"Go ahead, get the urge to ramble out of your system. Feel better? Alright.
Forget Pak." The Irishman fiddled for a moment with the tape recorder.
He sighed and pounded his shoulder a few times. "Kim, give me something on Kim. You don't like him, I got that much. I take it he is still alive."
"A sad state of affairs, Richie, when men like Kim are left standing."
I sat down again and poured myself half a cup of coffee. It looked cold.
"Kim is a problem in search of a solution."
"Couldn't tell by me. So far, his only sin is a bad haircut."
The Inn of the Red Dragon in Kanggye was a two-story building that had given up the struggle with the weather. The roof sagged, its windows were cockeyed, and the exterior cement facing was chipped and cracking where it wasn't streaked with water stains. A few blocks east of the train station, the inn sat alone, across from the burned wreck of what used to be a clinic, according to a sign on the boarded-up door.
I had asked at the station whether there was an inn nearby. There were several, according to an old lady who leaned against the wall with a blanket spread in front of her, selling cigarettes stacked in two small pyramids-one Korean, one foreign-a circle of rice cakes, and a few pieces of fruit. A pile of party newspapers sat beside her; the one on top was old but in remarkably good shape, an edition for Kim II Sung's sixtieth birthday, dated April 15, 1972. She also had four or five children's books in English, brightly colored, one of them with a duck in pants and a hat on the cover.
"Buy an apple," she said. "You look hungry."
"Grandmother, I need to wash my face and go to sleep. Do you know where a poor boy can put his head down?"
"You want a girl?"
"Grandmother, look at me," I said. "First you offer me an apple, then a woman."
"Yeah, biblical, ain't it." She smiled, and her eyes disappeared in the wrinkles. I must have looked surprised, because she suddenly stopped smiling. "Don't worry, this isn't Pyongyang. Bibles around here come as thick as flies. Decent paper. Some people use it to wrap fish."
"And you?"
"I can read, can't I?"
"An inn, Grandmother."
"I know. There's three. Five actually, nearby, but two's not for you.
One of them, the White Azalea, is only for military, which you're not.
Then there's the Lotus. Very elite, for fine gentlemen from Pyongyang and foreigners." She looked at me. "Not you. Anyway, just between us, it's a dump. The party lets them charge through the sky, and for what?
The food stinks. The cook is crooked and only buys spoiled goods at a discount. They caught him once, but his uncle is someone important up there"-she pointed a finger into the air-"and he got let off with a warning." She laughed. "Big deal. A warning. They should have broiled his ass good." She paused and looked thoughtful. "You, you try the Red Dragon. Nothing fancy." She paused again. "I'm surprised you don't know much about Kanggye."
"Why would that be?"
"You look like one of General O Chang-yun's boys. Same eyes."
I shook my head. "Don't know any such man, but we've all got to have eyes, don't we, Grandma?"
As I walked up the hill to the inn, I tried to calculate the odds of the first person I met in this sorry city knowing my grandfather, General O, "Hero of the Struggle and Beating Heart of the Revolution," as they called him on the radio the day he died.
5
The clerk behind the desk at the Red Dragon did not move. I stood for a moment taking in the cluttered counter and the spare furniture against the walls, trying to decide if this place would keep me out of Kang's sights. The man finally stirred but kept his face in a book. He worked his lips a few times to check if they still functioned, and then his voiced slipped up over the top of the pages into the room. "You needing something, or just here to observe?"
This was not said sarcastically. It was with considerable boredom.
He did not strike me as someone who was enjoying his job.
"I was thinking about a room."
"Grandma Pak sent you, no doubt. People don't show up here this time of day, unless she sends them." I waited, but he stayed behind his book.
"She recommended you, said it was better here, more suited to me. Funny thing for an old lady to say to someone she's just met." I looked around the room again. "But she definitely had a low opinion of everywhere else." The closer I studied it, the more I realized that the place was not as shabby as it seemed. It reminded me of Kang's carefully scuffed shoes, like a safe house I had been assigned to watch a few years ago in Pyongyang: barely used, so someone had to kick the dust around and muss up the woodwork to give the place a lived-in look.
"That's good. It means she likes you." The book came down, and the clerk was suddenly watching me closely.
"A room?" I decided to get to the point. That seemed to bring him around.
"Got one. Got one with a view. Overlooks a pine tree. Very evocative."
"Wonderful. I'll take it."
We stood eyeing each other. I broke first. "I believe it is customary at this point for you to tell me how much it is, for me to say that's too much, and then for you to give me a registration paper, check my ID card, and so on."
He shook his head. "Don't have any registration forms left."
I could see four or five of them on the desk. He followed my gaze, then picked up one of the forms and waved it over his head. "These?
These? This paper is pathetic. It's not even good for the toilet. I wouldn't send a form like this in. It's an insult to the nation."
I leaned across the counter and looked directly into his eyes. "You always so patriotic about not keeping track of guests?"
He stared back. "If a record is what you want, that's fine by me. But if I have it and the special police or a couple of lunkheaded colonels from Military Security come asking, then I have to give them the form, don't I?"
"And what would you know about Military Security?" There was no sense in leaning into his face if he didn't react. I turned to a TV set sitting in the corner nearest the door. If you weren't paying attention, you could miss it when you first walked in, just like I had. It was new, big screen, a South Korean make with the name still on it. An oblong dish aerial perched on the top, nothing you'd need if all you could receive was the central TV channel, but something you'd want if you were looking for foreign broadcasts.
The clerk acted as if the TV were perfectly normal. "First, this is Kanggye, if you were wondering. The place is full of special sites which"-he shrugged his shoulders-"I have heard nothing about.
This means it is full of military security. Second, I'm from Pyongyang myself. I know what I know." He saw me look back at the TV. "Go ahead," he said, "turn it on if you want. This time of the day we can't get much, but in the morning and at night we can pull in Chinese stations.
The game shows are pretty funny, even if you don't understand the language. If that's capitalism, I say it doesn't look too difficult."
"Been here long?"
"Three years. I was in the Foreign Ministry. They asked for volunteers to move out when they took cuts. I raised my hand and was cheered gloriously at the train station the afternoon I left, along with a few hundred others. Here I sit. It's a life."
The book he was reading was in English. It was a paperback, the cover nearly coming off and some of the pages hanging loose. It looked like it had been read and reread plenty. "A gift from a foreigner long ago. Don't worry. It's legal. I'm supposed to keep up my English. No one to talk to, so I read this."
"Very literary town, is Kanggye," I said. "You read English novels; the old lady at the station reads the Bible. She's seems a tough bird, smarter than she lets on."
He shot me a speculative glance; then his diplomatic training kicked in, and the shutters came down over his eyes. "Your room is up the stairs, down the hall, on the left. Number 7. The door doesn't close all the way, nor the window. We lock the front door at 10:00 p.m. Be inside before that, or you sleep under the pine tree. No exceptions."