"Jam," she repeated irritably. I didn't say anything, so she shrugged.
People do that, it doesn't mean much, but the way her shoulders moved, you paid attention. "Suit yourself." As she took a deep drag on the cigarette, she looked slowly around the room. It was her exercise, like taking a walk in the park. I could feel myself getting short of breath, waiting until she exhaled. She was in no hurry. Finally, when her eyes were back on me again, she made a perfect circle with her lips and the smoke came out, a little at a time. "My name is Elena. My father was Finnish. My mother Chinese. I wish I were in Finland, but I'm not. I'm in this stinking city." She was speaking Russian. She still smelled divine.
"First"-my head cleared a little as I focused on each object in the room, the bed, the chair, the small table, the lamp-"I'd appreciate getting back my shirt." I tucked the blanket under my chin. "I assume you are washing it."
She didn't move a muscle.
"Second, I love your perfume, but it's drowning in cigarette smoke."
She put on a pouty look, but somehow she didn't resemble a traffic lady. "You asked for a nonsmoking room, perhaps? Let me check your reservation."
I decided not to be distracted by her lips. "Third, who is grandpa, why did he drag me here, and what time is it?"
"Aren't you going to tell me your name?
"What for?"
"I told you mine." She leaned against the wall again, the cigarette dangling from her fingers. Her nails were painted a glossy red. She wasn't wearing shoes, but her skirt was so long I could only see the tips of her toes.
"Your blouse?"
She sighed. "Yes?"
"Is it Finnish?"
"Why, do you want me to take it off so you can see?" She barely hid the disdain in her voice.
"No, it's the buttons. They're blue."
"Yes, like the lake beside the town where I grew up."
"Blue like Lake Keitele," I said without a pause, and she nearly jumped off the chair. I realized I had scored a bull's-eye, totally by accident.
I hadn't even aimed the shot. "Surprised?" I tried to smile, but it made my head hurt. "Don't worry, I haven't looked at your file. I had a conversation with a Finnish businessman a few years ago in a bar in Pyongyang. He was drunk and talked about Finland. Funny man. He said he wanted to be a police detective, but there was something wrong with his knee, so he became a salesman-machinery, cosmetics, something.
I didn't ask, and he was vague. He showed me a little book of landscape paintings by Finnish artists he carried around so he wouldn't get homesick. One of the paintings was of a place called Lake Keitele.
It was a beautiful blue, peaceful but ice cold all at once. I decided that someday I wanted to go there."
She had settled back in her chair. "Do you know much about Finland?"
"Not much besides vodka, blue buttons, and paintings of blue lakes. I've heard the forests are endless. In the summer, when the wind rustles the leaves, they say it sounds like a hundred distant waterfalls." I felt like pressing my luck. "Your father was from near Lake Keitele?"
"He was. He drowned himself in the lake on his seventy-fifth birthday."
Another bull's-eye, only this one I didn't want. I must have turned white. "Don't worry," she said. "He always told us that was what he was going to do, and so none of us were surprised. My sister wrote and said he just announced one day that he was tired of getting old, finished his coffee, and walked out the door. It was a pretty day, in summer. The lake must have been very blue."
The whole time she was talking I was searching my mind desperately for an exit line. "The bread might be good after all." It was all I could find. "Is the jam blueberry?"
"Supposedly from your Mount Paektu, very sweet. Your Russian isn't bad. Not many people can change the subject so smoothly in a foreign language."
She stood up. She was tall. I tried to imagine how her father, the taciturn Finn, had stumbled into China. Must have been in the northeast; no woman in southern China would give him such a daughter. After she closed the door, I threw off the blanket, which I knew was a mistake as soon as I'd done it. My back screamed. I'd wrenched it.
Every time I was hit on the head, I fell off balance to the left. Pak complained that I was the only one in the unit who needed an extra three days to recover after getting knocked out. The dizziness would clear- it always did-but the back would linger. That meant limping through Manpo, even though it was plain this was not a town where you wanted to be marked as a wounded animal.
I shuffled to the window. The sky showed no sign of dawn, so I guessed I'd only been here a few hours. I was on the third floor. In the moonlight I could see we were in an old wooden building. The last time it had been painted it had been white. I didn't hear the door open behind me, which was a surprise because in old buildings like this, the doors usually stick. It's easy to fix, but no one takes the time.
"You want me to close my eyes while you jump back into bed?"
Elena had two pieces of black bread on a plate, a spoonful of jam next to each one. "Your shirt won't be dry for a while. Then it needs ironing.
The girl who does that never gets here before eight o'clock."
It was cold, and a little hammer inside my head was pounding my brain. She put the plate on the bed, then moved to her chair. She didn't look at me, she hadn't done anything wrong, but I suddenly didn't like her or the accommodations. "You don't have to sit and watch me. I won't run anywhere without my shirt."
"This is my room. I've nowhere to go. Believe me, watching you is not paradise. When I'm alone, I can imagine I'm somewhere else. With you here, I cannot forget I'm in this godforsaken land."
"It's not so bad." My headache was getting worse, which made me determined to contradict whatever she said. "Pyongyang is peaceful.
The parks and the trees give the place a sleepy feeling, especially in the summer. You can hear the trolley bells clang in the morning, and the river sparkles on sunny days. From the top of the Juche Tower, you can see the whole city stretched out like a miniature village in a museum."
"God, what are you, a travel advertisement? Do you know what you are saying? Have you ever been anywhere real?"
"Real?" I forgot my headache. "Real?" I walked back to the bed, my back shrieking at me with every step. It was all I could do not to drag my leg, but I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction. To hell with her eyes.
"Yes, where there are real restaurants, real buildings, real people."
"So. We're not real?" Getting into bed was torture. How could I lift my legs over the side without moaning like an ox? "If that's how we impress you, I must apologize. How rude of us, not to seem human to someone like you." I saw her body stiffen. Good. I pressed the attack.
"We're real, every one of us. Don't forget it. And, yes, I have been overseas.
Some things are good, some things aren't, same as here. Nothing is perfect. This godforsaken country, as you call it, is where I live. This is my home. The little room I have is where I go at night to find shelter from the storms of the day. Maybe a Finn would think it too cramped, not well furnished, lacking blond wood and bright furniture. But I like it fine." My voice was rising a little at the end as I dropped back on the pillow. It was a good thing I was so angry; it was just enough to cover over the pain that nearly strangled me as I remembered, too late, that I was supposed to lie on my side.
"Now you're mad at me. Why do Koreans get angry so quickly?"
"We don't. We just don't hide our feelings." I closed my eyes. "You may not always know what a Korean thinks, but you damn well know what he feels. If anything, we're melancholy more than angry. Listen to our songs. Always longing for something."
"The Russians are like that. Melancholy."
"Any country that produced Stalin has reason to be melancholy."