How I Became a North Korean (14 page)

Eomma, I said, I'm finally home. Eomma turned and I saw that it wasn't her at all, but a man from the Ministry of People's Security in my
eomma
's navy dress who struck me on the head with the boiling cast-iron pot.

But I wasn't daydreaming anymore. My dark dreams were real, the pain was real, and I was struck, and struck again.

The two black suits in my room moved with grace for such large men. One of them knocked aside my tray. Stew splattered and dried anchovies scattered across the floor. I backed away against the bedpost; there was nowhere to go. They didn't hurry. I begged; it didn't help. The hand that slapped me across the head came down so slowly; the pain wasn't as bad as the waiting.

“Save me?” said one man. One of his eyes was welded shut and his knuckles were tattooed with Han characters.

My plans had been discovered.

“Some guy's offered to buy you and any others from your country. What have you been saying to our customers?”

Something was about to change. The snowdrifts blocked me in, and I shivered in the cold.

T
he week waiting for Missionary Kwon brought out the worst in us. Gwangsu began talking to himself about escape, Cheolmin started kicking Gwangsu in the shins, Yongju ground his teeth while sleeping, and Bakjun began masturbating all night without bothering to take it somewhere more private, or at least it seemed that way to me each time he interrupted my sleep. Only Namil was unaffected, as long as he got three square meals a day. I waited for a chance to use Missionary Lee's cell phone or for Missionary Kwon to expel me for challenging him in front of the Bangs—whichever came first. If anyone could help my friends, it was my mom—I just needed to reach her.

The day Missionary Kwon returned, Namil was napping on the floor as stiff as a mummy, the Bible spread over his eyes; Bakjun was staring down at the words as if they were Egyptian hieroglyphs. While I drew Bible scenes on cardboard cards for them, Cheolmin ran back and forth across the room, slamming
his body into the walls. He halted and screamed, “There's a hole in my stomach! I can't take it!” then ran again.

“You can, you can and you will.” Yongju stopped recopying the Book of Isaiah into a notebook. “We have to.”

Missionary Lee wiped at the sweat beading on his forehead and upper lip. “It's Missionary Kwon's orders. I'm sorry.”

He had banished Cheolmin from lunch for the second time that week for not memorizing his daily Bible verse.

“He won't know if you let me eat or if I piss in my pants, since he's never around.”

“I made a promise. It's my duty.” Missionary Lee looked fatigued. “And if you keep using such language, I won't have a choice but to report you.”

“He's never been to school, so how can he read?” Bakjun bit off the skin from his thumb. Of course he was also talking about himself. “And now he has to memorize the Bible?”

Memorize
wasn't exactly the right word for it. In the missionaries' defense, outside of the daily Bible verse the boys were assigned, they weren't expected to know much more than the Bible's stories in the right order. But it was a strange new world for them, even if the version we were reading was in their Joseon language and not the Korean two cousins removed that was spoken in South Korea. Seeing it through their eyes, it had become strange for me, too. I wondered about the mysterious ways of God and about how long you could keep a group of teenage guys locked up without consequences.

Namil said, “Do you always have to do what Kwon wants you to?”

“All promises are a promise to God.” Missionary Lee clapped his hands together and brightened. “How about some snacks? I can do that.”

The rare treat went wrong when Cheolmin grabbed the last Choco Pie and knocked over Bakjun's bottle of Coke. I set it upright in a flash, but a quarter of it had spilled, and everyone scrambled to rescue their notebooks and Bibles.

“You stupid
ganna saekki
.” Bakjun kept his voice low so it wouldn't carry to Missionary Lee's room, where he was resting. He was always resting those days, which should have been a sign. “That was mine! When do we ever get to drink this stuff?”

Bakjun was sweeping the spilled liquid into his palm when Cheolmin smashed the crown of his head with his elbow.

I locked Cheolmin's arms behind him the best I could. I wasn't about to push my luck with a guy who'd begun talking about returning to his country and joining a legendary gang.

Bakjun's eyes narrowed into flints. The tension in the air scared me; for the first time I sensed that in the confined space, there was nowhere for their energy to go. I released Cheolmin and sprinted to the middle of the room, threw my arms wide, and said the first thing I could think of.

“Once upon a time it was the darkest night ever imagined. God dipped his hand into that darkness and when he opened his arms”—I spread mine out—“he divided the dark from the light.”

