be the coldest night of the winter. Young-min shook me and I awoke to his terrified face and the sound of barking all around us. The night before, a cow had wandered in the yard and its shadow had frightened me so much that I’d curled into a ball and had kept shaking for an hour afterwards. Although I mumbled that it might be the animal again, I jumped up when, through the crack in the door, I spotted someone outside shining a torch over our shack. We leapt back to the corner behind
the padlocked door. Every time a beam of light seeped through the cracks in the door and wall, I flinched as if it were a blade that could cut through my skin.

The light was coming closer and growing brighter. I pulled the blanket close to me and crouched in the corner. There was the sound of footsteps, which then stopped at the door. The lock on the door rattled viciously, and the sound clawed at my chest. I thought the intruder might give up and go away, but the door finally swung open to reveal a large soldier. He grimaced when my eyes met his. After the short moment it took for the soldier to register that there were two of us, he started yelling something in Chinese and rushed out. I slapped Young-min’s back to get his attention. He was bent over, frantically looking for something on the ground.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ I hissed. Then we ran into the dark. I don’t know how I managed to climb over the high wall across from the shack. I had often stared at it through the dirty window of our shelter, thinking I could never scramble over it even if our lives depended on it. Tumbling onto the other side, I sprinted after the shape running ahead of me. I muttered to myself again and again, ‘I’m going to live, I’m going to live.’

I stumbled through the dark, but came to a halt when I realised that the shape I was chasing was not Young-min, but a calf. I turned to look behind me, but there was no one there. I bent double and retraced my steps to look for Young-min, ending up in a large empty plot with a line of sight to our shack. I counted four torches, then another eight. There were twelve torch lights altogether.

Still bent double, I crept down the alleyways in search of Young-min. Sudden footsteps made me jump, and I realised that one of the torch lights was beaming from somewhere close. In the glow of light, I could even see a red star on the soldier’s cap. In only a few seconds, we would come face to face. But then a miracle occurred. A cow appeared next to me, out of nowhere. Perhaps it was the mother of
the calf I had seen earlier. I quickly hid myself behind it. The distance between the soldier and me must have been less than five metres, and if he turned there was every chance that he would see my legs below the creature’s belly.

But the cow registered my presence before the soldier did. It shifted nervously a few paces, and then started to move more quickly. Forced to run in the same direction as the cow, and doing my best to stay hidden behind its bulk, my clothes were torn by tangles of thorns in the hedgerows. When we reached a dark place far from any source of light, I pushed against the cow and ran ahead with the last of my strength until I reached the bottom of the mountain.

There, I sank to the ground and pressed my palm against my tight chest to still the pounding of my heart as I caught my breath. My surroundings looked familiar, and I realised I must be in the area we had run to on the first night when, led by Chang-yong after the phone call, we fled from his mother-in-law’s house. Perhaps this was the only road in the neighbourhood! If so, Young-min might be nearby too.

‘Young-min?’ I called out. ‘Young-min? Are you there?’ I called a little louder.

The mountain did not respond, as if it had turned its back on me and piled a wall of darkness between us. Only then did I realise that my feet, numb and beyond pain, were bare. I sank into the snow and rubbed my frozen soles. They were like stone, not flesh. Cold winds stabbed at my cheeks and ears like needles. I heard a crunching sound, similar to footsteps on snow. Had the border guards followed me up all the way here? At the thought, I was furious, because I had lost the will to run any further with these frozen and unprotected feet. But unexpectedly, a voice called to me.

‘Hey, it’s me! Over here!’

I looked towards the noise, and saw some branches moving. The snow reflected enough light for me to see Young-min smiling and
waving his hand, poking his head out between the branches of a bush. The bastard was alive! I ran towards him, and as soon as I got close, I punched him.

‘How can you smile? You selfish bastard, you abandoned your friend to save your own life!’

Young-min received my punches to his chest without complaint. Only when I had finished my scolding did he tell me he had come here thinking I was right behind him. Then he took out something from an inside pocket and handed it to me. It was the manuscript of my poetry that I had brought from Pyongyang. That was what he had been searching for on the ground in the shack before we fled. Even in that desperate situation, confronted by soldiers, he had done the best thing a friend could do. I felt a pang in my heart at the thought. Then I noticed Young-min wasn’t wearing shoes either.

‘Stupid boy, you should have put your shoes on too,’ I said, attempting a joke.

Fortunately, we had not taken anything else off, so the rest of our bodies were relatively warm. To be safer, we climbed a little higher up the hill. As soon as sat down, we put our feet on each other’s bellies to warm them. We could see the whole village down below, and could even count the individual torches in the alleyways beneath us. Near where we had been hiding, two vehicles had their lights on although their engines were switched off. Chang-yong’s mother-in-law was perhaps sleeping through it, as there were no lights on in her house at all.

We did not have to wait too long before the sky had begun to lighten and gain some colour. The order must have been given to withdraw, because the torches all moved towards the vehicles, which then drove off out of the village.

‘Should we go back down?’ Young-min asked first. I found the cold difficult to bear any longer, and we cautiously made our way back down to the village. Having confirmed our presence in this
village, I had thought that the border guards might have left some men behind. But we had seen each of the torches disappear into the vehicles and, more than anything else, the greatest threat to our lives at the moment was the cold. As we picked our way down the hill, we had no feeling left in our feet at all and we stumbled several times.

When we reached the house of Chang-yong’s mother-in-law, we knocked but there was no response. But as soon as we called Chang-yong’s name a light came on inside and, instead of a spoken response, he rushed out to let us in. As he opened the door, we could hear his mother-in-law shouting something in Chinese.

‘Unbelievable,’ he said to us. ‘You weren’t caught after all! You lads are amazing.’

Those words made me feel very proud. But what we needed more than praise at that moment was heat. When Chang-yong noticed our exposed feet, he took a sharp intake of breath but didn’t say a word. He went to find us some shoes, and returned to us bearing socks and rubber slip-ons, apologising that these were all he had. When I put mine on, they were surprisingly warming for my feet. Farmer Chang-yong said that if we had been captured, he too would have had to live a life on the run. He told us that we were therefore greater men than Kim Jong-il. Whatever his reasons for being relieved at our safety, I was happy that he shared our relief, and at that moment he felt like an uncle to me.

‘The soldiers took your rucksack,’ Chang-yong said. ‘What was inside?’

When I replied that it was just books and a change of clothes, he asked me to confirm that there hadn’t been any money in the bag. Young-min, who was standing to Chang-yong’s side, went pale at the word ‘money’. Before he could speak, I answered, ‘Luckily, we had the money on us.’

As Young-min signalled to me with his eyes to check whether I was telling the truth, Chang-yong’s mother-in-law called from inside, and he went into the house.