“This is stupid,” said Cheolmin.

“Listen to Daehan,” said Yongju. “You two can have my Coke and Choco Pie.”

“The light was as bright as the white in a burning fire, a
dove's wing, the streak of a missile across the sky. That was how bright it was.”

I described Adam as he wandered through the unruly topiary of nature and showed them how lovely he was, how innocent. Soon enough I was there with Adam and Eve, strolling through Eden, the sting of orchids thick in my nose, the green foliage wrapped around the trees like a sarong, listening to the larks and nightingales. I admired those fateful apples, so luminous that they reflected Adam back to himself like a mirror. I was singing one of the greatest songs that man has ever known, and I was flooded with love and hope. But whether that love was for the story, for comfort, or for faith, I didn't know anymore. I continued until the fate of the world's first man and woman unraveled and the end came: “Dust you are, dust you will return.”

I opened my eyes. No one had moved.

“It's not a bad story, when you say it that way.” Bakjun cuffed me on the head, sending happy tingles through me.

“I've never heard a nightingale sing,” said Yongju. “I like the sound of it. Nightingale.”

Cheolmin spat into the air and caught the descending blob in his fist. “Those Bible stories are a load of shit. Everyone knows that.”

“Everyone?” I said. “Have you talked to the entire world's population and checked? Do you have any idea how many of us have infiltrated the planet? In China alone there are more than two billion homo sapiens wreaking havoc . . .”

“There he goes, acting like he's intellectual when he's just a homeless Joseon-
jok
. There's easier ways to get out.” Cheolmin
flashed both palms covered with tiny drawings at me, his version of crib notes.

Namil slung an arm around me, so close that his unwashed hair trailed its oiliness across my cheek. “At least he knows something. At least he's saying something worth listening to.”

“And where'd your fancy long words and your fancy learning get you,
dongmu
?” said Cheolmin. “Here, with us.”

I slung my arm over Namil's shoulder. “I enjoy learning.”

“‘I enjoy learning,'” Cheolmin parroted back in a squeaky voice that sounded nothing like mine. My stomach tightened. I was exposed again in a circle of boys and there was nowhere to hide. I prepared myself, curled up roly-poly on the floor to protect myself from his fists, but they never came.

Instead, Yongju asked, “Who's your real enemy? Who are you really angry at?”

He approached Cheolmin gently, like a rustling leaf. “Daehan's one of us, too, and right now we're all we have.”

No one had ever defended me before; no one had ever been on my side. I was touched; I was speechless.

Maybe my life would have spun out differently if Yongju hadn't crouched on the floor and put his arm around my shoulders and one around Cheolmin's. But he pulled me into his musk and amber, drew me into the secret fraternity of men, until I was drowning in the oceanic span of his long arms, finally lost.

I hadn't recovered when Missionary Kwon arrived later that afternoon; maybe I have never recovered. He cleared his throat, his eyes resting on Cheolmin, who was sleeping facedown on the
dojjari
. I was teaching Namil how to do a handstand, and he tumbled to the floor feet first as I let go of him and sprang to eager attention, hands at my sides. I'd be more useful to them on the outside anyway, I told myself. I wanted to leave immediately, even if it meant facing my parents.

I could have timed Missionary Kwon's steps toward Cheolmin with a metronome. He inspected him, then disappeared down the hall and returned with Missionary Lee.

“Is this how you're running my safe house?” Missionary Kwon's quiet voice could have needled straight through a bolt of wool.

“We were just taking a break.” Missionary Lee frantically shook Cheolmin by the shoulders.

Missionary Kwon pulled up Cheolmin by his armpits and held him like a scarecrow. Missionary Lee did nothing. Cheolmin grabbed Missionary Kwon's hands and dug in with his nails, his face screwed up with so much fury that I ducked as if his fists were flying at me.

“You could have hurt him!” said Missionary Lee, but he stayed half-hidden behind Yongju.

Still holding him by the armpits, Missionary Kwon lifted Cheolmin into the air until their faces were inches apart. “I hear you haven't been very successful in memorizing your daily verses.”

“He's only missed a few, and he's really trying,” said Missionary Lee.

“Missionary Kwon, I am trying.” Cheolmin's eyes were hard and cold.

The missionary set him back down.

“No dinner today for you. No verse, no food. We'll stick to
this every day until you conform fully to my rules. I'll come personally to check if I have to, but I expect . . .”

He frowned, drawing out the fine lines under his eyes. “I expect Missionary Lee will be honest in his reports.”

Cheolmin said, “You heard. I tried. I got most of it.”

“Most? If the Lord's sacrifice of his own son saved us from most but not all of our sins, would that be enough to bless us with the eternal gift of heaven?”

“And if I give up? Are you going to starve me?” The bulldog look came over Cheolmin's face.

“No, don't try blackmailing me. I don't recommend that. One girl I tried to help—she went on a sort of strike. She wouldn't study or read the Lord's words—she abandoned her soul. I can tell you we were patient, and we moved her from safe house to safe house for more than three years.”

A chorus of voices, including mine, said, “Three years?”

“We tried so hard not to give up on her . . . The discipline's for your sake,
jaashik
. You North Koreans can't understand our system, but trust me, I've done this work for years. Without discipline, this house would be utter chaos. Most Christians won't even take kids like you in, because of the potential trouble.”

“They're good boys.” Missionary Lee approached Cheolmin and wrapped his arms around his neck. “They're God's children, too!”

Ignoring him, Missionary Kwon turned to me. “I need a word with you, Daehan. That shouldn't surprise you.” I was ready.

I followed him down the exposed concrete stairs and out the front gate toward his car, my head a muddle. Who I was, what I
believed, all the neat black-and-white boundaries of the map of my life no longer made sense. I rubbed at my hair, my cheeks, and wished I could strip out of my skin. The sun warmed my back after precisely ninety-nine days without direct sunlight on it and the foothills were finally a verdant green, but none of it mattered.

He dusted off the boxy sedan's windshield and windows with a soft mop from the trunk, taking his time. I waited a few steps behind him, my hands folded together. I realized that my ankles were peeking out from my pants, and that in the last months I'd outgrown Missionary Kwon. He got into the car and fiddled with the navigation system, then looked out at me. “Are you going to stand there all day?”

So I lowered myself onto the hot prickle of the passenger seat, prepared to be kicked out of the safe house and be liberated.

He tapped impatiently at the black screen. “Do you know how to make this work?”

Of course I understood the psychology of machines, which was actually only the psychology of their maker. I watched Missionary Kwon from the corner of my eye, the smooth facade of his face, which was beginning to remind me of a salesman's. What he'd said about discipline and faith in the safe house was probably mostly true, but it was also unjust and cruel and, worst of all, dangerous. I was thinking about the nature of God, and especially about how to confess, when Missionary Kwon started the car and I was suddenly off the premises with a man I'd accused of being a potential murderer.

I prepared myself. “Missionary Kwon—”

“Daehan, I want to tell you a story about a man,” he said. “This man is me.”

Before I could stop him, he launched into how he had once languished in a South Korean jail, a no-good man abandoned by society. I became extremely uncomfortable, suffocated as I was by my own secrets.

“I lost everyone—my wife, my brothers and sisters—to my ways. I lost my son.”

He tapped a photo dangling from the rearview mirror, a grave young boy around six. I couldn't imagine Missionary Kwon as a father, but then maybe no one ever really seemed like a father.

“There wasn't anything illegal I didn't do. I did my time as a loan shark, I ran a gambling ring, I had my hand in everything until I got caught. My son would be your age now, you know. He's in Cheonan, in South Korea. I get to see him a few times a year. That's it. If I show up at any other time, my wife calls the police. The church saved me. God tested me, and I tested him, but now I know he reserved me for a greater purpose.”

My North Korean friends, and the others before him, were the greater purpose.

I asked, “Why are you telling me this?”

He kept talking as if he were speaking more to himself than to me. I managed to stay quiet the way an older man would expect me to and kept my eyes fixed on that dangling family photo. My head was filled with his confessions, this family man,
the man with a dark underbelly of a past, who helped and hurt the people entrusted to him. A man, in the end, who believed in God.

Finally, we stopped near the river, a very different river in the summer heat with its banks overgrown with willow trees. There were smugglers openly working in some sort of cooperation with a border guard, sending their goods across with a car tire supporting a length of plywood. The village on the other side had gray walls surrounding peaked roofs and chimneys. Men were fishing, a woman was doing laundry in the river, and kids were playing on the bank. It seemed so safe, bucolic even.

“Missionary Kwon—”